Fall of Rome · War Crimes & Atrocities
The fall of the West was accompanied by atrocity on every side. Roman officials exploited and starved the very refugees they had admitted; panicked mobs massacred the families of their own barbarian soldiers; and the migrating and invading peoples sacked cities, slaughtered or enslaved their inhabitants, and laid whole provinces waste. Much of the suffering fell on civilians caught between collapsing authority and roving armies — the unrecorded victims of a century in which the structures that had kept the Mediterranean world relatively orderly came apart.
10,000+
deaths
Victims: Gothic refugees admitted across the Danube(Deaths from starvation and the slavery into which children were sold; numbers unrecorded)
Victims: Wives and children of Gothic federate soldiers in Italy(Thousands of non-combatants killed; precise toll unrecorded)
5,000+
deaths
Victims: Inhabitants of the city of Rome(Restrained by the standards of the age; churches and refugees largely spared)
30,000+
deaths
Victims: Civilians of Gaul and northern Italy(Combined toll of sacked cities; figures uncertain)
3,000+
deaths
Victims: Inhabitants and treasures of Rome(Mass enslavement rather than mass killing; thousands carried to Africa)