Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 351 - The 410AD Sack of Rome

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys check out our merch store: https://llbdmerch.com/ Joe is joined by the Zoo Crew to talk about the time Rome hosted the world's largest Goth convention. Sources: Zosimus. New History Michael Kulikowski. Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric. Ludwig Heinrich Dyck. The Goth Sack of Rome: Barbarians at the Gate in 410 AD. Military Heritage. Volume 7, no 2. 2005. Herwig Wolfram. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 13

Hey everybody, our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, at wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDmerch.com. So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So if you want something, get your order in.

Once again, that is LLBDMerch.com and the link will also at Bydonkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Francis and Shox. We're dressed head to toe in black, having descended upon our local hot topic like a plague of clove cigarettes smelling locusts and have purchased all of the Invaders in merchandise. That is because while Shox takes the aux cord and switches the song from mindless self-indulgence to cradle of filth, we pile into Francis' beaten up Buick Skylark, because we're heading to the local goth convention.

As we pull into the parking lot of Grunk McShithole Convention Center, so named for a Confederate Civil War hero located mysteriously somewhere between Missouri and Michigan, we see no other cars parked outside. Rather, there are only horses. Soon men wearing armor and carrying spears and swords emerge from the convention center speaking a strange Germanic language. Francis and Shocks push me towards them to parlay. As is tradition, I offer them a three-liter bottle of Faygo Rock and Ride.

One of the men approaches me, takes the bottle and sniffs it. He says, and broke in English, he'd rather have red pop and quickly cuts me down where I stand. Should have brought a white monster, man. That's the only thing that anybody wants. I mean, for the initial part of the introduction, you were like, you know, could you guess where this is from? And, uh, I don't know, uh, my first half of college in 2005.

You know, I wasn't gonna say it, that I'm kinda telling on myself with this one. Yeah. Yeah, this is just me in high school. We're talking about Goths. As in the Visigoths. Let's be honest, I think all of us were more emo's than Goth, if we're gonna be honest here.

I feel like I straddled the line, and the thing that made me stop from going goth is that gothic music is shit. Like Cradle of Filth was the only goth. Like I had to go back in my memory hole to remember one specific goth guy I went to high school with. High school or middle school. It kind of blend together in my head. And the only thing I remember vividly is he was a huge Cradle of Filth band. And that band sucks. I know I have notoriously probably the worst

taste in music of anyone on this show, but Cradle of Filth fucking sucks. And like that kind of music is just like, no I'm fine with the weepy kids. I mean yeah everybody will tell me now that emo and scream music sucks, but we all listened to it. We all liked it. All right. I still might listen to it today. I do. There's no might about it. But goth music is fucking shit. And I know people are going to talk about the cure or whatever, but that was before I was even alive. We all love to Peshmo, but that doesn't count for those of us that are in our thirties and

forties. You know, that's, that's something those of us that are in our 30s and 40s. That's something for the kids that are in their 50s and 60s at this point. I'm excited for Nate to cut in here and just go on a 20 minute diatribe about how you're wrong. How critical of both is actually... From a critic's eye is actually brilliant. No, about you insulting the Cure and early goth music, because that's like solidly within his wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. Look, it happened before I was born.

I don't care. It can't be the voice of my like weepy generation if it happened when my mom was a teenager. It just doesn't work that way for me. I know like whatever people, it was just like when my kids were wearing the Kill em All shirt from Metallica. I think it was like their first or second

album. You were not alive when that came out. The absolute largest pants ever. Look, I see kids wearing Ramones shirts and Nirvana shirts and you ask them about it and they're just like, I thought it looked cool and it was that target. Nirvana is my favorite band and Kurt Cobain died when I was like four. But it's a little different than when it comes to like, I was never a grunge kid. I admit that wasn't a thing when I was a teenager. But like, you can't be a goth kid or an emo kid. I don't know.

People are gonna be really mad about my opinion on music and it's fine. My music taste, again, is terrible. Yeah, at least two of us on the show willingly listened to ICP for a extended period of time in our lives. It got a couple years out of my life there, for sure. I did go. It was ICP. You were the only, like, you're the only dude with white face in the crowd. I like that you're like, you know, saying this, like it's like a testimony before a Senate subcommittee.

Like Senator, I want to be very clear that I did go to the ICP show. However, I did not face paint. I did not face paint. I did leave Congress. I did leave Congress. I did leave Congress. I did leave Congress. I did leave Congress.

I did leave Congress. I did leave Congress. I did leave Congress. to be very clear that I did go to the ICP show. However, I did not face paint. I did not face paint. I did leave covered in Fago though. So I did get the full experience. It was. But I want to be clear.

I was covered in Fago, but I did not bring Fago. I did not bring Fago. I did not inhale Fago. I don't know. I didn't even know where you can buy Fago in St. Louis, Your Honor. I didn't even know what. I found Fago in Ar. Louis, Your Honor. I don't even know what I found.

Fago in Aruba, which was weird. Whoop whoop on the beach. Or like I was covered in the Fago, but I did not drink it. Whoop whoop whoop whoop parentheses beach. As our cold open kind of gave away, we are talking about the Visigoths. It's 410 A.D. The Goths are at the gate. We're talking about the sack of Rome. And I know you're probably saying you've already talked about the sack of Rome before, which is true.

That was a different one. 1527. Rome just loves a good sacking. They love to get sacked. Put in your mother joke here. Yeah. They love to get sacked. They love to get sacked put in your mother joke here Let me get sacked they love to get tea bagged they up a joke for everyone who ever trolled me on like 2006 era Xbox live on that one, so We're talking about the sack of room We've talked about the 1500 for ten. We talked about

Yeah We talked about the 1500s, 410. We talked about the 1527. The 1500 AD? Yeah. 1527. So like, I guess that's not Roman Empire Rome though. That's just regular Rome. This is solidly Empire time. Like, end of the Empire. This is East-West rap war era of Rome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I... Right, this is where feminism started to really take hold of Roman. Romans ended up falling fine they had DEI There are many women in charge The Coliseum and everything just kind of went to shit from all of their emperors Every single fucking asshole who was ever the leader of Rome with the exception of like three people was only there because their family was rich It's just how we all pick our governments today

It's really it's great. You're rich and stupid and insane fuck Start off here by pointing out this episode is not in fact going to be an exhaustive history about the quote-unquote fall of the Roman Empire Because there is literally a podcast about that It is not a monolith it is there's many different explanations for it There's no period of which you could call the quote fall of the Roman Empire But we do have to explain a background a bit as to why the Goths, led by a guy named King Alaric, wound up inside the walls of Rome and made the streets flow

with thick, delicious marinara sauce. I like the idea that's like, no, this actually will be an exhaustive history of the fall of Rome. We are now trapped. This is a very nerdy Saw episode. Both Francis and I have been locked into our respective rooms. This will go on for 12 hours. This could only happen if I managed to bait everybody into the Netherlands studios here and bar the doors behind you. Like everybody sit down.

