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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 Visigoths now came into conflict with the Franks under their King Clovis I, who had conquered northern Gaul. Following a brief war with the Franks, Alaric was forced to put down a rebellion in Tarraconensis, probably caused by recent Visigoth immigration to Hispania due to pressure from the Franks.
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]
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.
The revolt of Alaric I was a military conflict between the Roman Empire and a rebel army, probably composed mainly of Goths. This war consisted a number of armed conflicts in the period between 395 and 398, interspersed with periods of negotiations and sometimes even cooperation.
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."
Alaric was succeeded by his brother-in–law Athaulf, husband of Honorius' sister Galla Placidia, who had been seized during Alaric's sack of Rome. Athaulf settled the Visigoths in southern Gaul . [ 198 ] [ 199 ] After failing to gain recognition from the Romans, Athaulf retreated into Hispania in early 415, and was assassinated in Barcelona ...