Sack of Rome (455)

Date: May 31, 455 • Location: Rome, Italy

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 455.

Petronius Maximus, the ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome before Vandal forces arrived and sacked the city.

Petronius Maximus was Roman emperor of the West for two and a half months in 455. A wealthy senator and a prominent aristocrat, he was instrumental in the murders of the Western Roman magister militum, Aëtius, and the Western Roman emperor, Valentinian III.