For centuries afterwards, the sack of Rome by the Visigoths on 24 August 410 reverberated as one of the darkest days in world history. The birthplace of the empire, the spiritual capital of the Christian world, had fallen to the barbarians.
In fact, Rome’s importance in the early fifth century was largely symbolic. Following the division of the empire, power had moved to the new capitals of Constantinople and Ravenna, and the ageing city was manifestly in decline. Even so, as Alaric’s Visigothic army approached, its fall seemed almost unimaginable.
But then, according to legend, a group of disaffected slaves opened the Salarian Gate, and in poured the barbarian army. And so, “1163 years after the foundation of Rome”, wrote Edward Gibbon, “the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilised…