Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity) Read Free Page B

among many different Gothic histories one can reconstruct from the third and the fourth centuries. But it is in some ways the most important one, and certainly the most symbolic: Romans at the time and later did not remember the sack of Rome by ‘some Goths’. For them, Rome had been sacked by Alaric and the Goths. We remember the sack of Rome in the same way, and a recent television series on the barbarians devoted almost the whole of its episode on the Goths to the story of Alaric. There is nothing wrong with remembering the past in this way, choosing a profoundly shocking moment to symbolize a much larger series of historical events. Alaric’s career was a watershed in both Roman and Gothic history, and no one can dispute that the sack of Rome was its climax. Symbolic dates and events help us remember, but historical reality is always more complicated, always messier.
    We will return both to Alaric and to Rome,the stricken ‘mother of the world’, before we reach the end of this book, but before that we have to deal with a great deal of just such messy historical reality. The book sets out to answer two main questions: first, how did Gothic history develop in such a way that the unprecedented career of Alaric became possible? And second, how do we know what we think we know about the Goths? That last question is very important, and it is not usually asked in an introductory book like this one. Most introductions to a subject try to adopt a tone of omniscience which implies that, even if complex historical events are being simplified, whatever is included can be regarded as certain fact. Unfortunately, however, there are large stretches of historyin which even the most basic facts are either unknown or else uncertain because of contradictory evidence. Many times, the way we resolve those contradictions has as much to do with how modern scholarship has developed as it does with the evidence itself. As far as I am concerned, the curious reader is not helped by attempts to disguise the difficulties we face in trying to understand the past. In fact, a false sense of certainty takes much of the excitement out of history. For that reason, I offer no apologies for introducing readers to uncertainty and controversy in the history of the Goths. The road to the past is bumpy, and there is often no single destination at the end of it. Reconstructing the past, and reaching conclusions about it, requires historians to make choices, and in this book I always try to offer explanations for the choices I have made. Throughout the book, we will look not only at Goths and their history, but at the ancient writers who give us our only access to Gothic history and are fascinating and important figures in their own right.
    We will also look at modern debates about the Goths. Gothic history is a controversial subject among modern scholars, who support their own positions with an intensity that most people reserve for their favourite football team or rock band. Anyone who writes professionally about the Goths, even if only a little bit, has to take a position in the heated debate about who the Goths were, where they came from, and when their history can really be said to begin – I am no exception. But instead of merely outlining the possible options and explaining which one I choose, I have devoted a part of chapter  three to explaining exactly why the Gothic past is so controversial – after all, it is not football or music, which, if they are any good, are meant to inspire passionate controversy. By doing this, I hope to give readers a glimpse not just of how historians wrestle with the evidence that past ages have left behind, but how, in doing so, we are deeply affected by many centuries of modern thinking about the past. More so than is the case with many other historical problems, the history of the Goths is still caught up in questions that our ancestors were already asking in the Renaissance. Although such a long heritage of debate