back their pay, and irritated by Rufinus, who was then at the
head of the government of the emperor Arcadius, they laid waste the
Illyrian provinces down to the Peloponnesus, and made repeated irruptions
into Italy, in 400 and 402, under their valiant leader Alarich. In 408 he
besieged Rome, and exacted considerable sums from it. He renewed the siege
in 409, and made the wretched prefect Attalus emperor, whom he afterwards
deposed, and recognised Honorius again. At last he took Rome by storm on
the 24th August, 410. The city was completely plundered, but the lives of
the people spared. He withdrew to Lower Italy and soon died. His
brother-in-law and successor, Ataulf, was first minded entirely to destroy
the Roman empire, but afterwards to restore it by Gothic aid. In the end he
went to Gaul, conquered Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and afterwards
Barcelona. His half-brother Wallia, after reducing the Alans and driving
back the Sueves and Vandals, planted his seat in Toulouse, which became, in
415, the capital of his Aquitanean kingdom, Gothia or Septimania. Gaul, in
which several Roman commanders assumed the imperial title, was overrun in
the years from 406 to 416 by various peoples, whom the two opposing sides
called in: by Burgundians, Franks, Alemans, Vandals, Quades, Alans, Gepids,
Herules. The Alans, Sueves, Vandals, and Visigoths, at the same time, went
to Spain. Their leaders endeavoured to set up kingdoms of their own all
over Gaul and Spain.

Arianism came from the Visigoths not only to the Ostrogoths but also to the
Gepids, Sueves, Alans, Burgundians, and Vandals. But these peoples, with
the exception of the Vandals and of some Visigoth kings, treated the
Catholic religion, which was that of their Roman subjects, with
consideration and esteem. Only here and there Catholics were compelled to
embrace Arianism. Their chief enemy in Gaul was the Visigoth king Eurich.
Wallia, dying in 419, had been succeeded by Theodorich I. and Theodorich
II., both of whom had extended the kingdom, which Eurich still more
increased. He died in 483. Under him many Catholic churches were laid
waste, and the Catholics suffered a bloody persecution. He was rather the
head of a sect than the ruler of subjects. This, however, led to the
dissolution of his kingdom, which, from 507, was more and more merged in
that of the Franks.

The Burgundians, who had pressed onwards from the Oder and the Vistula to
the Rhine, were in 417 already