Ataulf (sometimes spelled Athaulf) was king of the Visigoths from 410 to 415. He succeded his brother-in-law Alaric I, and his reign came to a sudden end when the servant of a noble he had slain killed him while he bathed. Sigeric, the brother of Sarus immediately became king for seven days, when he was also murdered and succeeded by Wallia.
Therefore I have more prudently chosen the different glory of reviving the Roman name with Gothic vigour, and I hope to be acknowledged by posterity as the initiator of a Roman restoration, since it is impossible for me to alter the character of this Empire.
Athaulf, King of the Visigoths [Orosius, Adversum Paganos, translated in Stephen Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery, Routledge, 1985, 2000, p.218]
Six major German tribes, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Lombards, and the Franks participated in the fragmentation and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
She was carried off with them to Gaul, and in 414 she was married in a Roman wedding ceremony to the Visigothic chieftain Athaulf at Narbonne.
She subsequently traveled with the Goths to Spain and bore Athaulf a son, Theodosius, who died in infancy, thus destroying an opportunity for a possible Romano-Visigothic rapprochement.
In the next year, rather against her will, she was wedded to the powerful Roman general Constantius, to whom she bore two children, Justa Grata Honoria and the future emperor Valentinian III.
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