We're talking about the fall of Rome. Get a good haul of my dead rat inside of the radiator. Have you seen it? It's like an energy drink. The key to get out is in the dead rat that's in the ducts here. You guys gotta cram yourselves in there. One person has to go searching

while the other makes pithy comments on the podcast. I will have you know, the allegations that there's a dead rat at the studio walls are unfounded because I haven't looked yet. But it really smells. We're all on trial here, one way or another. This is the 1979 studio album, The Wall. We're all yelling at the judge

about how we've been abandoned by our parents and this is why we are the way we are. The problems confronting the Western Roman Empire by the time 410 AD rolled around were, let's just say, too many to count. And the Eastern, Rome in general, there's the East and the West Empire, they're both just a pile of teetering bullshit at this point. What would you say was the Eastern Empire's Boston? I just need some context here. I don't know It's probably called Bostonium You go east until people are ultra racist

And have the worst accents in the Eastern Empire. It's our media. Fuck it is our media. Few people know this, but Istanbul used to be Constantinople, but Constantinople used to be Bostonia. So no, it's kind of lost to history. Like the cigarettes. Be right back guys. I got to execute a very specific archeological hoax. Actually, you know what?

Today is the anniversary of the Big Dig Moon Knight hoax. January 31st, when everybody thought that somebody was gonna blow up Boston with a light board with the Moon Knight from Aqua Team. Celebrate the anniversary with us when this episode comes out at the end of February. My God, that's almost been 20 fucking years. Don't say that a lot, it makes us all feel older.

We've talked about a lot of these problems before. There was a massive climate crisis, a little problem called the Huns, and the resulting displacement of people from portions of Central Asia and Europe, leading directly to seemingly never-ending conflict between Rome and outsiders. These are sometimes simply known as barbarians. There's a time where this is commonly known as the barbarian invasions of Rome period, but it's more generally understood by people who aren't idiots as a more of a large scale migration period more than any kind of invasion. Invasion makes it seem much worse than it was. Right, there's a bunch of guys showing up and just saying, hey, can we can we stay here? Can we live here?

It's only a problem when they show up with swords and start stabbing. I mean much of the resulting conflict that comes out of this period is not always the fault of these outsiders. The Romans were more than happy to let these people in and exploit them for their own ends until those people began asking the Romans for rights. Ah, weird. That's where it always goes downhill. I mean, like more than once, these rebellions begin because Rome lets people in, Rome promises them the world, Rome takes what Rome wants and then gives them nothing in return and people are like, I'm going to start stabbing you motherfuckers.

Ah, weird. Anyway, time to look at the current events. Let's not. I'm sure this historical precedent will not at all be repeated. Can't think of anything. There is also more than one massive plague paired with more than one famine that sweeps through the population.

Again, chalk another win up for the climate crisis back then. However, another seemingly never ending problem Again, chalk another win up for the climate crisis back then. However, another seemingly never-ending problem that came with all of this was near constant political strife, born from a system that seemed to, in fact, relish in it. Wow. That's crazy how government works. Joe, I want to just talk about how the last five minutes of this narration have made me really depressed.

Don't worry, that won't change. Weak emperors created easily exploitable institutions that would eventually become more powerful in the position of emperor itself, leading to crushing endemic corruption at nearly every level. Rather than an imperial family passing power down through dynasties, which I'm not saying is a good form of government, but it can at least be made to be made, you know, generally stable. Power began to just pass from dude to dude via bribes, violence, civil war, and, you know, more than once, just a guy calling himself emperor. It seems like the Roman Empire was big enough that you could kind of get away with that

at times. I know that sometimes part of the Roman Empire falling is the explanation of how far they spread and how big the empire was. And it's not exactly you could send an email from Spain to Italy or anything like that. You want to send a message. Yeah, you've got sort of Gmail, you got H-mail. That sounds like me getting heroin off of the Silk Road. Yeah, it could be both.

This horse has brought you a letter and a sweet bag of heroin. That's just a pony express in Afghanistan. That pony is high. You know, instability begets weakness and other rising powers took advantage of Rome's weakness to attack it. These outside powers begin to slowly chip away at the empire's borders from the outside as the social contract at the Empire's borders from the outside as the social contract within the Empire's borders began to unravel. Rome was an empire that only

really worked when it was constantly expanding because that's how you got money and treasure. A constant flow of new wealth into the imperial coffers to be spent on public works and generally to keep people happy or at least less miserable than their baseline life would have been otherwise. Because it's a rough time to be alive in general. But that era is over. Do you say that about any time before the 1920s? I mean, the 1920s weren't great, depending on where where you happened, what patch of dirt you happened to fall out on either. Was it a great time for my ancestors? Plagues, famine, and corruption combined

with a rotating cast of dickheads, all calling themselves emperors and conscripting people to fight in one civil war or another, meant that soon all of the benefits that people would have had by virtue of being Roman were just gone. Even the mechanism that once existed to had by virtue of being Roman were just gone. Even the mechanism that once existed

to pull men out of poverty and give them something for service to the Republic and then the empire, you know, military service, was rendered completely fucking pointless for most people. And that isn't because Romans suddenly didn't want a sick government benefits package, but because they just didn't meet the minimum requirements to join their own army anymore. Here's the problem when it comes to

soldiering. You have to be generally healthy, a certain height, not be riddled with horrible disease, things of that nature but that is a harder barrier to reach after year after year of war, famine and plague. After generations, even a couple decades, even one decade of famine, your next crop of children that could turn into soldiers are just gonna be smaller and weaker. That's how that happens. Yeah, I mean, it's the reason why they implemented

weight requirements in the army originally. It wasn't people being overweight. Yeah, and coming out of the Great Depression, a lot of Americans simply didn't meet it because they're like Oh, dude hasn't had a fucking meal in six years. Yeah. Yeah I I love every World War two movie that is made now when it's some like, you know jacked guy with you know Huge arms is just like I'm here to kill fucking cute. We're here to kill the Japanese I'm here to kill the the Germans and you know, like I looked at my grandfather and who was like at the time a normal size man,

he was not a large man and no, nobody was large. There was not largeness. It's like any time that you would like, you know, someone discovers their grandparents like, you know, world war two like uniform or whatever. And it's just always like, oh wow, this was a, an adult large and I can fit it sort of around my calf. Yeah. Yeah. Like a child could fit it these days. That's going to be very useful coming up soon. It's like, well, I mean, look, look,

every war movie has every single person that that's like my size, like, you know, six foot four, 230 pounds. Like I doubt it. Right. I seriously doubt it. But yeah, I mean, after a while, after so many cycles of famine, plague and war, the crop of new possible soldiers in Rome just kind of didn't exist anymore. And not to mention the the promise of a military career, which really was a big thing back then.

You know, you could show up with nothing and the state would give you food. It would give you a paycheck at the end of, to be fair, a very long term of service, normally around 20 years or longer, which was a very long time back then. You would get a pension. You would get land. You would be set. All that was gone too because the Roman army at this point was effectively border control.

There was no big campaigns anymore. There was no snatching up all this new land to give out to soldiers as pensions. Not to mention that when soldiers are on campaign back then, they got a huge bonus of their salary by stealing shit. Like campaign looting was a huge part of a soldier's paycheck, and since there's not a lot of campaigns anymore, not a lot of loot. So there's really no good reason for a Roman citizen to be like, I'm going to go brave a storm of horrible disease and sickness and possibly a spear to the guts to get nothing.

