The reasons for the new Gothic eruption are found well to the east, where new climatic conditions and a population explosion on the steppes set the stage for the Huns to make their first major appearance on the world stage. The Huns, whose domains lay beyond the Sea of Azov, were superb horsemen and fierce fighters. But that could be said of all the steppe people, or at least their warriors. What set the Huns apart was the invention of a new composite bow that allowed them to shoot remarkable distances with unprecedented penetrating power. Moreover, they could shoot accurately without ever having to dismount. Moving west, the Huns defeated and absorbed all the bordering tribes who proved unequal to the ferocity of their assaults. In Ammianus’s words:
This race of untamed men, without encumbrances, aflame with an inhuman desire for plundering others’ property, made their violent way amid the rapine and slaughter of the neighboring peoples as far as the Halani, once known as the Massagetae.1
The Hunnic advance was finally halted for a time when they came up against the Tervingi Goths. Under their king, Athanaric, the Tervingi waited behind a strong defensive position north of the Black Sea, along the Dniester River. The Huns had already defeated the Greuthungi Goths, who had also fallen back upon the Dniester. The two Gothic branches did not, however, unite against a common foe. Instead, the Tervingi were left alone to face the Hunnic force, while the Greuthungi, perhaps too battered to be of much help, disappear from our sources until they showed up along the Danube in 377. Had the Tervingi been able to hold their fortified line, it is likely the Huns would have been forced to break up in search of food and pasture. How this might have changed the course of history is unknowable. In any event, a savage night attack broke the Gothic line and would likely have brought an end to the Tervingi entirely if the Huns had not halted their advance to satisfy their appetite for loot.
The Goths made a strategic retreat of about two hundred miles, stopping atop the old limes transalutanus that had defended the Carpathian passes when Dacia was an imperial province. As discussed previously, here is one of the great what-ifs of Rome’s strategic arrangements. One can only guess the impact on the Empire’s future if the Romans had manned and maintained the limes transalutanus, with a supporting road system and a network of fortifications and fortified settlements arranged in depth beyond it. With Dacia as a buffer and able to absorb and settle migratory tribes who then could have assisted in their own defense, the Huns might have been halted far short of the Danube. The problem, of course, was a matter of logistics. It was much easier to support the frontier garrisons and the field army when they were close to a major river.
It hardly mattered. The Gothic move was too late, and the old Roman defenses could not be repaired and expanded in time to meet the next Hunnic advance. Wary of Roman arms and unwilling to break his previous promise to Valens to never again enter Roman territory, Athanaric appears to have taken some of his people into the safety of the Carpathian Mountains. But the bulk of the tribe followed two new leaders, Alavivus and Fritigern, who sent envoys to Valens pleading for permission to cross the Danube and promising to obey Roman laws and to provide recruits for the Roman army.2 Valens, with his limitless need for soldiers, during a recruiting campaign to man the army facing the Persians, accepted the Gothic offers. The Tervingi were permitted to cross, although the other major Gothic branch, the Greuthungi—now also on the Danube—were forbidden to do so. Without asking for permission, the Greuthungi soon crossed anyway, joined by some of the local tribes.3
Winter was closing in, and the Goths began crossing the Danube and moving into the Empire. So far there was only one thing unique about what was happening, and it does not appear that the Romans took much notice of it at the time. In the past, large groups of migrants entering the Empire were quickly broken up and moved to distant corners, far from their kin on the other side of the frontiers. This time, however, the Goths asked for a portion of Thrace to be handed over to them to settle as a group. It is worth noting that the Tervingi had already displayed a degree of political organization capable of holding a large society together to coordinate a widespread resistance to the Huns, to survive a tribal split when Athanaric departed with his followers, and to sustain a coordinated migration of approximately—if Eunapius is to be believed—as many as 200,000 persons over several hundred miles.4 They then calmly settled along the Danube and sustained themselves over several months of negotiations with Roman authorities.
