Who Were the "Barbarians?"

Depictions of foreigners in Greek and Roman art

The barbarians were literally at the gates.

Alaric the Visigoth, at the head of an army of more than 20,000 men, had been rampaging through Roman territory for almost a decade by the time he resolved to take the city of Rome in the year 410. The emperor of the West, Honorius, safely ensconced in his fortress in Ravenna, had kept the Visigoth hordes at b…