Alaric - 'Roman Officer'?

[Sean Manning]

a barbarian invasion of fur-clad savages intent on plundering an ending an Empire

Ha! But does anyone seriously believe that sort of thing nowadays? Even popular historians are very keen to deny the old stereotypes - which doesn't stop the more academic ones having fun with it: Kulikowski, in the lecture above, has a few laughs pretending that he once believed all barbarians resembled Arnold Schwarzenegger...

I seem to recall that last time AWM had a "late antique" issue, it was full of maps with frightening sharp pointy ethnic labels burrowing into the soft vitals of the Roman empire which could have been drawn in 1900, and some distinguished Late Antique historians use "uncontrolled immigration" to market their books. Guy Halsall can still find quotes from recent scholarly books about the legions leaving Britain to "shore up a crumbling continental empire" (when really, as he points out, they are last seen marching to fight the current ruler of that empire).