Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome

If you have an interest in classical antiquity, history, politics, policy, biography, theology, or the history of early Christianity, you'll get a lot out of Alaric the Goth. Douglas Boin has made a compelling case to challenge the narrative of how the Western Roman Empire collapsed, how internal divisions and poor leadership amplified each other to foment calamity, and how the seeds of that calamity grew into centuries of misapprehension about the nature of the Late Roman Empire.For me personally, his book has challenged a previously deeply held belief: that a society of sufficient diversity, size, and wealth is uniquely able to weather crises of all types.With Alaric, Boin illustrates how these traits create fault lines that can prove too tempting for political leaders to avoid exploiting for their own gain, and that when exploited these supposed strengths become potentially fatal liabilities. Worse still, the nature of this sequence makes it easy to completely misunderstand the driving forces at work, leading to ineffective or escalatory policy decisions by even well-intentioned actors. The lessons for today are many, timely, and troubling.The chief complaint of negative reviews seems to be the relative lack of detail about Alaric compared to his contemporaries and Late Roman politics. Understand that there is very little source material about Alaric directly and none is newly rediscovered to modern scholars. Boin has used Alaric's context to create an impression of the man himself, much like a person may use the side of a pencil to make an impression of a leaf. The result is not perfect clarity, but nonetheless is both useful and revealing. This need for inferring an impression also drives the nonlinear structure of the book, as there is simply not enough in the written or material record to craft a sound linear narrative without taking ancient sources at face value (that's bad practice in most contexts and inexcusable when dealing with ancient authors). Some also accuse Boin of anachronism and going beyond the facts or rewriting history to make a point about the modern world. This book is definitely a revision of the accepted history about Alaric and the Goths, though Boin has made a compelling case that revision is necessary. Boin may use some words or phrases that make more sense in a modern context than the ancient world he describes. However, this helps make the subject more accessible to a modern audience. And what better use could there be for historical study than to help its readers better understand their own world?The scholarship is impeccable, the writing clear and compelling, and the subject well worth revisiting. I highly recommend it!

Alaric the Goth, by historian Douglas Boin, shines a very forgiving light on the man who led the first (of many) sacks of ancient Rome in 410. Not much is really known about Alaric, so Boin concentrates on the socio-political situation at that point. He illustrates Roman xenophobia and exploitation of the "barbarians." But barbarians are people also, it seems, with problems of their own. They were being driven from their ancient homelands by invaders from the Steppes and Asia. Boin paints Alaric as a "Romophile" leader who the Romans were happy to use when it suited their own ends, but were equally quick to dismiss when they asked for help. It was an eye opener to me. Boin painted a forceful picture of Rome in its decline. I found disturbing parallels with us in the 21st century, but Boin makes no attempt to introduce such a comparison. A good read. If you want a more vivid description of a conquering barbarian, order Attila, by John May.

There are some interesting tidbits of information scattered through this book and the criticism of Honorius being a weak leader is certainly accurate, but anyone who has actually studied the decline and fall of the western empire that began after the Battle of Adrianople and rapidly accelerated during the various barbarian invasions of the early fifth century (Ragadasius, the collapse of the Rhine frontier in 406, the withdrawal from Britannia, Alaric’s invasion) and became fait accompli with the Vandal seizure of Spain and North Africa and the Hunnic invasions of the mid-fifth century is going to find the author’s narrative factually inaccurate and his conclusions laughable.It seems to me that the author was more interested in writing a critical allegory about current US immigration policies (or more accurately, those who do not subscribe to an open borders policy), then accurately describing the declining state of the western empire and the pressures being exerted by the barbarian tribes on Rome.His post-collapse description of Ostrogoth-ruled Rome is similarly fanciful. His description of the rule of Theodoric in particular is exceedingly dishonest as he describes his reign as some sort of multicultural nirvana, when in truth Theodoric was able to successfully harness the still competent Roman bureaucracy in Italy precisely because he elevated Romans over Goths and waged a constant war against various other Germanic tribes during his reign (he was quoted by multiple contemporaneous sources on the relative merits of Roman and Gothic civilization—he was more contemptuous of Gothic and other barbarian tribes than the most chauvinistic Roman). The author also curiously neglects to mention that Theodoric’s kingdom imploded at the end of his reign as the various barbarian tribes fought wars of extermination against each other and the competent Roman bureaucracy was destroyed or left for the Eastern Empire to escape the maelstrom).In sum, don’t waste your time with this polemic. If you want an accurate, balanced picture of the same period that is both unsparing in its criticism of Roman leadership and civilization but also paints an accurate picture of successive waves of barbarian invasion, read Peter Heather’s excellent work, The Fall of the Roman Empire, A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.

The headline sums it up, and other reviewers have already ably explained what's wrong with this book and the author's bias, so there's no reason to do it once more. I regret spending my money on it.

A birthday present for Goths - seems to have been well received

Many historic books are written by academics and their writing style is a hard read, not so with this book, the author distils the information is a very readable format.

“The life and times” used to be a way of describing bio-pics. Well, this book is more about the times, than the actual life of Alaric. This is something the author acknowledges, given the scarcity of sources, and it does not detract him from presenting events linked to the end of the Roman Empire as seen through a different perspective. The events in question cover the final decades of the fourth century AD and the beginning of the fifth, culminating in what we know as the “sack of Rome by the barbarians,” of August 24, 410 AD. Although the author uses some categories, or concepts that might have had a different connotation at the time than how we understand them today, this helps him hint at parallels with contemporary situations, and makes for a lighter narrative. The lesson to be drawn from Alaric’s tale seems to be that if the losers are better writers than you history will treat you very unkindly.

The book is easy to read and offers some new and interesting perspective. I found that the effort to tie it into contemporary issues, especially diversity and migration, was overdone. The political stance is too obvious. We get enough of that kind of thing elsewhere.