So the Romans turned to a new population of outsiders or barbarians. These are normally from various Germanic tribes to fill this gap in recruitment. And for someone living on the fringes of Roman society, which these guys would have been, this is a pretty sweet gig. You know, their paycheck that they'd give these guys, which probably didn't seem great to Romans, seemed pretty good to them. They also got some lands. They got an entry-level job at a Roman society, effectively, which is what they wanted. And we don't know how many barbarians joined the Roman military, but it was thought to

be quite significant in all ranks. The Romans were not discriminatory when it came to taking the barbarians in at the foot soldier level or even the officer level. They put them into schools, they put them into military officers academies as much as they existed back then. Every rank up to and including general were just folded right in and it worked. Can you imagine dealing with the officer that went through like Roman era West Point? It's gotta be terrible. Their actual nobility,

meaning they're even bigger dickheads. Well, and it's also like, you know, their class ring is probably made out of lead. So every time you got to, you know, it's just cause a whole host of other issues if we're honest. Oh, what happened to your officer? Oh, his jaw fell off because he kept chewing at his ring.

The Romans were learning valuable lessons in the midst of all of this. because he kept chewing at his ring. The Romans were learning valuable lessons in the midst of all of this. Their enemies had caught up to them. The backward savage barbarians, a lot of people like to think of as being the ones that were gnawing away at Rome's borders. They didn't exist anymore. They had a hundreds of years of contact with Rome at this point. Rome had been trading with them. There had been trading with them.

There had been cultural, military, and educational exchanges. Over the years, these quote unquote tribal barbarian people were pretty much just feudal kingdoms. There was nothing tribal or barbarian about them really anymore. They had modernized both from lessons learned from Rome, but also pure practicality if they wanted to continue to exist in a changing world. Societies change to survive.

Or they don't, and you don't hear about those people anymore. I mean, that's how it works. And then Joe talks about them on an episode. He's like, you want to hear how this civilization died off from their own stupidity? Now in a previous episode, we talked about the Battle of Adrianople, where a Roman army under the command of Emperor Valens was crushed and the emperor himself was killed on the field. A few years later, the Visigoths and the Romans came to a peace agreement under Emperor Theodosius

that made the Visigoths Roman clients, gave them lands, gave them a food subsidy, commonly known as the dole, which is kind of what the Visigoths even wanted in the first place. That's what started the whole problem. It also made them subject to service in the Roman military. It was a good deal for all sides, all things considered, when the other option was just butchering each other. However, the Gothic king Fritigern, the man who signed the deal, died, leaving the throne to Alaric in the Visigoths.

There's something of an election going on. Alaric wins. Did you ever have one of those little like rod things you bought at like a parade or something that you go up and down and it makes a weird little noise? Yeah, like a slide whistle almost. Yeah, I mean, that's what Alaric sounds to me. Alaric, Alaric. We're ruled by a slide whistle.

You put some respect on King's slide whistle. Alaric, Alaric, Alaric. You put some respect on King Slidewhistle. He was a 25 year old Roman educated man who attended Rome's officer school for five years with the dream of eventually commanding a Roman legion himself. He spoke five languages, which to be fair was kind of required to be able to speak to everybody in the Roman army at this time. And he had done so well in school that he was routinely invited to the house of Emperor Theodosius himself for dinner, drinks, and just kind of broing down from time to time. He almost certainly fucked the Emperor's daughter as well. So this dude rules.

This guy, yeah, he's 25 years old, man. He's living the fucking dream. What are you doing later? I'm going over to the Emperor's for, you know, see his daughter and maybe get like a little oil scraping. Yeah. You know, you know how it is. We're going to lounge around. We're going to eat some grapes. We're going to check out a nice mosaic on the floor. And then I'm going to do terrible things to his daughter. It's going to be great.

There is also a time when he rebelled against Theodosius, lost his rebellion, was brought back under Theodosius' control and led an army for theodosius against the Western Roman army. He won and was named a Roman count. The dude simply rules. Going before the emperor, they're about to cut your head off and just declaring the sacred sanctum of Mulligan. Let me try this again, sir.

I deeply respect you and your daughter's cheeks. I really don't want to fumble this bag. My bad. I thought I had this. I thought I had this set up. I didn't recognize the game you're bringing. Dude Emperor Theodosius, my bro. Woopsorium. Woopsatorius. I didn't mean it.

Doopsodius. However, when Theodosius died, he left the throne to his two idiot sons, Arcadius to the east and Honorius in the west. Neither were exactly strong willed or experienced. Arcadius was not so cool with the Visigoths like his dear old dad was. He saw them as a drain on the Empire's resources, despite the fact that they were a huge part of the Empire's resources. So he cut the Visigoths' food stipend.

This made them pest. At this point, they were kind of considered like the favored people of the Roman barbarian population for lack of a better term. They had been serving them for many, many years. Not only had they been doing it for a long time, a lot of gods had died in service to the Empire. They saw that food stipend as like their rightful reward for their sacrifices on the battlefield, their benefits package. And since Theodosius was dead and the new asshole on the block cut their benefits, Alaric saw the previous treaty that he had with Rome as void. It's like, well, all right, boys well alright boys guess we're gonna fuck Rome up again

You know the way that you keep people from fighting you is you give them shit to say don't fight me anymore and Rome is messing that up the last thing on earth you should ever do is have a large Population of trained and armed people who know how to do organized violence and then cut their benefits. That's the last like no matter what country you're in anywhere on earth at any point in history. It's like fuck those guys. What else are they going to do? We're going to build you up. We're going to tell you how great you are. We're going to give you lots of praise, a lot of good snacks and everything and then take it all away. This is how you can learn.

But if someone cuts my benefits at that point, I'm not just like, well, I guess I'm just going to go back to my dirt farm. Like, no, I'm going to kill some Italians. There's like three things I like to do in this world, and it's eat and fuck and kill. And you're taking away the eat and I can't get to your daughter right now. Fuck me for starving. We got one option. Alaric put out a call to war when on the march, sweeping through Macedonia and Thrace until

he got to the outskirts of Constantinople, unopposed. However, once there, he had to back down. The emperor did not have the means to defeat him, but he also did not have the means to besiege Constantinople. He didn't have a lot of siege weapons, so it was kind of just shaking his fist outside the city walls type situation. So he had West and Ran directly into Roman generals to Lichio

Sorry, just it is still really funny that you know just like thinking about points in history where like you could really just like Absolutely rampage until the point that you got to a wall, but then she's like ah fuck they hit me with that trap card wall How did I not see this coming? It snuck right up on me. My daughter's been doing history stuff and we learned about Hadron's wall. And you look at Hadron's wall and you're like, that's just simply like a three foot thing. Can't you just climb over it?

But like when your only mode of transportation is walking from one place to another, a decent sized wall is going to fuck you up for a while. Yeah, your Chevrolet legs are easily defeated by a wall. Like first off, half of your guys aren't even like, you know, tall enough to get over the wall. And you got all of your SOAR, you got, you know, you've got your, your logistics supply train that you got to get over there. Nobody's got a bomb. All we have is horse and wall beats horse. We have horse and also we have Macedonian Square, which is not going to work here.

Two hundred and fifty six. You guys get into a square and defeat this wall. And Hadrian's Wall is in Britain. Yeah. So a little problem getting to problem a wall. Limit break wall, I think, beats limit break horse is what we're finding. We just really have to hope that like they don't discover wall technology. We have to prevent a wall gap. You've got what?

