The Barbarian Invasions in the opening years of the fifth century.

Jerome's letters are not to be considered a primary source for the barbarian invasion, but they are an admirable source for the way the invasion appeared to a man of culture and some patriotic feeling. With this passage should be compared his Ep. 60, ad Heliodorum, § 16, written in 396, in which he expresses his belief that Rome was falling and describes the barbarian invaders. The following letter was written 409.

§ 16. Innumerable savage tribes have overrun all parts of Gaul. The whole country between the Alps and the Pyrenees, between the Rhine and the ocean, have been laid waste by Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepidi, Herules,[160] Saxons, Bergundians, Allemans and, alas for the common weal—even the hordes of the Pannonians. For Asshur is joined with them (Psalm 83:8). The once noble city of Mainz has been captured and destroyed. In its church many thousands have been massacred. The people of Worms have been extirpated after a long siege. The powerful city of Rheims, the Ambiani

§ 17. I am silent about other places, that I may not seem to despair of God's mercy. From the Pontic Sea to the Julian Alps, what was once ours is ours no longer. When for thirty years the barrier of the Danube had been broken there was war in the central provinces of the Roman Empire. Long use dried our tears. For all, except a few old people, [pg 423] had been born either in captivity or during a blockade, and they did not long for a liberty which they had never known. Who will believe it? What histories will seriously discuss it, that Rome has to fight within her borders, not for glory but for bare life; and that she does not fight even, but buys the right to exist by giving gold and sacrificing all her substance? This humiliation has been brought upon her, not by the fault of her emperors, both of them most religious men [Arcadius and Honorius], but by the crime of a half-barbarian traitor,[161]

(b) Jerome, Prefaces to Commentary on Ezekiel. (MSL, 25, 15:75.)

The fall of Rome.

Jerome's account of the capture of Rome by Alarich is greatly exaggerated (see his Ep. 127, ad Principiam). By his very exaggeration, however, one gains some impression of the shock the event must have occasioned in the Roman world.

Preface to Book I. Intelligence has suddenly been brought to me of the death of Pammachus and Marcella, the siege of Rome [A. D. 408], and the falling asleep of many of my brethren and sisters. I was so stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could think of nothing but the welfare of all.… But when the bright light of all the world was put out,[162] or, rather, when the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, “I became dumb and humbled myself, and kept silence from good words, but my grief broke out afresh, my heart was hot within me, and while I was musing the fire was kindled” [Psalm 39:3, 4].

Preface to Book III. Who would believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, had collapsed; that she had become both the mother of nations and their tomb; that all the shores of the East, of Egypt, of Africa, which had once [pg 424] belonged to the imperial city should be filled with the hosts of her men-servants and maid-servants; that every day holy Bethlehem should be receiving as mendicants men and women who were once noble and abounding in every kind of wealth?

(c) Theodosius II, Novella I, de Theodosiani Codicis Auctoritate; Feb. 15, 439.