Imperial Recourse to Hunnic Auxiliaries against Alaric

Alaric’s leverage grew from the post‑Theodosian pattern: federate arms inside the empire, courts unwilling or unable to meet their price. By 409, his marches between Noricum, the Po valley, and the approaches to Rome had wrung promises, then delays. Zosimus—writing in the sixth century from earlier sources—records a desperate expedient: the court called in 10,000 Huns to counter Alaric’s forces in Italy [3][15].

The decision was pragmatic. Hunnic cavalry were fast, terrifying, and had fought as Roman auxiliaries before. A dispatch went out from Ravenna, across the marsh causeways to the Adriatic ports, then inland toward Pannonia. Not long after, Italian towns heard a new sound: the steady roll of hoofbeats and the whistle of composite bows bending in practice. The Western state had sourced deterrence on credit.

The optics were jarring. In Rome, senators walking beneath the bronze‑green dome of the Pantheon had to imagine a future in which their safety depended on mercenaries whose loyalty ran through gold, not through law. In Ravenna, gates rose and fell for riders with shaved scalps and scarlet tassels. Zosimus’ dry line, “the emperor called ten thousand Huns,” compresses a thousand anxieties into a single sentence [3].

Did it work? Temporarily. The presence of Hunnic horse complicated Alaric’s calculations. He adjusted his demands, at one point seeking the two Noricae and annual grain, a modest ask compared to the storms he could unleash [3]. But hires can’t mend strategy. The West’s need for foreign horse underlined its shortage of loyal, paid, Roman troops, a shortage rooted in a shrinking tax base and years of civil turbulence [15].

On the ground, the Italians saw processions of force rather than battles. Black horsehair standards flickered near Verona; couriers bounced along the Via Aemilia to Ravenna; envoys shuttled to and from Alaric’s camp outside Rome’s walls. The clatter of hooves and the creak of saddle‑leather stood in for decisions the court would not take: either pay Alaric properly or fight him without borrowed spears [3][15].

The Huns did not bind themselves to Italy. They came for pay and plunder shares, then withdrew when invoices were settled or prospects dimmed. When negotiations with Alaric failed altogether in 410, no hired thunder could prevent the storm that followed.