After years of failed negotiations and broken treaties with the Western Roman Empire, Alaric I led his Visigoths through the Salarian Gate on the night of August 24 and unleashed three days of plunder. The event stunned the ancient world—Saint Jerome, writing from Bethlehem, said his voice failed him with sobs—and is often cited as the symbolic beginning of Rome's terminal decline.
Rome had not fallen to a foreign enemy since the Gauls sacked it in 387 BC. By 410, the city was no longer even the empire's capital—that distinction belonged to Ravenna—but it remained the empire's spiritual and symbolic heart, the Eternal City whose name meant civilization itself. Alaric, a Gothic king who had served and been betrayed by Rome in turn, had besieged the city twice before, extracting ransoms of gold, silver, and pepper. The third time, he simply took it.
Slaves reportedly opened the Salarian Gate from within. What followed was, by ancient standards, relatively restrained—churches were spared at Alaric's order, and Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's basilicas became sanctuaries—but the psychological shock was immense. Refugees fled to Africa and the East, carrying tales of the city's humiliation. Augustine of Hippo, moved by pagans blaming Rome's fall on its abandonment of the old gods, began writing City of God in response.
Alaric died within the year, reportedly buried with his treasure beneath a diverted riverbed in southern Italy, his grave never found. Rome itself limped on for another 66 years as a Western imperial seat, but the sack of 410 marked the moment the empire's aura of invincibility shattered for good.