Like a visit goth just like kind of stacking rocks in a line is like, wait a minute. I think I have something here. I think I got something. And we're just coming to come here. What? Well, if we smash enough horses in between these rocks, nobody's going to be able to get through them. We're starting once again with our corpse infrastructure. I think it's also just like,

Patriot guy just like running spear in hand for like a thousand miles. Like, you know, whatever else. And then just like getting, and it's like, aww. Like, I came all the way here. I guess I live under the shadow of wall now. And General Stalicho was actually one of Alaric's instructors at his Roman military academy. He was a barbarian himself. His dad was a vandal, which is a type of person, not the thing I was arrested for when I was 16.

And his mother was Roman. And this is where things get a little weird. Alaric knew that he didn't want to fight Stalichio, specifically in the field. So he built a defensive network of wagons and earthworks, which is again just wall. Which Stalichio surrounded and laid siege to. Wall, wall, triple wall. Yeah. All right. We've got double wall for sure. Yeah. However, Stalichio never went for the kill and eventually withdrew, leaving Alaric and his forces to raid their way across Greece, pillaging and looting as they went. Pretty much the only Greek city that didn't get robbed and murdered was Athens, who did the absolute correct thing you do in this situation of

bribing Alaric to leave you alone. This work will kill you or you give us what we want. It's a very simple process that they had going on. I mean, it's like if you get robbed at gunpoint, you get my wallet. There's not going to be a fight in the situation. Like, yeah. Right. I'm not there. You've got a gun. I have a wall, bitch. Even if I do have a gun, here's my wallet. You point that gun at me. You just wait like six, eight hours. I'm going to dig a wall

up so good. Some guys steps out of the shadows with a gun. You're just like, yeah, we'll watch this. And you just step behind the wall. I just started hopping through the air, like fortnight rapidly constructing a wall. You just carry around a cubicle wall with you at all times. Like this rating continued for months as word of Alaric's actions terrified You're just carrying around a cubicle wall with you at all times. This rating continued for months as word of Alaric's actions terrified the Roman emperors as he crossed into northern Italy.

Honorius in the Imperial Palace in Milan had to run for his life as he was very nearly captured before setting up a new capital in the nearby town of Asta. However, Stilicho's army went on the march again, outnumbering Alaric 2-1. The other leaders of the Visigoths told Alaric that you should probably leave before the battle breaks out because we don't think we could actually defeat Stilicho. Alaric reportedly laughed and spit out this outstanding line, quote, This land shall be mine whether I hold it as a conqueror or in death as the conquered sick Probably never said it but people say he did he probably didn't I should point out it but it is cool

Yeah, I'm either gonna be alive and conquer Rome or I'll be dead and under its dirt like either way. I'm gonna be here Yeah, either way. I'm not leaving. Yeah, I can imagine the Romans beating this guy's like, no, take his ass back to what will be Germany one day. Now, what the fuck was this quote again? Throw his ass in the sea. Just throw him in the water. Into the ocean. Tie some rocks to him. In fact, let's invent boats so we can get further away.

We need to get further. They already had boats. Well, I mean, we need seafaring boats. We need boats that can go across the ocean. But wouldn't the wall also be in Rome? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's the uno reverse card. Ah, you're in Rome, but you're at a wall.

Yeah, we built this wall specifically in Britain for no reason. But to just stash this guy there. And now he's punished by being in Britain. We built this city on that guy over there. We built this city on Alaric's corpse. Then Alaric deploys his army and puts Asta under siege. Now Stilicho finally shows up at this point, and this time he doesn't pull his punches. The resulting battle is horrific.

Alaric loses horribly. Half his men die in the field and he very nearly catches the sword to the face. Obviously he's had some successes in between, but it is funny when it's like you're signing up. It's like, well, I did hear that this guy got

his ass totally kicked that one time, but probably like lightning can't strike twice, right? No, I can't happen to me. I'm built different. I won't catch a sword to the face. I certainly won't end up being built into wall.

Alrick orders his army to withdraw before they're destroyed entirely, and he quickly pulls out of Italy, staying just outside of its northern borders. Just the tip. No, the tip would be the bottom of the boot of Italy. So this is more like Italy's asshole. This is Italy's asshole, the situation. So just the tip. Yeah, whatever. Italy's asshole, You mean the Pope Oh

400 I assume that was very Protestant of you, Brennan Francis The Romans however believed him to be completely defeated and Staliccio and Emperor Honorius held the celebration in Rome complete with a full triumph Just like when anybody else finally chases the Goths out of their house We gotta have a party. We have that. That's that's the thing. You can't if you invite too many Goths to your party, then it becomes a Goth party and you're not they're going to get a hold of the music. They're going to start playing some Depeche Mode, which like is cool to begin with.

But like it starts to really weigh on it. And then they start defending Morrissey's stuff. Oh god, there's there's a lot of indefensible about Morrissey these days. It's like when you turn 18 and you finally leave the house and your mom thinks you're certainly never coming back. Nope. Joke's on you, mom. Mom, if you're listening.

Hello. Joe's mom, if you're listening. Hello. Ha ha ha ha ha, finally happened. I'll be a good dad to you, Joe, don't worry. That's what several other dads said. Ha ha ha ha ha. I'll only hit you if you make me, okay?

That's what several other dads said. Ha ha ha ha ha. The Visigoths may have stayed out of Italy, and Elric would have been made an outlaw and probably lived that way for the rest of his life, being fine, if it wasn't for the constant grinding gears of the imperial political machine. Despite them technically supposed to be working together, the Eastern and Western Roman empires and their emperors had their own goals, each one to be more powerful than the other, and squarely in the middle of all of this was

the prefecture of Illyricum. Technically, the prefecture was the legal property of Emperor Arcadius of the East, but that never stopped the West from playing fuck-fuck games within their borders. At this point, Emperor Honorius had effectively been sidelined by Stelicho. It's often said that Stelicho was acting regent, but that kind of makes it sound like

he didn't just sort of take over. Yeah, what does reg does Regent mean in this? In this context? Anorius was young. He would have had a Regent most of the time. But as Anorius got older, still it should never have went away. OK, so Regent is like, I'm you're technically the king, but I'm kind of running things because you're four years old.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As Regent, he was supposed to be teaching Anorius how to be emperor, consulting him, things of that nature. He didn't do any of that shit. He was just running the empire on his own. Would you like to take this, uh, this incredibly powerful job, which you will eventually let go of willingly and without any fuss? Yes.

Yeah. This could never go badly. That is why only a year after fighting a bloody battle against him, Stellitio reached out to Alaric and made him the master of soldiers at Illyrica. What is master of soldiers? Is that a thing or is that just like a... It's pretty much like a military governor. But is it like a yes, the master of soldiers is a position we have in our army or is it kind of a... No, it's a legitimate position.

Okay, it's like you get to be master of soldiers. Why don't you go on out and play soldier? Remember, Alaric is technically Roman nobility at this point. He is also a count. This is a position that someone of his rank would hold. But this pissed off everyone at court. Remember, they had just been killing each other not that long ago. But Steliccio kind of rationalizes like, look, we know the guy can fight. Who else would be better at this job? I guess the argument to that would be a guy who didn't just rebel against us.

But I am not the region of the Roman emperor. So what do I know? Yeah. And, and, you know, like, look, I'm not just bringing it to modern times, not politics, but you know, the same thing. If you want, you know, a satellite state, or if you want like another country to, you know, Hey, we're going to be here. Kurds, can you help us out?

