At its height the Roman Empire stretched from Britain and the Atlantic to North Africa and Mesopotamia. In the fourth century ad, however, what Pliny the Elder had called the ‘immense majesty of the Roman peace' was menaced by invasions of Germanic peoples from beyond the frontiers of the Rhine and the Danube. Among them were the Visigoths, whose leader from around 395 was a chieftain in his mid-20s named Alaric. That same year also saw the death of the Emperor Theodosius the Great, after which the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves under his sons, Arcadius in the east and the ten-year-old Honorius in the west. Honorius's capital was moved from Rome to Ravenna, which was more easily defended.
Honorius's regent was his father's choice, an able general called Stilicho, himself half-German and half-Roman and who kept a loyal German bodyguard. In the early 400s Alaric, who had been attacking the Romans in the Balkans, turned to repeated invasions of Italy, which Stilicho repelled. He hoped to draw the Visigoths into an alliance against the eastern Romans, but now hordes of other Germanic warriors invaded the western empire across the Rhine. In 408 Stilicho was beheaded in Ravenna as a traitor who, it was claimed, had conspired with Alaric to put his own son on Honorius's throne.
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