Rome was not dealing with a desperate horde. Rather, it allowed into the Empire a militarily dangerous, efficiently organized society capable of taking coordinated action if they were not handled with care. What was called for was a deft touch, much political wisdom, and the massing of sufficient forces to intimidate the newcomers and enforce the will of Rome. What happened, instead, was a comedy of errors ending in catastrophe. The first rule of any migration into Roman territory was that the newcomers be disarmed, and this was certainly Valens’s intention. Those who enlisted in the army could be rearmed from Roman arsenals at a later date, once they were far from their kin. The planned disarmament was the first Roman failure: many of the Goths and probably all of the warriors crossed with their arms. The disarmament having failed, the next element of the process—recruiting as many Goths as possible into the army and moving them to distant postings—had little chance of success and does not appear to have been a priority. Finally, while the Goths awaited resettlement, it was the job of the local administrators to shelter and feed them. Through a combination of venality, incompetence, and greed, the Roman commanders on the spot—Lupicinus, the comes rei militari, and Maximus, probably the dux of Moesia—decided that they had been given a wonderful opportunity to enrich themselves. They placed an oppressive tax on the food that had been sent to feed the Goths. As Gibbon relates, “The vilest food was sold at an extravagant price; and, in the room of wholesome and substantial provisions, the markets were filled with the flesh of dogs, and of unclean animals, who had died of disease.”5 Soon the Goths were bartering their children as slaves in return for food. As Gothic restlessness increased, Lupicinus ordered the Goths to move toward Marcianopolis, where the garrison could be added to the frontier troops who were guarding their encampment. When the frontier troops departed to escort the Tervingi, the suddenly denuded frontier was wide open for the Greuthungi Goths to cross the Danube into Thrace unopposed. There were now two huge bands of Goths within the Empire, both hungry, armed, and dangerous.
Lupicinus, trying to forestall a full-scale Gothic revolt, invited the Gothic chieftains Alavivus and Fritigern to a banquet at his Marcianople (modern Devnja, Bulgaria) headquarters. While dinner was being served to the ruling elites, the starving Goths fought a pitched battle with the townsfolk over access to food. Lupicinus, either in a panic or in a move he had already planned, ordered the murder of Gothic leaders’ guards, and Alavivus and Fritigern were taken hostage. When the Goths threatened to storm the walls if their leaders were not released, Lupicinus released Fritigern, who had claimed he could calm the enraged Goths.
Instead of settling the Goths, Fritigern told them that the Romans had no plans to honor their agreements and led them in a series of raids throughout the countryside. Realizing that he had mismanaged the crisis from the start, Lupicinus reverted to the Roman playbook—mass what troops are available and march to battle as soon as possible. Most of the time this rapid action was successful. But on some occasions, such as the 9 CE disaster in Teutoburg Wald, it led to disaster. This was one of those occasions. Lupicinus’s army gathered about nine miles from the city and marched against the Gothic encampment. Without bothering to form up, the Goths swarmed out of their camp and dashed upon the Roman shields. It was all over in a few minutes. The Roman force was surrounded, overwhelmed, and exterminated, leaving the frontier denuded of troops and the Balkan provinces exposed to the Gothic ravages.6 Fritigern’s Goths armed themselves with captured Roman weapons and armor and ranged as far as Adrianople, two hundred miles distant. At the same time they increased their numbers dramatically as other Goths already admitted to the Empire, as well as thousands of slaves, flocked to the invaders’ banners.
Valens, as soon as he had concluded arrangements with Sapor, rushed north, sending ahead two of his best generals, Profuturus and Traianus, to muster any remaining troops and try to contain the Goths. At the same time Gratian, who was beginning to comprehend the magnitude of the problem, sent two of his best generals, Frigeridus and the comes domesticorum Richomeres, east to help as best they could. Their instructions were to help the Eastern Empire’s forces if possible, but above all to make sure the Goths were contained in Thrace and Moesia and the troubles did not spread westward. We have previously seen how the generals surrounding Valentinian refused to let him help Valens against Procopius’s attempted usurpation. One suspects, therefore, that they recognized the complete collapse of the Danubian frontier as a much more serious threat to their own domains and well-being. Dynastic squabbling may not have been able to hold their attention, but the collapse of the frontier focused them. Frigeridus soon fell ill, leaving Richomeres to command the western army reinforcements, which were mostly legions scraped up from the Rhine frontier and Pannonia.
