Alaric I

Alaric I (370 - 410 AD) was the first Visigoth king, reigning from 395 to 410 AD. He rose to command of the Goths who came to occupy Moesia, territory taken a few decades earlier by a combined force of Goths and Alans following the Battle of Adrianople.

Alaric was born on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube Delta in present-day Romania to the noble Balti dynasty of the Thervingian Goths, according to Jordanes, a 6th-century Roman bureaucrat of Gothic origin who later turned his hand to history. This claim cannot be verified.

Alaric began his career as a Gothic soldier under Gainas before joining the Roman army. Under the Roman emperor Theodosius, Alaric helped defeat the Franks and other allies of a potential Roman usurper. Despite losing tens of thousands of men, he received little recognition from Rome and disappointed the Roman army. After Theodosius' death and the disintegration of the Roman armies in 395, he is referred to as King of the Visigoths. He sought Roman legitimacy as the commander of the only effective field force left in the Balkans, but never quite achieved a position acceptable to himself or the Roman authorities.

He fought primarily against the Western Roman regimes and marched into Italy, where he died. He is responsible for the sack of Rome in 410, one of several notable events in the decline of the Western Roman Empire.