Ataulf

Ataulf was king of the Visigoths from 410 to 415 and succeeded his brother-in-law Alaric after the sack of Rome. He moved the Goths from Italy into Gaul, negotiated with the western imperial government and married Galla Placidia, the half-sister of Emperor Honorius.

Their marriage briefly suggested a possible Romano-Gothic political settlement, but their child died in infancy and Ataulf was assassinated at Barcelona. Ataulf was born in Pannonia and died in Barcelona.

Ben Kane’s Rome presents Ataulf through Galla Placidia’s captivity among the Visigoths: their relationship grows while she is carried away from the Roman court, and marriage turns a hostage princess into a Gothic queen. Faith L. Justice’s Twilight Empress follows the same marriage as a dynastic experiment in which a Roman imperial woman and a Visigothic king try to create a place for themselves between two political worlds. Ian Hughes’s Constantius III supplies the non-fictional aftermath, explaining how Placidia’s return from the Visigoths and later marriage to Constantius tied Ataulf’s brief union with her to the succession politics that eventually produced Valentinian III.