Rome Sacked/Falls to the Barbarians



Today I had the, er, great pleasure of interviewing a, well a barbarian to be quite frank. His name was Grunt, and he gave me some very interesting details about the empire he and his people sacked.

Q: So, Grunt? Right? Can you tell me a little about the sacking of Rome?



Barbarians



A: Ugh, yes. In the year 410 AD, me and my people, the barbarians, came to Rome looking for food and treasure. We wanted to take their wealth. We came and stayed, ravaging the capital for 3 days. The silly German slaves rose up against us and pushed us away. Lucky for us, we had a powerful leader with a plan in mind.

Q: A leader you say? Are you talking about Alaric? Tell me about him

A: Yes, Alaric was our leader. He had four motives, and I feel very special to say that I had the great honor to talk with him and he shared them with me. His four motives for taking the city were very strategic; they were profit, his career, power and food. To obtain food for us hungry men, we surrounded the city, and took their food until they were at the point of starvation. Haha, those fools. We, on the other hand were living large with full bellies to boast about.

Q: What did the city do about this food crisis?

A: This is a little graphic, but I'm going to tell you because I think you can handle it. They had the audacity to continue their usual slew of fun and games, like chariot racing, death sentences being carried out, and battles between men and beast or man and man. At first this bothered me greatly, until I heard the shouts from the crowd one day. They were shouting things like, "Let us buy that meat!" Disgusting, I know! The city was so starved, they turned to cannibalism. You could tell they were not doing well if this was their solution and what they did next I think is a result of this.

Q: Next? Well what did they do after cannibalism?

A: They chose subjugation over starvation! They actually opened their gates to us! We thought this was the greatest thing that could have happened to us, a whole cities worth of food. We ravaged all through the city but quickly discovered this was not as great as we had thought. We finally found the reason for their starvation, there was no food to be found. This left us slightly discouraged, but always the optimist, Alaric moved on in hopes of better things.

Q: You must have heard about the city since then, like how it is doing and such. What have you heard is going on there?

A: Well actually I have heard a lot, in whispered tales told around the campfires about what happened to the great power after we left. It is said that it imploded from within. The so-called "Mother of the World" had been defeated in a Gothic sacking. We put that Mother of the World to bed and on life support. She had civil wars with inept leaders fighting for their claim, which ultimately put her down, we just helped. Their trade backfired and they got diseases like small pox, and measles with their shipments from foreign countries. The city actually called back my people, the barbarians, because they needed defenders for their dying empire. After asking for our help, they treated us like dirt too. We were literally forced into a rebellion due to the Romans incompetence and cruelty at the hands of the Roman officials.

Q: So you must wonder, how do you think this will impact people in the future, for fun let’s say around the year 2010?

A: My, I can't even count that high! But ok, because we are friends, I will try and tell you. I think that my sacking the Roman Empire and their being so many barbarians, that the world will do a tailspin into the past. Does that make sense? Well, what I'm trying to say is that I think we will go back in history for awhile, by not using the technology that’s available and the whole population becoming essentially, barbarian. Now don't get me wrong, I love barbarians, but I honestly don't think we helped the progress of this time very much. This will probably set the world back for a long time, and we will have to work up again to what we once had. If we hadn't come, the year 2010 would be even greater than I'm sure it is.