Valens’s generals were not up to the task, and by apparently common consent Richomeres took command of Rome’s Balkan army. He camped his recuperating troops near Salicles—“By the Willows”—only a few miles from the main Gothic army.7 For some time the two armies watched each other as the Goths sheltered behind their wagon fort and called in their raiding parties. This was playing Rome’s game, since the Roman logistical system could supply their army’s needs while the Goths would soon exhaust whatever meager amounts of food they had collected. Eventually the Goths considered themselves as strong as they would ever be and advanced on the Roman position. The subsequent battle was bloody but indecisive, only ending when night fell. Both armies stood to their arms all night, and the Romans were shocked to find the Goths still on the field in the morning. Ammianus describes a second daylong battle in which the Romans suffered serious losses but also inflicted many casualties upon the Goths.8
The damaged Gothic force retreated into the safety of the Haemus Mountains, while the Roman army marched south to Marcianople. By this time Gratian’s general, Frigeridus, had recovered his health and had advanced with some additional legions to Beroea, which he fortified. Here he wiped out a large band of Gothic raiders led by Farnobius, sending the survivors to work the fields of Italy as slaves. But his job was apparently to guard Pannonia, not to help clear the rest of the Balkans of the Gothic menace.
That winter Richomeres returned to Gaul while Valens sent reinforcements along with his best general, the magister equitum Saturninus, to command the remaining imperial forces. Saturninus penned the Goths up in their mountain holdouts, hoping to starve them sufficiently to attempt an advance through an opening he had left in his defenses, whereupon he planned to annihilate them in the open fields to the north. Instead, the Goths allied themselves with a newly arrived combined Hunnic-Alan force and moved south to Thrace. Here the barbarians were able to make good use of the undefended Roman road network to raid as far as the shores of the Bosporus and even approach Constantinople itself.
The crisis was now at a point where both Valens and Gratian planned personally to take the field. As the two Augusti gathered their forces, Saturninus won a series of small battles against the Gothic raiders, which only served to alert Fritigern to the growing danger and order his forces to concentrate near Cabyle. From there the Goths marched toward Adrianople, where Saturninus’s army was camped.
Gratian’s plans to help catch the Goths in a pincer between the Roman field armies were delayed when an Alemanni tribe, the Lentienses, observing that the frontier was only weakly held owing to Gratian’s concentration of forces in Pannonia, crossed the Rhine in large numbers. Ammianus claims that between forty thousand and seventy thousand of these Alemanni struck Raetia, forcing Gratian to recall the legions he had already sent east.9 The Lentienses invasion was contained and then destroyed, but instead of heading east immediately, Gratian took his army across the Rhine to inflict greater damage upon the Alemanni. His likely intent was to cow them sufficiently that they did not consider another assault while the field army was in the east. Over fifteen hundred years later, what possible necessity required such a move cannot be judged. Only in hindsight can we see how it led to disaster, for the diversion cost Gratian several weeks of campaigning time, whereas, had that time been put to better use marching east, Valens and the eastern field army would have been saved and the Goths destroyed.
Throughout the winter and spring of 378 Roman forces continued to stream through Constantinople. Valens arrived in May 378. An Arian Christian in a Nicene city, he was not a favorite of the populace. Moreover, the city was suffering from riots over the lack of food, since little was making its way in from the ravaged hinterlands. After just a week in Constantinople, Valens moved his headquarters to one of his summer palaces along the road to Adrianople. Fritigern, despite still not having much of his cavalry on hand, moved his army to Nike, just a few miles from Adrianople. Valens now heard from Gratian, who informed him that he was in Sirmium with his army and preparing to move further east. Gratian also boasted of his victories over the Alemanni, which his generals had won for him, and inflamed the jealousy of Valens, who had spent nearly a decade facing the Persians without garnering the glory of military victory. Even his earlier success against the Goths was now being made a mockery of by the massive Gothic forces destroying vast swaths of his domains.
