of their empire. The Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II declared three days of mourning in Constantinople. St. Jerome wrote in grief, "If Rome can perish, what can be safe?" In Bethlehem, he detailed his shock in the preface to his commentary on Ezekiel. The Roman Empire at this time was still in the midst of religious conflict between pagans and Christians. The sack was used by both sides to bolster their competing claims of divine legitimacy. Paulus Orosius, a Christian priest and theologian, believed the sack was God's wrath against a proud and blasphemous city, and that it was only through God's benevolence that the sack had not been too severe. Rome had lost its wealth, but Roman sovereignty endured, and that to talk to the survivors in Rome one would think "nothing had happened." Other Romans felt the sack was divine punishment for turning away from the traditional pagan gods to Christ. Zosimus, a Roman pagan historian, believed that Christianity, through its abandonment of the ancient traditional rites, had weakened the Empire's political virtues, and that the poor decisions of the Imperial government that led to the sack were due to the lack of the gods' care. The religious and political attacks on Christianity spurred Saint Augustine to write a defense, The City of God, which went on to become foundational to Christian thought. The sack was a culmination of many terminal problems facing the Western Roman Empire. Domestic rebellions and usurpations weakened the Empire in the face of external invasions. These factors would permanently harm the stability of the Roman Empire in the west. The Roman army meanwhile became increasingly barbarian and disloyal to the Empire. A more severe sack of Rome by the Vandals followed in 455, and the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 when the Germanic Odovacer removed the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and declared himself King of Italy. See also Gothic War (376–382) Visigothic Kingdom Fall of the Western Roman Empire Sack of Rome References Notes Further reading The Histories of Olympiodorus of Thebes New History of Zosimus Michael Kulikowski, Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Kovács, Tamás. “410: Honorius, His Rooster, and the Eunuch (Procop. Vand. 1.2.25–26).” Graeco-Latina Brunensia 25, no. 2 (2020): 131–48. https://doi.org/10.5817/GLB2020-2-10. 410 410s conflicts Rome 410 Rome 410 Battles involving the Huns Rome 410 Ancient city of Rome 5th