Alaric's Sack of Rome
The Goths enter Rome and for three days plunder a city that had not seen an enemy in eight hundred years.
Alaric's Goths had long lived inside the empire as allies, but received neither the promised lands nor their pay; negotiations with the court at Ravenna broke down, and the army approached Rome three times. In August 410 the gates were opened from within, and for three days the city was plundered — without great slaughter, the churches spared, but everything portable carried away. Rome had long since ceased to be the capital, and the event meant little militarily; the shock was of another kind. Jerome, in Bethlehem, wrote that speech failed him; Augustine answered the question on everyone's lips with the City of God: earthly cities fall, and that is no argument against faith.