Radagaisus invades Italy
The Chronicle of Marcellinus Comes records under the consulship of Arcadius (sixth time) and Probus (AD 406) that Radagaisus, a pagan and a Scythian, flooded all Italy with two hundred thousand of his people.
What this does and does not establish
A Latin chronicle written at Constantinople c. 518-534, used through Mommsen's 1894 edition (MGH AA 11) as Internet Archive OCR text (page images not checked); the English is an AI working translation. OCR 'ct' read as et. The figure of 200,000 is the chronicle's; Mommsen's margin cites Orosius 7.37 as the source. Jordanes, Romana 321, draws on Marcellinus here. Cassiodorus, entry 1169, reports Goths entering Italy under Alaric and Radagaisus in the consulship indexed to 400. The episodes need not be identical.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- Europe
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- Indiction/consul heading (OCR line 5413): 'IIII. ARCADII VI ET PROBI.'
- How we use it
- Placed in the consular year under which Marcellinus enters it (as numbered by the editor). Consular years run from 1 January; entries are not dated within the year, and the chronicle can misplace events.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Consular year to AD 406 per the heading index marcellinus-headings.json (one indiction/consul heading per year in order, indiction expected 4, read 4), matching the AD years Mommsen prints in the margin.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon (Latin), ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH Auctores antiquissimi 11 (Chronica minora II), 1894
Marcellinus Comes (6th-century, Constantinople); critical edition by Theodor Mommsen (1894)
Quoted text (Latin)
Radagaisus paganus ct Scytha cum
ducentis milibus suorum totam Italiam in-
undavit.AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
Radagaisus, a pagan and a Scythian, with two hundred thousand of his people, flooded the whole of Italy.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (1894), Internet Archive OCR text. English renderings are AI working translations from the Latin.
Exact source version
e805805fe7b68265bd53e46c3152420178fa7275b1ed420804dfd243bfc628c9Source 2 · Context for reading it
Chronica, consular annals
Cassiodorus
Quoted text (Latin)
Prosp. 1218 1169 His conss. Gothi Halarico et Radagaiso regibus ingrediun-
tur Italiam.AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
In this consulship the Goths, with Alaric and Radagaisus as kings, enter Italy. [Marginal cross-reference: Prosper 1218; entry 1169.]
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Cassiodorus, Chronica, consular annals, in Mommsen (ed.), MGH AA 11 (1894), Internet Archive OCR. AI working translation.
Exact source version
e805805fe7b68265bd53e46c3152420178fa7275b1ed420804dfd243bfc628c9Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
This is a corrected version of this record. During research, before this release, an earlier version was withdrawn after independent review and replaced by this one.
Revision s1h_406_marc_1_r2
Exact revision fingerprint
0a258f9316cb38d5ee29bcad1d8187a86cfe8a5cbd5cf053118a2b3c5aaf0b3a