Augustine of Hippo
Midnight, August 24, AD 410. The Salarian Gate opened, and a foreign army walked into Rome. For three days, soldiers loaded carts with gold and silver and rolled them out over the stone streets. Rome had not fallen to an outside enemy in nearly eight hundred years. That's more than three times as long as the United States has existed. Roman walls had always held. This time they didn't.
Key Terms
- Sack
- The violent looting of a captured city.
- Pagan
- In Rome, a worshiper of the traditional gods rather than the God of the Christians.
- Bishop
- A senior church leader, in charge of the churches of a city or region.
- Alaric
- Baptized Christian and commander of Gothic troops who took Rome in AD 410 after years of broken promises.
- Salarian Gate
- Opened at midnight, August 24, AD 410 — a foreign army walked into Rome.
- Aurelian Walls
- Rome’s brick circuit of nearly 12 miles, unbreached for almost 800 years.
- Ravenna
- The fortress-city holding the emperors’ working capital by AD 402.
- Jerome
- A scholar in Bethlehem who translated Bible texts and wrote "the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken."
- Hippo Regius
- Augustine’s busy North African port — besieged by the Vandals for fourteen months in AD 430.
- Augustine
- Bishop of Hippo for 35 years; wrote The City of God; died in AD 430.
- The City of God
- The 22-book fall of Rome reply, written AD 413–426 by Augustine.
- Cain
- In Genesis, the builder of a walled city for safety — emblem of the earthly city.
- Abel
- The wanderer who owned no city and set his hope on God — the pilgrim.
- Civitas
- The Latin word behind city, civic, citizenship, and civilization.
- Count Bonifacius
- Roman governor of Africa, counseled that a Christian could rightly defend an earthly peace.
- Penitential Psalms
- Copied onto the plaster walls of a sickroom, large enough to read from bed.
- Romulus Augustulus
- The last western emperor, removed from his throne in AD 476.
- Odoacer
- Deposed the last western emperor and sent the regalia to Constantinople.
- The earthly city
- Formed by the love of self, even to the contempt of God.
- The heavenly city
- Formed by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.