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Imaginative portrait of Alaric in C. Strahlheim, Das Welttheater, 4.Band, Frankfurt a.M., 1836. According to Jordanes, a 6th-century Roman bureaucrat of Gothic origin—who later turned his hand to history—Alaric was born on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube Delta in present-day Romania and belonged to the noble Balti dynasty of the Thervingian Goths.
Possibly in 391, a Gothic chieftain named Alaric was declared king by a group of Visigoths, though the exact time this happened (Jordanes says Alaric was made king in 400 [14] and Peter Heather says 395 [15]) and nature of this position are debated. [16] [17] He then led an invasion into Eastern Roman territory outside of the Goths' designated ...
The Montagne d'Alaric (Alaric's Mountain), near Carcassonne, is named after the Visigoth king. [16] Local rumour has it that he left a vast treasure buried in the caves beneath the mountain. [17] The Canal d'Alaric (Alaric's Canal) in the Hautes-Pyrénées department is named after him. [18]
A problem arose when in 395 Alaric, a former general in the Roman army and king of the Visigoths, revolted and invaded Greece (Revolt of Alaric I). Stilicho, the commander-in-chief of the western armies, and shortly before his superior, wanted to drive him back, but was repulsed by the Eastern Authority, because he moved outside his territory.
When Alaric II was killed while fighting Clovis I, king of the Franks, in the Battle of Vouillé (507), his kingdom fell into disarray. "More serious than the destruction of the Gothic army," writes Herwig Wolfram, "than the loss of both Aquitanian provinces and the capital of Toulose, was the death of the king."
By 403 Alaric and the Visigoths had been pushed back to the Balkans where they remained a minor threat. [ 11 ] : 512 In 405 (according to Adrian Goldsworthy) or 407 (according to Averil Cameron) Stilicho and Alaric formed a treaty which conceded the latter's demands of title for himself and concession of 4,000 pounds of gold for his troops in ...
Despite being in a superior army in size and equipment, Alaric's soldiers wavered as all of the Auvergnat commanders except Apollinaris were killed. [2] During the melée Clovis allegedly killed the Visigothic king Alaric, whereupon the Visigothic army broke and fled. [3] Clovis's army proceeded south and plundered Alaric's treasure at Toulouse ...
The Visigoths were never called Visigoths, only Goths, until Cassiodorus used the term, when referring to their loss against Clovis I in 507. Cassiodorus apparently invented the term based on the model of the "Ostrogoths", but using the older name of the Vesi, one of the tribal names which the fifth-century poet Sidonius Apollinaris, had already used when referring to the Visigoths.