Scholars and teachers seeking additional readings about Alaric’s world may find this list helpful. Books and articles below are in English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

Abbreviations refer to the print publication (W. W. Norton 2020).

Chapter 1: Seventy-Two Hours

A straightforward account of Alaric’s accomplishments, presented in the jargon of scholars, can be consulted at PLRE volume 2, 43–48. At the other end of the biographical spectrum is the immensely readable, though highly fictionalized French novel by Marcel Brion, La Vie d’Alaric (Paris: Gallimard, 1930), released in English as Alaric the Goth. There are innumerable discussions of 410, but no book in English has ever woven it into Alaric’s life. Javier Arce’s Alarico (365/370–410 A.D.): La integración frustrada (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2018), published in Spain, is good at presenting many of the problems of interpretation related to events in Alaric’s life. Claudian’s quip, “Everyone insults the immigrant,” is at H6, line 198 in Platnauer’s edition (insultant omnes profugo), my translation. 

Chapter 2: The Trailblazer

A good introduction to the northeastern frontier is William Hanson and Ian Haynes (eds.), Roman Dacia: The Making of a Provincial Society (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2004). Also excellent is Ioana Oltean’s Dacia: Landscape, Colonization, Romanization (London: Routledge, 2007). Regarding Cleopatra, to be precise, it was her effigy and, by extension, her legacy which was marched through the mud during a humiliating triumph; the queen committed suicide before she could be captured. On provincial society there are good overviews by C. R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) and Hugh Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). For a specialized look at one population on the northern border, John Drinkwater, The Alamanni and Rome, 213–496: Caracalla to Clovis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) is helpful. The frontier ethos has been nicely evoked by Heather Ann Pundt, “Mining Culture in Roman Dacia: Empire, Community, and Identity at the Gold Mines of Alburnus Maior, ca.107–270 C.E.” (M.A. thesis, Portland State University, 2012). On contracts, Elizabeth Mayer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). J has the Gothic version of Maximinus’s biography.

Chapter 3: Stolen Childhoods

Overviews of Gothic history in the 370s are numerous and inconsistent in their approaches. Essential starting points are Michael Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Peter Heather, Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 189–91; Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, translated by T. Dunlap, revised edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); and Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Outstanding on policy towards the Goths is Noel Lenski, Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Archaeology is well-treated in The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Danube and Beyond,, edited by Andrew Poulter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). J is inescapable for this part of Gothic history, but his claims demand a healthy degree of skepticism. Good on the literary analysis is Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (AD 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). For a better understanding of Z and his sources, particularly relating the border separation program, a good starting point is François Paschoud, Zosime: Histoire Nouvelle, Tome II, 2e Partie (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979), 388–91, who, it should be said, argues against Z’s accuracy. 

Chapter 4: Opportunity

Vegetius provides one look at the army. Christopher Allmand has studied V’s reception in The De Re Militari of Vegetius: The Reception, Transmission, and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge, 2011). A scathing impression of Rome emerges from AM’s social commentary, nicely elucidated by John Matthews in his magisterial The Roman Empire of Ammianus (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Kenneth Harl has deduced prices and spending power in his Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). On the experience of immigrants, classic is John Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980). Mary Boatright, Peoples of the Roman World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) is a nice introduction to diversity in the Roman world. An excellent study of the economy is Ine Jacobs (ed.), Production and Prosperity in the Theodosian Age (Leuven: Peeters, 2014). Literacy is explored by Raffaella Cribiore in Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).

Chapter 5: The Mystery of Conversion

For religion in Gothia, “Saba” is a fantastic source. So is Eunapius. Orosius describes Alaric’s behavior in 410. An excellent discussion of Gothic religion is E. Thompson, The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila, second edition (London: Duckworth, 2008). One of the best overviews of politics during the Theodosian age, despite its trite title, is Thomas Burns, Barbarians within the Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, ca. 375–425 A.D. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). Paganism was not dead, contrary to the thesis of Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Nor do we need to presume that Christianity had won flocks of new converts, as in Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). The many overlapping religious sensibilities are captured in Michele Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) and in the volume edited by Michele Salzman, Marianne Sághy, and Ritta Lizzi Testa, Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition, and Coexistence in the Fourth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Ramsay MacMullen’s Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100–400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) injected a healthy dose of realism into debates about conversion. 

Chapter 6: Love, War, and an Awakening

There are a range of resources on Sasanian Persia. For collected sources and analysis, Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter’s Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbors and Rivals (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Excellent on the intellectual milieu is Joel Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); on diplomacy and art history, Matthew Canepa, The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship Between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); on society and religion, Richard Payne, A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). A good synthesis of the late Roman military is A. D. Lee, War in Late Antiquity: A Social History (Malden: Blackwell, 2007). Unbeatable on Roman politics is John Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364–425 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Legal culture is covered nicely in Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Chapter 7: The Lion and the Fox

The events in this chapter, which cover the late 390s, look vastly different to many scholars: Halsall 2007, Heather 1991, Burns 1994, Wolfram 1988, and Kulikowski 2007 are all needed for their perspective. McEvoy is good on Stilicho (2013, 153–86). A classic survey is Emile Demougeot, De l’unité à la division de l’Empire romain 395–410: Essai sur le gouvernement impérial (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1951). More up-to-date, also in French, is Christine Delaplace, La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident: Rome et les Wisigoths de 382 à 551 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015). Athens’s spirit of intellectualism comes through in Edward Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). The lasting importance of the Acropolis can be found in Anthony Kaldellis, The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On the life of the marketplace, see the archaeological analysis of Allison Franz, The Athenian Agora: Vol. XXIV, Late Antiquity, A. D. 267-700 (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1988). For a view of Athens’s streets, Hendrik Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City: Architecture and Ceremony in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 189–212.