Without his cavalry, Fritigern’s Goths were at a severe disadvantage against the concentrated Roman field army. He therefore sent a Christian presbyter to ask the emperor to confer Thrace upon the Goths in return for lasting peace.10 Valens, desirous of a much-needed military victory and believing intelligence reports stating that the Goths numbered only ten thousand, scorned the offer and advanced his army of between twenty and forty thousand men toward the enemy. Once at Adrianople, Valens fortified his position and, now seeing the size of the Gothic host, settled in to await the arrival of Gratian’s field army. Richomeres, arriving with the vanguard of the western army, begged Valens to wait until the main army, now only a few days away, arrived. A lengthy debate now ensued among the Roman commanders as well as some high-ranking courtiers. The question was whether the Eastern Empire’s army should stand the defensive or march out and attack the Goths without waiting for Gratian’s force. The sensible choice was to wait: the Goths were no match for the combined forces of both halves of the Empire. And although some generals pleaded for that course, Valens was of a mind to attack. Aggressive, ruthless offensive action had always been the hallmark of successful Roman emperors. Gratian had proven he had the mettle for ruthless attacks and hard fighting, but Valens had not yet gained such a reputation. Still, from a strategic standpoint, it was an error for Valens to bet the Empire’s future on a single roll of the dice, when just a few days’ wait would have heavily tilted the odds in Rome’s favor.
In the end, the generals were stalemated in their respective opinions. In stepped the courtiers, who were only too ready to impress upon on the emperor how weak he would appear if his nephew were to share or, worse, claim the credit for defeating the Goths. From the start, Valens had been in favor of an immediate assault, and it did not take much of an appeal to his vanity for that course to carry the day. According to Ammianus, “The fatal insistence of the emperor prevailed, supported by the flattering opinion of some of his courtiers, who urged him to make all haste so that Gratian might not have a share in the victory which (as they represented) was already all but won.” Valens ordered the army to march.
Having decided to attack, the eastern emperor further demonstrated his unsuitability for command by leaving his logistics train, as well as his treasury, back in Adrianople. The soldiers who had marched before dawn would now be forced to go the day without food. Furthermore, the generals, probably piqued over being outvoted by courtiers with no military experience, failed to make provisions for water along the line of march. The August heat soon exhausted an army forced to march eight miles in full armor. By the time they caught sight of the Goths’ fort, the soldiers were ready to drop from thirst. The harrowing march was made much worse by the Goths, who burned brush all along the march route, enveloping the gasping Romans in smoke. As Ammianus reports, Fritigern now played for time, in hopes his cavalry would return soon, by sending envoys to discuss peace while the imperial army was being slowly broiled in the hot sun. Why Valens allowed these negotiations to continue into the afternoon while his army’s fighting capacity rapidly withered will always be a mystery. The Goths, on the other hand, rested within and near their fortified lagger, drinking and eating their fill as they awaited the Roman advance.
