AD 410: The Year That Shook Rome

On a sweltering August night in the year A.D. 410, the unthinkable happened. The Goths swarmed into Rome and sacked the city—not just any city, but the Eternal City, unbreached for eight hundred years. The calamity shook the empire to its core. Ever since, historians have struggled to fathom the reason why Rome fell but few have told the tale of exactly what transpired.

The year 2010 marks 1600 years since the fall and this compelling new chronicle is being published to coincide with the anniversary. Brought vividly to life by evocative storytelling, AD410 explores the chain of events that culminated in the collapse of the empire. Interwoven with contemporary histories, letters, and testimonies—many newly translated for the book—this epic tale of imperial folly and court intrigue, honor and duplicity, and heroism and cowardice, paints an illuminating portrait of ordinary individuals grappling with an extraordinary crisis at a defining moment in history.

Sam Moorhead is National Finds Advisor for Iron Age and Roman coins in the Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum. He has worked on excavations of various Roman sites and is the author of Pocket Explorer: The Roman Empire. David Stuttard has taught classics and published his translations and adaptations of Greek tragedies, which he has directed in the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Albania. He is the author of AnIntroduction to Trojan Women.