LATE IN AUGUST 410, A LARGE TROOP OF SOLDIERS BORE DOWN ON the city of Rome. At their head rode the general Alaric, in the full insignia of a magister militum. It was the highest command in the Roman army, won after years of politicking and military success. But Alaric was more than a Roman general. He was also a Gothic chieftain, some might have said a king. As far as contemporaries were concerned, the soldiers who followed him were Goths. Sometimes, to be sure, Alaric had put his followers at the service of the Roman emperor. When he did so, they became a unit in the Roman army. But their loyalty was to Alaric, not to the emperor or the empire, and everyone knew it. Alaric might be a Roman general, but no one ever mistook his followers for Roman soldiers. They were the Goths, and Alaric had led them against regular imperial armies more than once. In the early fifth century, the line between Roman regiment and barbarian horde was a fine one, and Alaric straddled it as best he could. But no one was quite taken in by appearances, and Alaric never succeeded in turning himself into the legitimate Roman commander he so desperately wanted to be.

But he had come very close, to within a hair's breadth of achieving everything a barbarian commander could hope for: a place in the empire's military hierarchy for himself, permanent employment for his followers, food and land and security for their wives and children. Yet each time he had been on the verge of grasping everything he wanted, something had gone terribly wrong, negotiations had broken down, someone he had relied on had betrayed him. For fifteen years he had led his men, and for fifteen years most had remained loyal, through the ups and downs of constant negotiation and occasional battle, through the endless marching from the Balkans to Italy, from Italy to the Balkans, and back again.