The battle was finally brought on when two of the army’s most elite units, the Scutarii and the Sagitarii, advanced without orders. This opening skirmish was observed by two chiefs of the Greuthungians, Alatheus and Saphrax, who had just arrived on the edge of the battlefield with the Gothic cavalry, joined by a band of Alans. Their impetuous charge into the flank of the advancing Romans sent the Sagittarii and Scutarii flying back toward the advancing Roman line. In their wake came the Gothic cavalry, pressing their attack into the Roman flanks and compressing the solid Roman lines so that it was difficult for the soldiers to wield their weapons. With the decline in tactical discipline that coincided with Constantine’s death and the loss of so many veteran troops in the civil wars that followed, Roman infantry had become dependent upon the psychological bond of close physical proximity to their fellow soldiers. Long gone were the days when hard training and ruthless discipline allowed the tactically flexible formations of Constantine’s era. The tactical formations of the late Roman armies were virtually solid blocks that were difficult to maneuver, nor did they allow individual soldiers much room to move. The result was a disaster for Roman arms:
On every side armor and weapons clashed, and Bellona, raging with more than usual madness for the destruction of the Romans, blew her lamentable war-trumpets; our soldiers who were giving way rallied, exchanging many encouraging shouts, but the battle, spreading like flames, filled their hearts with terror, as numbers of them were pierced by strokes of whirling spears and arrows. . . . And because the left wing, which had made its way as far as the very wagons and would have gone farther if it had had any support, being deserted by the rest of the cavalry, was hard pressed by the enemy’s numbers, it was crushed, and overwhelmed, as if by the downfall of a mighty rampart. The foot-soldiers thus stood unprotected, and their companies were so crowded together that hardly anyone could pull out his sword or draw back his arm. Because of clouds of dust the heavens could no longer be seen and echoed with frightful cries. Hence the arrows whirling death from every side always found their mark with fatal effect, since they could not be seen beforehand nor guarded against. But when the barbarians, pouring forth in huge hordes, trampled down horse and man, and in the press of ranks no room for retreat could be gained anywhere, and the increased crowding left no opportunity for escape, our soldiers also, showing extreme contempt of falling in the fight, received their deathblows. . . . Finally, when the whole scene was discolored with the hue of dark blood, and wherever men turned their eyes heaps of slain met them, they trod upon the bodies of the dead without mercy. Now the sun had risen higher and . . . scorched the Romans, who were more and more exhausted by hunger and worn out by thirst, as well as distressed by the heavy burden of their armor. Finally, our line was broken by the onrushing weight of the barbarians.11
Toward the end Valens was forced to seek shelter within the Mattiarii’s formation. This was one of the field army’s regular line units, so we can assume that the imperial bodyguard, along with other elite forces, had already been massacred. As the slaughter continued, Valens’s generals Victor, Richomeres, and Saturninus attempted to bring the auxiliaries, who made up half the army and had been left in reserve, into the fray. But it was obvious to these soldiers that the battle was already lost, and they just melted away. In the end, Valens’s generals also fled the field, leaving the remainder of the army to be butchered. Valens himself had fallen during the battle, and his body was not recovered.12 With him had fallen at least two-thirds of a Roman field army—perhaps more than thirty thousand men. As Themistius wrote of that day—August 9, 378—five years after the event: “Thrace was overthrown, Illyricum was overrun, armies vanished altogether, like shadows.”13
This was a disaster; the loss of Valens’s army extinguished almost all of Rome’s military power in the east. All that remained were the garrisons of the cities and forts, and even these had been weakened when soldiers were withdrawn from them to feed the field army’s needs. The Roman defeat was not caused by superior Gothic cavalry overrunning Roman infantry. Rather, it reflected mistakes made by the Roman commanders. The Battle of Adrianople may have ushered in a period when cavalry dominated the battlefield, but that domination was the result of a lack of discipline among the infantry that prevented them from standing firm in the face of cavalry charges. Horses will not charge into a line of infantry that stands firm; no horse is that valorous. But without cohesion, an infantry formation is a mob and will always fall prey to a rapid cavalry charge.
Adrianople taught those succeeding Valens in the east the crucial lesson of the fragility of military power. And on that lesson the survival of the Empire depended for the next millennium. Thus, the strategic approach for the remainder of the Eastern Empire’s existence emphasized the diplomatic and manipulative aspects of foreign policy. For most of their rulers, at least after Justinian had frittered away the army’s strength trying to rebuild the Empire of Trajan’s time, war was resorted to only when no other choice existed, and the survival of the Empire depended on military force alone. But both in terms of the resources available and in their understanding of the relative strategic weakness of their power, they used force with the utmost discretion.14