August 24, AD 410

Sack of Rome (410)

Alaric's Gothic army sacks Rome for three days

Procopius says 300 Goths spent weeks posing as household slaves before opening the Salarian Gate — then, in the same passage, gives a completely different explanation.

24 August 410

A Gothic army commanded by Alaric entered Rome on 24 August 410, after repeated sieges and a final breakdown in negotiations with Honorius's government, and began three days of plunder.

Honorius was at Ravenna. Rome remained symbolically central but was no longer the emperor's regular residence.

Nobody agrees who opened the gate

Procopius, writing roughly a century and a half later, says 300 beardless Gothic youths entered Roman households disguised as enslaved servants, killed the guards at the Salarian Gate and admitted Alaric's army.

In the same passage he supplies an alternative: the wealthy matron Proba, pitying a famine-stricken population, ordered her own domestics to open the gates at night.

The manner of entry therefore cannot be stated as settled fact.

Three days, then out

Residents were killed, assaulted, robbed and taken captive — the imperial princess Galla Placidia among them — but the surviving partisan accounts supply no trustworthy totals.

Orosius, writing Christian apologetic history a few years afterward, says Alaric ordered that refugees in holy places be left unharmed, especially in the basilicas of Peter and Paul, and that his men restrain bloodshed while taking booty.

The army departed after three days rather than occupying the city. Procopius reports fires near the Salarian Gate, including damage to the House of Sallust; modern scholarship concludes Rome suffered a major psychological shock but comparatively limited physical damage.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The 24 August date and three-day duration are accepted in modern scholarship, but detailed narratives of the entry survive in later, conflicting sources.
Procopius wrote roughly a century and a half afterward and explicitly records two incompatible gate-opening stories.
Christian authors such as Augustine and Orosius wrote apologetically, emphasizing sanctuary and restraint to answer claims that Christianity had failed Rome. Their testimony cannot establish exact casualty or sexual-violence rates.
“Visigoths” is conventional modern shorthand. Alaric’s followers were a changing Gothic-led military and migrant coalition, not yet the later territorial Visigothic kingdom.