You got to give them something. You got to give a little yin and yang, a little, uh, a little something. And as long as you are making those people happy, they'll be on your side. Like it feels, I know that we want to, or especially, uh, you know, at the time people want to think, you know, you joined the Roman empire because you love the Romans, you love this empire, you love all this shit, but sometimes it's just like, I just want to not starve and you're giving me rice. So I'm on your side.

You're not giving me rice anymore. Fuck off. A lot of subjects of the Roman empire didn't exactly have a lot of say in the matter. It's like, congratulations. You're Roman now. Please don't resist. Here's a road.

Do you like this? Here's a road and some grain. Please be our friends now. Yeah. Or, or else, you know, you will enjoy your road or you will enjoy your grain or we're building you into the wall. Right, we're building you into the road. Look, we're building this road. It can either bring grain or soldiers, which would you like it to bring?

And this is also important for Stalicho's political plans as well, because he planned on using Alaric and his Visigoth soldiers to wage war against the other empire and take the prefecture of Illyricum. This is all happening as more and more outside armies made up of barbarians raided across the Roman borders. Steliccio was forced to divert his ever-dwindling Roman army to crush these invaders, which meant he became kind of more reliant on Alaric and his men. He eventually became so desperate that he began to enlist slaves into his ranks to fight off the barbarian invasions.

And eventually, Delicho did win. But that also left another problem of, well, Alaric and his men are still very strong and just kind of sitting there. I don't have slaves to harvest the grain for them anymore. Slaves got fed into like a buzz saw of just living as a slave as usual. And also congratulations, you're a soldier now. It's not a good time. All the Romans who decided they wanted to join the military for whatever scraps are being given all got, you know, hit with the horse limit break. It's a bad time for everybody. And now the strongest army in that part of the empire is controlled by Alaric.

Alaric's men did not get sent into the war specifically because Staliccio wanted to use them to take over Illyricum. So normally military victory in Rome was a way to secure your political position, secure it and raise it, but certainly not lower it. It's hard to lower your position by winning, But that is what happened to Stalicho. He had one, but he won at one hell of a cost. He lost most of his army, replaced with slaves, lost most of them too. And now people were spreading rumors that, you know, because he let Alaric back into the circle, they're both Germanic barbarians.

This is some kind of like internal coup from the barbarians who were never true Romans, according to people spreading these rumors. And this was made much, much worse by Alaric himself. And this was probably on purpose. So there's constant revolts and these barbarian invasions Stalichos war plans are just going absolutely crazy in every direction trying to secure Rome's borders the plans for Illyricum get kicked further and further down the road because of these invasions and then Alaric in the middle of all this tells the Roman Senate y'all motherfuckers haven't paid me Where's my money bitch Bitch better have my money. You got money for all these slaves but you don't got money to pay me. No we don't, that's

why they're slaves. He didn't go to war but he did have all these soldiers sitting around, which isn't exactly cheap. So then when the Roman Senate is like, we'll pay you later, he threatened to go to war again. The Senate decided war against Alaric's and sounded much better than paying him because remember they all fucking hate this guy and now they're pissed at still itcho for not destroying him when he had the chance and then employing him and Giving him all of the things that come with Billeting a Roman position Alaric is in a strong position. His losses from his crushing defeat have all been restored.

So you would say they've been lessons. Yeah, he is 100% in a better position than he was after Staliccio had just defeated him. So the Senate is pissed at both of them. However, Staliccio, with his massive political and military power, specifically kind of acting as emperor at this point, convinced the Senate to back down and pay him. Now, the Senate pointed out, if we do this, he's just going to do this again, which he does.

But Stalichow was like, nah, he's fine. I trust the guy who's walking into his first blackmail payment, being like, well, goodness is this good. And it's going to take care of this. Definitely not. No, no, I already had it's cool. He inspected my wallet. It's fine. He said everything was there. That I said he definitely won't have it again next month. They're expected again. So I can be really safe and just keep all my money in it. And then Arcadius died, leaving the even younger Theodosius II on the eastern throne.

This all combined into a firestorm of rumors, held up by deeply, deeply instilled racism on the part of Romans. The empire depended on the Germanic people for their continued survival, and they fucking hated them for it. Rumors began to fly that it was actually Stelicho who assassinated Arcadius in a plot to put his own son on the throne in the East, all while arguably being the most powerful man in the West. There's not a lot of evidence to suggest

he had anything to do with Arcadius dying, but the rumor itself was enough. I mean, it's also like, you know, a situation as has already been revealed this episode, where like, everyone's just kind of like, you know, making deals and then immediately stabbing one, like each other in the back. So, you know, can kind of see why, like you just have to assume like any time anyone dies is like, I don't know what level cover they were high up,

probably poisoned, maybe stabbed, you know, he woke up and someone had built a wall in his bedroom. He couldn't get out. He was surrounded him in his room. He just starved to death in there. Stealth wall. This did sound like something that he would do. Like everybody's like, he's a conniving sneaky fucker. He might do this. Give him the Minotaur treatment, boys. Framed in a way that it was.

Framed. Framed in a wall. It was seen as like, this was kind of like a secret barbarian attempted takeover of Rome. The legions revolted, killing their barbarian comrades in arms, slaughtering their barbarian officers and their families that accompanied them. Then there was an eternal palace coup led by a man named Olympius, who slaughtered Stalichos allies within the walls and probably would have killed the emperor too.

But as he burst into the room, the emperor switched sides, condemning Stalicho and his entire family to death. You kick the door open and there's the there's the emperor with a giant uno reverse card. Stalicho looking over at the emperor like, bitch, what the fuck? Just like my family's over there. Take them. Take them. I don't even like those motherfuckers. get a new family I got five families I don't like this one you have no idea how many wives I have scattered across the empire each one I hate more than the last I'll bring them all over here you kill you're doing me a favor you me a favor led to another issue Germanic soldiers and Roman ranks suddenly were fearing for their lives.

They desert. They flee the Roman army and flee to Alaric. Ah, yeah. Rats. The thing we all should have seen coming happened. Oh, no. We've done it again. We have speared ourselves directly into foot. At this point, Alaric still hadn't been paid, and his ranks had swelled with 30,000 more people. Jesus.

He once again demands the Senate give him his money, or he would go on the rampage, which I need to remind you, he did get paid the first time. He blackmailed him a second time. That's where we're at. From what he knew about Rome, he knew Italy itself was weak, and the city of Rome itself was even weaker. Drained of manpower, still roiling with instability due to all the coups and murders of the military leadership, Honorius, with Olympius in his ear, refused any more

deals with Alaric. So, in 409, he invades, just six weeks after Staliccio's death. Storming across Italy and facing no real opposition to speak of, he marched right by Ravenna, the new imperial capital, because he knew he lacked any power to put it under siege. Again, see above wall. Just like, nope, too many walls. Keep moving, boys. Yeah, the more of them you say, I'm out of here.

Oof. They're moving so freely, so devoid of conflict that the march's atmosphere was compared to that of a festival, complete with music and games. And I don't mean to say they weren't murdering people and spectacular acts of violence the whole way because they were. Oh boy, were they. That's part of the game.

Yeah. They're just doing it to some sick beats. Once again, this is like guy, you know, like, you know, a toga track suit just like bumping some, you know, bumping some jams the entire way down the Italian peninsula. Instead of attacking Ravenna, he made his way down the length of Italy, looting and pillaging as he went directly towards Rome. Rome at the time had a population of possibly up to one million, making it one of if not the largest cities on earth. It was also completely unprepared

for a siege. Seeing themselves as like the shiny beacon on the hill or whatever, they never thought such a thing would be necessary or even possible. Like a wall? They did have walls. They did have walls. Rome has walls. So far as defending said walls?

