Alaric I

Alaric rose through the Roman army after fighting for Emperor Theodosius against Frankish forces, losing thousands of men with little recognition to show for it. When Theodosius died in 395 and the Roman military fractured, Alaric became king of the Visigoths and the only credible field commander left in the Balkans. He spent the next fifteen years seeking legitimacy from Rome — a formal position that both sides could live with — and never got it. He turned his attention to the Western Roman regimes and marched into Italy. In 410, he took Rome itself, an act that marked one of several fracture…