What Happened When the Goths Took Rome?
The year 410 AD was one of the worst in the Roman Empire’s history
The Roman Empire reached its apex during the second century. It stretched out on all sides of the Mediterranean Sea (which led the Romans to simply refer to it as “Mare Nostrum” meaning “Our Sea”). The empire’s capital, Rome, had a population of almost 1 million people, making it the largest city in the world at the time.
Rome was also the center of culture for all of Europe. Marble statues of Roman emperors and conquered barbarians littered the city. There were many glorious buildings whose only purposes were to entertain the masses — such as the Colosseum for gladiatorial fights, the Circus Maximus for chariot racing, churches/temples, bathhouses, and brothels.
Rome’s harbor, Ostia, received tons of exotic goods from far-away lands every day — for example, spices, glassware, silks, dyes, perfumes, leather, etc. The citizens of the city were relatively affluent, and those that weren’t were given grain rations so that they wouldn’t go hungry and revolt. All of this led contemporary historians to call Rome the “eternal city.”
But by the dawn of the fourth century, the empire had been split into two halves, and the capital of the western half — of which Rome was a part — was moved to…