Nah. Much like other cities, Alaric knew he wouldn't be able to actually go through the walls. So his men simply camped out around Rome's famous 12 gates, shutting them down and locking the entire population inside. He then took control of the Tiber River, closing it off to all riverine traffic. Without the constant flow of commerce and food into Rome from the river and no hope of help whatsoever from the imperial government in Ravenna, things rapidly got real apocalyptic inside Rome. The daily dole of food to citizens in the city once enough to live off of was cut down to virtually nothing. It was starvation. And then before long, cut down to literally, because the food stores ran out. Within weeks, dead bodies are piling up on the streets as starvation,

and of course, a wave of disease, see, piles of dead bodies in the streets, made even more dead bodies to be piled up in the streets. There's now thousands of bodies just rotting in the open. So it smells kind of like your studio right now is what I'm hearing here. LAUGHS Allegedly. Do you have a, uh,

a hundred dead Romans stuffed in your, uh, in your vents there? Is that, is that the problem? Just one, just one rotting army cook. A man doesn't tell his secrets. The thing is Nick's not actually dead. He's in there eating MREs. It's just the MRE farce. No bad. He switched to a new protein powder today. That's the only reason you notice the different smell. Things got so bad in the Christian city of Rome that the people kind of gathered

and thought, what if we became pagan again and started sacrificing people just in case we were wrong about this whole Jesus being our savior thing? And it gets weirder than that. The pope was like, okay. Listen, I'm just saying, let's hear it out. What if we kill Larry? That's effectively what the Pope said. No one really likes him anyway, like, oh.

The Pope said killing Larry is fine, but it has to be done in private. However, Pagan said, our sacrifices only count to our gods if they're done in public at the Roman Forum. The Pope refused to do that, so officially the matter was dropped. Though, again, the Pope almost green-lighted human sacrifice, but dropped at the last minute due to effectively a bureaucratic arrangement. There's too much red tape to open up the Coliseum during a plague. It's just, nobody's got face masks. Nobody's vaccinated. It's just not good. It's not good health wise.

That did not stop human sacrifice from allegedly going on in Rome anyway, just behind closed door in a way of free booting sacrifice. I guess. I love the idea of like the negotiations on this. Like, uh, all right, I understand. We don't want to kill, Pope, you won't let us kill Larry out in public. That's fine. But like, look at Sam. Like he's already, he's already got a lot of plague.

Like he's pretty close to death anyway. Like can we just- Yeah, we can just push him over and he'd die. We'll take him inside. We'll do a little sacrifice inside. You don't have to see it. It's fine. Well, that's the thing is the Pope said,

if you conduct human sacrifice and pagan rituals, perfectly legit. I give it my allowance, but you have to do it in private. And the pagans are like, no. As it turns out, God also defeated by wall. Yeah, exactly. Everybody's putting up L's because of wall, because there's two L's in wall. This is so stupid. People inside Rome went feral, devolving into murdering gangs of assholes, stalking the city for anything they could eat.

And when that failed, they began eating one another. I was wondering when the cannibalism was going to start. This is pretty common in all sieges we've covered. Eventually the people go from, we must defend our city to, I'm gonna eat my neighbor. And it happens very quickly. It's part of the problem where people just don't know their neighbors anymore.

Yeah. My box of Cheez-Its ran out. Let's go get Larry. I mean, I don't know. I feel like if I knew Larry, I knew Larry's dietary habits, that would put him up or down on my list of cannibalism. So knowing your neighbors is not a defense.

Have you seen how many trans fats that guy eats? That dude just sits and he eats potato chips. I bet Larry's marbling is fantastic. He gets a lot of massages from his wife. I mean everybody has been like marinated in oil, too. Like everybody is great. Everybody's sopping wet on the inside. Now, Serena, the emperor's cousin, for some reason, became the target of a different rumor

that she was somehow the one at fault for encouraging Alaric's siege. Like the rumor was like she promised Alaric her hand in marriage if he took the city, which is insane to think about because she's inside the city that's devolving into like one of those apocalyptic paintings of the end times. But not only the common people believe this,

but also the Senate, who legally ordered her to be strangled to death just in case. Why wouldn't they just kick her out and be like, there's your husband? But you know, strangling is probably easier than going through the wall. We've already got the strangling guy. He's coming over. And according to the strangling guy, CBA, once we send him an H mail,

we can't rescind it. We have to pay him either way. Or you got to pay him out eight hours overtime. And nobody has that, you know, not not during a siege. Yeah, exactly. And you know, if you just pay him as normal hourly, it doesn't take him eight hours to strangle a girl. Sorry, he's good at his job. He's got it. He's got a one hour minimum.

That's what we're trying to do. I'm still stuck on. We're all stopping one on the inside. It's like just imagining that it's like not me. I'm dry. Don't eat me. I keep it's like, just imagine that it's like, not me, I'm dry. Don't eat me. A human rights slogan, like just chanting, like we're all sopping wet. We're all wet. We're all wet. We're all wet on the inside. Like, not we're all the same color on the inside, but we're all wet on the inside. We're all full of oil.

All humans are wet. Sopping wet on the inside. We're all full on. All humans are wet. We're all sopping wet on the inside, boys. That's copyrighted, UN. You can't take that. Look for the new line of human rights campaign. Collab shirts with lines led by donkeys coming up soon. We're all sopping wet on the inside. The first merch led sponsored by UNICEF.

Finally, the Senate sends an envoy to Alaric to negotiate. His demands are simple. He would only break the siege if all treasures of Rome were handed over and the barbarian slaves were released from captivity. The envoy asked him simply, well, what will be left to us? Alaric reportedly laughed at his face and said, your lives. You will not die. You might kill each other, but I won't do it.

However, Alaric eventually relented, demanding thousands of pounds of gold, tens of thousands of pounds of silver, and of course, pepper and silk. Though because the city was completely broke, the ransom had to be crowdfunded. They gotta get a GoFundMe for pepper going on. Like, alright everybody turn out your fucking pockets. Which I don't understand, like any pepper I'm sure they already ate it. They seasoned Larry with it. We sprinkled it on Larry. You know the marbling is good but you need just a little bit of flavoring, you know? Yeah. They were forced to melt down statues, personal belongings, anything made out of any

kind of metal, precious or otherwise, to hand it over. And Alaric, a man of his word, took this massive bag of loot, thousands of newly enlisted freed slaves, and left Rome. But he did not leave Italy. He still wanted land for his people, but Emperor Honorius refused. This infuriated Alaric. Then Olympius, the engineer of the last coup, got couped himself, leading to another purge within the Imperial walls and also the Imperial military. Honorius at this point assumed Alaric would attack Rome again and sent a legion from Ravenna to reinforce it.