Chapter 8: Into the Labyrinth

The sources for Alaric’s movement in the early fifth century are largely Z, using the fragments of Eunapius and Oly, and a chorus of church historians, specifically Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. Claudian, hardly fair and balanced, remains important nevertheless, for which Cameron 1970, 156–88. Synesius is available in Augustine Fitzgerald’s The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene: Including the Address to the Emperor Arcadius and the Political Speeches (London: Oxford University Press / H. Milford, 1930). On Arcadius, two essential studies are J. Liebescuetz, Barbarians and Bishops: Army, Church, and State in the Age of Arcadius and Chrysostom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) and Alan Cameron and Jacqueline Long with Lee Sherry, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). On Eutropius, Cameron 1970, 124–55. On Gainas and the revolt of Trebigild, Heather 1991, Wolfram 1988, and Burns 1994. Relations between Christians and Jews were determined as much by top-down policies of religious discrimination as by bottom-up, personable interactions, as in the volume edited by Natalie Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed, Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Chapter 9: The Crash

Oly, Z, J, and the church history writers have all the material. Excellent on Rome’s aristocracy and their divided response to the crisis is Carlos Machado, “The Roman Aristocracy and the Imperial Court, before and after the Sack,” in The Sack of Rome in 410 AD: The Event, Its Context and Its Impact, edited by J. Lipps, C. Machado, and P. von Rummel. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013), 49–76. The volume in which it appears tackles questions from all angles in multiple languages, as does the German collection edited by Karla Pollmann and Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer, Der Fall Roms und seine Wiederauferstehungen in Antike und Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013). Outstanding is still Matthews 1973. On Rome’s walls, Hendrik Dey, The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271–855 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Sam Moorhead and David Stuttard, AD 410: The Year That Shook Rome (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010) is succinct and nicely illustrated.

Chapter 10: Alaric’s Dying Ambitions

Orosius, Oly, and J are the primary sources for the end of Alaric’s life. Z’s account is incomplete. EV has a narrative for Theoderic although some details come from J. Good on the hybrid worlds of Visigothic Spain and Ostrogothic Italy are Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Jonathan Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Jamie Wood, The Politics of Identity in Visigothic Spain: Religion and Power in the Histories of Isidore of Seville (Leiden: Brill, 2012). For art historical evidence, Deborah Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Very well-curated is A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, edited by Jonathan Arnold, Shane Bjornlie, and Kristina Sessa (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Surveys of the Goths in Spain are in E. Thompson’s book of the same name (1969) and Michael Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2004). 

Pictures of Augustine vary by biographer. Two are good in different ways: James O’Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (New York: Ecco, 2005) for seeing Augustine’s world roughly from the outside-in and Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, new edition with epilogue (London: Faber and Faber, 2000) for doing so from the inside-out. Other perspectives are collected in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, edited by Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Augustine’s concept of citizenship is discussed at Maijastina Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures c. 360-430 (London: Routledge, 2007), 35–37. P. Heather’s Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) takes a satellite view of the period, analyzing the effect of mass migrations, particularly of the Huns. For more intimate views of fifth century, as seen from the vantage of the Roman family, Kate Cooper, The Fall of the Roman Household (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Chapter 11: Smoldering Ruins and a Lost Key

New archaeological discoveries of Rome are available annually for English-readers in The Papers of the British School at Rome. Other options are usually in Italian. Fundamental for understanding the late imperial city was the work done at the National Museum of the Crypta Balbi, published by Daniele Manicorda, Crypta Balbi: Archeologia e storia di un paesaggio urbano (Milan: Electa, 2001), and in the Forum by Roberto Meneghini and Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani with Elisabetta Bianchi, I Fori Imperiali: Gli scavi del Comune di Roma (1991–2007) (Rome: Viviani Editore, 2007). Chapters, largely in Italian, English, and German, in The Sack of Rome in 410 AD: The Event, Its Context and Its Impact, edited by J. Lipps, C. Machado, and P. von Rummel (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013) cover other aspects of the attack. There are summaries in Boin 2017. Additional work on the archaeology of Rome is presented in Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 61–103. On the legacy of the Goths, David Gwynn, The Goths (Lost Civilizations) (London: Reaktion Books, 2018) is quick with wide-ranging coverage although it has a gap on Islamic reception, which can be filled by David König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 

Cite this page as follows: D. Boin, Additional Resources for Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020). Updated June 8, 2020. Accessed on-line at www.religiousdirt.com/alaric-readings.