[The Goths] crossed the Danube and settled Dacia Ripensis, Moesia and
Thrace by permission of the emperor. Soon famine and want came upon
them, as often happens to a people not yet well settled in a country.
Their princes... began to lament the plight of their army and begged
Lupicinus and Maximus, the Roman commanders, to open a market. But
to what will not the “cursed lust for gold” compel men to assent? The
generals, swayed by avarice, sold them at a high price not only the flesh
of sheep and oxen, but even the carcasses of dogs and unclean animals,
so that a slave would be bartered for a loaf of bread or ten pounds of
meat. When their goods and chattels failed, the greedy trader demanded
their sons in return for the necessities of life. And the parents consented
even to this.^10
The parents did not consent for long. In 378 the Visigoths rebelled against the
Romans, killing Emperor Valens at the battle of Adrianople. The defeat meant more
than the death of an emperor; it badly weakened the Roman army. Because the
emperors needed soldiers and the Visigoths needed food and a place to settle, various
arrangements were tried: treaties making the Visigoths federates; promises of pay and
reward. But the rewards were considered insufficient, and under their leader Alaric
(d.410), the Visigoths set out both to avenge their wrongs and to find land. Their sack
of Rome in 410 inspired Augustine to write the City of God. By 418 the Visigoths
had settled in southern Gaul, and by 484 they had taken most of Spain as well. The
impact of the Visigoths on the Roman Empire was so decisive that some historians
have taken the date 378 to mark the end of the Roman Empire, while others have
chosen the date 410. (Other historians, to be sure, have disagreed with both dates!)
Meanwhile, beginning late in 406 and perhaps also impelled by the Huns, other
barbarian groups—Alans, Vandals, and Sueves—entered the Empire by crossing the
Rhine River. They first moved into Gaul, then into Spain. The Vandals crossed into
North Africa; the Sueves remained in Spain, though the Visigoths conquered most of
their kingdom in the course of the sixth century. When, after the death in 453 of the
powerful Hunnic leader Attila, the empire that he had created along the Danubian
frontier collapsed, still other groups—Ostrogoths, Rugi, Gepids—moved into the
Roman Empire. Each arrived with a “deal” from the Roman government; they hoped
to work for Rome and reap its rewards. In 476 the last Roman emperor in the West,
Romulus Augustulus (r.475–476), was deposed by Odoacer (433–493), a barbarian