Alaric decided, fuck these guys, and ambushed the legion, killing pretty much all of them. Then Alaric marched with 40,000 soldiers behind him, but he wasn't going to Rome, he was going to Ostia. This is the port where all of the Roman African grain was shipped to. And this grain, Rome's African holdings, were the lifeblood of the Roman Empire. Without it, virtually all of Rome would be plunged into a famine the likes of which they had never experienced. And he told the Roman government that his

enemy was not Rome. You guys are cool. I want to kill a Norius. And if they didn't hand a Norius over or you know what, I'll settle for you guys electing a new emperor and making him unemployed, I'll cut off all your food. This happened to be a huge relief to the Senate because they fucking hated that guy too. It's a win-win situation. Everybody comes out on top. The Senate quickly gets together and elects a new guy, Aetolus, as the new emperor. Aetolus is a proxy of Alaric and, and Alaric

knows it. A tallest knows it. The Senate knows it. So Alaric took the time to march around burning towns and cities to the ground. They refused to acknowledge his new handpicked emperor just showing up like to get coordinated. You're wearing an already Jersey. You got like, I'm a huge Attalus head. But there was one big problem with this plan. Honorius was still in Ravenna and the Roman government was full of people loyal to him still, most importantly, of course, being the guy in charge of shipping grain from Africa to Rome.

So as punishment for dethroning him and picking that dumbass to replace him, Honorius ordered all grain shipments to Rome to stop. This plunged Rome into yet another famine. Back to eating Larry. Good thing we got some leftovers. But it also came with a problem for Alaric. Now he couldn't feed his men off of Roman grain either because all the people he was stealing from were now starving to death.

Ah, rats. So, Alaric summons Attalus to meet with him and fires him as Emperor of Rome after only a couple months. Then reaches out to Honorius and says, my bad, I didn't recognize your game. Um, let's talk. Honestly, I would love getting fired as Emperor of Rome because you're like the one guy who's like, yeah, man, I'll just fuck off. I'll take all this like, you know, I got it like a nice pension going on

No got kind of a golden parachute. I think an imperial pension is just being murdered to death by Praetorians No, it's like you're the one guy who isn't murdered like it's yeah Even the Praetorians are like we got nothing to gain here from killing you. Yeah, it's just like and it's fine I'll get a fuck off to my estates. You guys keep doing you. I'm going to take this treasure. We'll be good. Right. Like, Sassening a tallest would be like someone assassinating the vice president. What's the point? Like, did you miss? So Alaric gets to Ravenna to meet with Anorius,

and then he's suddenly attacked by his lifelong sworn enemy, a guy named Saris. I would simply not have a lifelong sworn enemy. That would seem to be a really good way to prevent that sort of thing from happening. Sarus had a blood oath sworn on revenge to Alaric because it was between Sarus and Alaric to become king of the Visigoths, and Alaric won.

And Sarus had sworn ever since to be the guy who kills him. So Alaric has been mobbing around Rome It's been you see just people while Saras is just like stewing somewhere is like one of these days motherfucker I'm gonna come for you, and then I don't know it's a prize But I like the idea that like an Aureus went into a shitty Visigoth bar and says the name Alrick and Saras is sitting in the corner is like did you say Alrick? and says the name Alaric and Saris is sitting in the corner. He's like, did you say Alaric? That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Son of a bitch. And they shake hands all muscled and oiled like a Schwarzenegger film. Now there's this other problem where like, Alaric isn't gonna really wanna chill and talk to the guy who just employed his sworn blood enemy, which is very, very stupid. Alaric probably would have been fine

with just a piece of land and food for his people. And now he's been ambushed by his sword enemy who's been hired by a guy who he's already killed thousands upon thousands of people in order to get to. So Alaric again says, fuck this, turns his army around and marches for Rome again. Yeah. Just like the time before he blocks the gates,

he blocks the river. I feel like, you know, after the first few times I would have moved. Move Rome itself. Just like pick it up and move it. No, just as a guy like living in Rome, like, nah, man, like, fuck this. I move into the suburbs. The crime rate here has gotten terrible. Rome already suffering from famine from the first sack as well as all of the grain shipments

being cut off suffered even worse than it had before. This time it does not take long for people to be like, all right, send the envoys out before we have to eat Larry's children. Envoys are sent out, but this time Alaric is absolutely not in the mood for talking this shit out. Then inside the walls, Germanic slaves get together and are like, why the fuck are we gonna sit here and die because the Romans are assholes? So at midnight on August 24th, 410 AD, a group of Germanic slaves opens the Salarian Gate and allows Alaric's men inside. The starving, diseased, and sleeping citizens of Rome

were woken by Germanic trumpets and war cries as they began the old slaughter once again. Once again, like the first time I have to eat my neighbor because we're having a bad time in the city, I would move. I wouldn't wait until the mass slaughter portion of the program Just imagine the reaction when the when the fucking Visigoths are outside the second time You start hearing someone scream in German outside the city walls. You start tearing your neighbor apart with your teeth Sorry, it's a trauma response Pavlovian like Whenever I hear a Germanic war war horn, I just get real hungry for Larry. I start shitting blood, my teeth fall out.

It's the weirdest thing. Trauma bonding! And this is where I would normally tell you that the city was turned into like an absolute hellscape apocalypse of violence at the end of a sword, but that isn't exactly what happened. According to Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire, A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, the sack of Rome, 410 AD, was actually quite restrained for its time. For its time?

That's... I recognize some fucking weasel lawyer words when I hear them, Joe. I'll have you know that my client, the Vizicots, are innocent until proven guilty. Look, their murder, their killing did not break six figures. It stayed well within the five-figure range. Yeah, listen, they only owed them the common duty of care appropriate for people of the time. So, in all reality, King Alaric paid me precisely one gold coin, which makes him protected by lawyer client privilege. I feel like part of it too is you just like, you rush into the gates of Rome and you're

just like, Oh cool. All the people who have, we previously sacked have also been sacked. Everyone is just dying of plague and eating each other. And it's like, I don't even really want to touch anyone. And once again, it just kind of smells vaguely like Joe's studio. There were burgers, but not on the scale you'd probably expect. Like there was no whole scale slaughter of Roman civilians. And said what Alek and his folks slaughter more of like an Etsy slaughter. Yeah, exactly. There wasn't a Costco slaughter. I handcrafted slaughter. None of it. Don't worry. It was not this mass produced.

All the slaughter comes over from the East now down the Silk Road. I bought the slaughter from Vinted. Instead, what Alaric and his mid-war after were riches, they wanted to rob the place blind. Well, rob what was left over from the last time they robbed it. And what they robbed, whatever was left over from the last time they robbed it. And what they robbed, whatever was left over, they didn't burn. I mean, that's why there's so much Roman architecture still left in Rome to this day. If they went on a burning spree, it simply wouldn't be there. And a huge reason for that is a lot of these physicos went to

Roman schools. A lot of them were Christian. They weren't exactly going to start desecrating churches other than prying the golden copper off the walls. Sure. God doesn't need this, but I do. Once again, wall. We respect the wall. We respect the sanctity of wall. Some Romans were taken into slavery.

