1 of 4

September 11, 2001, is frequently compared to December 7, 1941, as a day that will "live in infamy." But a more appropriate analogy might be August 24, 410, when the city of Rome was besieged and pillaged by an army of 40,000 "barbarians" led by the Osama bin Laden of late antiquity, a wily warrior named Alaric.

Before then, Roman coins bore the legend Invicta Roma Aeterna: Eternal, unconquerable Rome. It had been more than 800 years since the Eternal City had fallen to an enemy's attack. In many ways, Rome was like America prior to 9/11, the world's only superpower. But in 410, Rome's military power could not prevent its walls being breached, its women raped, and its sacred precincts burned and sacked.

When the Bible translator Jerome heard about the fall of Rome in faraway Bethlehem, he put aside his Commentary on Ezekiel and sat stupefied in total silence for three days. "Rome was besieged," Jerome wrote to a friend. "The city to which the whole world fell has fallen. If Rome can perish, what can be safe?" The British monk Pelagius, who was in Rome when the attack occurred, gave this report: "Every household had its grief, and an all-pervading terror gripped us."

Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in North Africa, began writing The City of God to counter those who said Rome's fall was the gods' punishment of the ascendant Christians, and to give guidance to fellow Christians who felt the world was crumbling around them. He completed this "great and laborious work," as he called it, just four years before his death in 430. Its influence extended to the Reformation and beyond. For 1,500 years, it has been the bedrock of a Christian philosophy of history.

Between the conversion of Constantine in 312 and Augustine's own conversion in 386, the Christian movement had been transformed from a small, persecuted sect into an officially established religion within the Roman Empire. Eusebius of Caesarea, the biographer of Constantine, had hailed the emperor as the 13th apostle and acclaimed his conversion in utopian terms. Nearly a century later, Augustine realized that such hopes were as misplaced as they had been premature. As wealthy refugees from Rome began to stream into Hippo with their horror stories of Alaric's acts—temples burned, women raped, citizens forced to flee for their lives—Augustine reminded his hearers that the City of God in its pilgrimage here on earth was not exempt from the ravages of time, that it was ever marked "by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labors, and dangerous temptations."

Rome had been "falling" for some time. Alaric was merely the latest in a long line of barbarian chieftains whose forces had been pressing down upon Rome. The Visigoths, Alaric's tribe, began their incursion into the Roman Empire in the winter of 406, when the Rhine River had frozen solid and was easily crossed by thousands of hungry warriors seeking grain and gold and the beautiful artifacts Roman soldiers had brought back to Italy from all over the known world. Alaric had already besieged Rome on two occasions prior to 410. Both times he had been bought off by bribes from wealthy Roman senators who thought such maneuvers could fend off imminent disaster.

When Alaric and his army appeared before the gates of Rome in 410, the besieged citizens were at the point of starvation and had little with which to bargain. They tried to bluff their way out of the crisis by telling Alaric that, if he invaded the city, thousands of Romans would rise up to repel him. Alaric replied, perhaps with a grin, "The thicker the hay, the more easily it is mowed down." He demanded everything they had—gold, silver, temple ornaments, anything that could be seized and carried away, including many of the slaves who populated the city. And what will you leave us? the negotiators wanted to know. Your lives, Alaric replied.

next page... |  1 of 4

FREE E-Newsletter Sign up for the ChristianHistory.net e-mail newsletter. Discover more about your Christian heritage with this weekly e-newsletter that features key people, topics, and events from the history of Christianity.      RSS Feed   RSS Help