Alaric was declared king by a group of Visigoths, though the exact time this happened (Jordanes says Alaric was made king in 400 and Peter Heather says 395) and nature of this position are debated. He then led an invasion into Eastern Roman territory outside of the Goths' designated lands. Alaric was defeated by Theodosius and his general Flavius Stilicho in 392, who forced Alaric back into Roman vassalage. In 394, Alaric led a force of Visigoths as part of Theodosius' army to invade the Western Roman Empire. At the Battle of the Frigidus, around half the Visigoths present died fighting the Western Roman army led by the usurper Eugenius and his general Arbogast. Theodosius won the battle, and although Alaric was given the title comes for his bravery, tensions between the Goths and Romans grew as it seemed the Roman generals had sought to weaken the Goths by making them bear the brunt of the fighting. Alaric was also enraged he had not been granted a higher office in the imperial administration. Visigothic invasion of Rome When Theodosius died on January 10, 395, the Visigoths considered their 382 treaty with Rome to have ended. Alaric quickly led his warriors back to their lands in Moesia, gathered most of the federated Goths in the Danubian provinces under his leadership, and instantly rebelled, invading Thrace and approaching the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople. The Huns, at the same moment, invaded Asia Minor. The death of Theodosius had also wracked the political structure of the empire: Theodosius' sons, Honorius and Arcadius, were given the Western and Eastern empires, respectively, but they were young and needed guidance. A power struggle emerged between Stilicho, who claimed guardianship over both emperors but was still in the West with the army that had defeated Eugenius, and Rufinus, the praetorian prefect of the East, who took the guardianship of Arcadius in the Eastern capital of Constantinople. Stilicho claimed that Theodosius had awarded him with sole guardianship on the emperor's deathbed and claimed authority over the Eastern Empire as well as the West. Rufinus negotiated with Alaric to get him to withdraw from Constantinople (perhaps by promising him lands in Thessaly). Whatever the case, Alaric marched away from Constantinople to Greece, looting the diocese of Macedonia. Magister utriusque militiae Stilicho marched east at the head of a combined Western and Eastern Roman army out of Italy. Alaric fortified