Others were kidnapped to be put up for ransom. But you know, when it comes to the level of slaughter, you probably expect it could be worse. Four out of 10, you know, they only killed half my family. So you know, I got that going for me. Thankfully, I could eat the other half. Right. And when news reached Honorius in Ravenna, the letter apparently said simply,

Rome has perished. He was in such disbelief that the idea, like the city of Rome falling was so beyond the pale, like so beyond comprehension that he thought his favorite chicken who he had named Rome had died. Yeah, that's how I felt. Allegedly. This could be another one of those apocryphal stories, but I think it's funny No, we ate him that was Larry. Yeah Larry the change the chickens name to Larry so I didn't feel so bad about eating Rome Three days later Alaric with the Emperor's sister taken for ransom also because you know He seems to like women related to the Emperor regardless of who the Emperor is that woman also ended up marrying Alaric's brother There's some argument if she had a lot of choice in that probably not

They leave the city and they march south Alaric threatens to continue his war Stacking Roman Africa and Sicily a plan that was ruined because well he died While while he was waiting for boats to be built to transport his men over there, he gets sick and drops dead. Well, you know, you can escape wall for so long, but boat wall is get you in the end. Wall comes for us all in the end. Praise be to wall. Yeah, that's who they should have been worshiping. Don't don't sacrifice Larry for the pagan gods. Sacrifice Larry for the wall. We're establishing a new religion today

that is the worship of wall. Any wall will do. Yeah. Yeah. Alaric's body was never found, but that was on purpose. Alaric's men dammed up the Busento River. Slaves buried. They built a wall. Gotcha.

I mean, what is a dam but a water wall? The slaves buried Alaric's body. What is a grave other than a hole with a wall on top made out of dirt? And all of the loot inside of a stream bed. To make sure that no one knew of its exact burial place, all the slaves that built said dam were slaughtered, and then the dam was broken out, allowing the river water to rush forward and flood the burial site, hiding

it forever. Rome and the Western Roman Empire, in general, all of it, would never really recover from Alaric's offensive. Already beset by countless terminal problems, he struck a slow but killing blow. An imperial gut shot, if you will. The end. Praise be to wall. The unified theory of wall. Okay so we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion. Questions from the wall. Questions from the wall

Legion. Put your question in a wall and we will come and read it. From the wall Legion we ask people who are not members of the discord. You can support the show on Patreon. You'll have access to our discord and you can go into the on Patreon. You'll have access to our discord and you can go into the channel that we have, put your question there, or you can leave us a DM on Patreon and we will answer it on air. Or you can slip it into the wall outside my studio

and I will answer it on air. I normally say, please don't do that, but if you actually attach a question from the Legion to the wall of the studio, I will answer it, I promise. Very frighteningly, I imagine. Just like fucking knows where I live. I will answer it with a restraining order. I'll answer by building a bigger wall.

Today's question from the Legion could be answered with wall, ironically enough. If you had the funding, time, and support to study and learn any tradecraft just for the fun of it, what would you want to learn? Masonry so I can build a wall. I would like to know how to play a musical instrument. I don't know.

Does that kind of as a tradecraft? Do you mean like actual trade? Yeah. You'd be a bard. I think like a building trade. Oh, shit. I don't trust myself with any of that. Learning how to be an electrician would certainly be handy.

I have lived in a lot of apartments with fucking shitty electrical work that I wish I could fix, but that seems really hard and I would kill myself doing it. Yeah, that's why I'm gonna say plumber. Plumber, plumber's a good one. Plumber doesn't have something that'll kill you. HVAC, because I wish I had air conditioning.

Didn't you try to be an HVAC tech? I remember that. Yes, I did. I think every every kid from Michigan tries to be an HVAC. It was a weird story. So I was whatever is below an apprentice apprentice. I never made it that far. Yeah. With an HVAC union and my position just kind of got cut.

Like, I signed all the paperwork. I even went to a couple of job sites to start learning, like, the very, very, very basics of the whole thing. And then, like, I showed up one day and everybody was unemployed. Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot more to it. But yeah, I mean, I'm happy I didn't, honestly, because I was working in Washington at the time before I got my job up there, and obviously before I started the show.

And most of what I did, I was on a couple job sites, and most of what I was doing was crawling under houses, which as I understand is a pretty important part of being an HVAC technician. Shouts out to you guys who do it. Big ups. I can't fucking fit. Yeah. It was it was really, really, really fucking hard for a guy my size to crawl under there.

But yeah, I showed up to work one day. They're like, yeah, it'd be best if you don't come back because we all have to go home now. There's no work. The shop is closed. Why don't you go ahead and crane yourself into a tank? That's probably better. That was way, way far after that

this is the being being the apprentice at the HVACs after I got the army and Afterwards, thankfully I got a call back from you know EMS agency that I was waiting for and then got back on an ambulance as as God intended to me to be in a box of human suffering Ironically, you would have made more money as an HVAC guy. No, I wouldn't have. You don't know what agency you work for. The plumbing, I know how to do enough electrical work, but when I see plumbing, and I can deal

with my pipes that go away from the house, but anything that's under pressure, I'm just worried this is the thing that's going to explode. I'd like to know how to do plumbing. Not necessarily that it seems easy, but it's going to be something that you always need. Like as long as you are still taking shits, you're going to need plumbing. So what if, unless you go shit on your wall?

Well, then I mean, is the guy who scrapes his shit off the wall a plumber? There's poop involved. Why would you take the good masonry out of the wall? Why are you making my wall weaker by taking my shit? Why would you shit on the wall? That's heresy. I'm telling the wall acquisition. Yeah, I, um, I love driving a crane.

So like being an operating engineer, like, but that's kind of like, I feel like a little bit of a, um, a little bit of a give me overall. I always forget you kind of did have a trade in the military, huh? Yeah. I mean, I was like a boat mechanic. And also because the Coast Guard doesn't have a lot of guys, I did some plumbing, did some electrical, rebuilt the boiler. Every Coast Guard guy has every Coast Guard job. Yeah. I mean, it just like, I just like, anything broke around the station, it was like, all right, get the MKs to fix it. So I've done demo, I've done demo, have done some masonry, have like, you know, like done a bunch of shit. To be clear for anyone, you know, who's a

journeyman listening to this, not well, but I'd say probably overall because I like shitty cars, I would say welding. I wish I knew how to weld because I like have used the torch to like cut stuff and have, you know, whatever, but I've never actually like been a welder and I would like to learn how to do that. Welding was another one that I almost got into because there's like a trade, what's the word, like convention thing when I was, when I got out of the army in Texas. And the thing that I think I stopped going down the welding path was like, Oh, so, you know, what's it like? And the guy just described it as like hot. Oh, that sounds like that. That's's what those things. It's like the answers of course it is but also why did I think of that?

My buddy who I was in the Coast Guard with they go to welding school and You know he described like the fun pranks that they would play on each other such as Welding each other into small spaces while they were in school Which you know sounds less fun to me. I would also do that I do have to say I was I always respected the the Coast Guard because you join the Coast Guard and Your first job for like your first year and a half is bitch. Yeah, like there's no there's no like you won in any fucking branch No, no because see like you and I we go to basic training then we go to a IT and then we go do our job Fuck I did.

Well, you did combat arms. I did that thing because I had a job that was useful in itself. That's because 99% of combat arms is just menial manual labor. There's only so much you can train. Most of the time you're sweeping or cleaning things that don't need to be clean

or cleaning things that you just finished cleaning. I wouldn't know about that. We just left early for the day. Yeah, I didn't. I did too, but I wasn't supposed to. Anyway, that's a podcast. Francis, you have a different podcast. Plug that other different podcast.

I do. What a hell of a way to dad for all of your dad discussions. Nate, this last one that we did Nate talked In French a lot and I do not speak French So if you're into listening to a white guy from Indiana speak French, guess what? What a hell of a way to dad this is the only podcast that I host Thank you for listening to it. If you like it consider supporting us on patreon And I, host, thank you for listening to it. If you like it, consider supporting us on Patreon.

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