Alaric II
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 13/01/2019

Alaric II, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1571 / CC BY SA 3.0

Alaric II

Alaric II (, "ruler of all"; August 507), also known as Alarik, Alarich, and Alarico in Spanish and Portuguese or Alaricus in Latin — succeeded his father Euric as king of the Visigoths in Toulouse on December 28, 484; he was the great-grandson of the more famous Alaric I, who sacked Rome in 410. He established his capital at Aire-sur-l'Adour ("Vicus Julii") in Aquitaine. His dominions included not only the majority of Hispania (excluding its northwestern corner) but also Gallia Aquitania and the greater part of an as-yet undivided Gallia Narbonensis.

Herwig Wolfram opens his chapter on the eighth Visigothic king, "Alaric's reign gets no full treatment in the sources, and the little they do contain is overshadowed by his death in the Battle of Vouillé and the downfall of the Toulosan kingdom." One example is Isidore of Seville's account of Alaric's reign: consisting of a single paragraph, it is primarily about Alaric's death in that battle.

The earliest documented event in Alaric's reign concerned providing refuge to Syagrius, the former ruler of the Domain of Soissons (in what is now northwestern France) who had been defeated by Clovis I, King of the Franks. According to Gregory of Tours' account, Alaric was intimidated by Clovis into surrendering Syagrius to Clovis; Gregory then adds that "the Goths are a timorous race." The Franks then imprisoned Syagrius, and once his control over Syagrius' former kingdom was secure, Clovis had him beheaded. However, Wolfram points out that at the time "Clovis got no farther than the Seine; only after several more years did the Franks succeed in occupying the rest of the Gallo-Roman buffer state north of the Loire." Any threat of war Clovis could make would only be effective if they were neighbors; "it is nowhere written that Syagrius was handed over in 486 or 487."

Despite Frankish advances in the years that followed, Alaric was not a...