Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity)

by Michael Kulikowski

  The Imperial Response

  At some point in 377, however, Valens became convinced of the seriousness of the problem. He determined to patch up a truce with the Persians over Armenia, sending his longest-serving general, Victor, to negotiate it.[147] In preparation for his own eventual advance, he sent the generals Profuturus and Traianus to keep the Goths in Thrace under control. Meanwhile, Valens’ nephew Gratian likewise realized the gravity of the situation. He despatched two good generals, Frigeridus and the comes domesticorum Richomeres, to support the eastern troops, but also to ensure that the trouble was contained in Thrace and Moesia and did not spread westwards into Pannonia and the Latin provinces.[148] Gratian’s intervention demonstrates how worrisome the Gothic revolt had become during the course of 377. Western generals did not, as a rule, intervene in eastern affairs, nor junior emperors in those of their seniors, lest it look too much like provocation. As recently as 366, Valentinian had declined to help Valens face down the usurpation of Procopius, a far more direct threat to dynastic control than the Goths could hope to be. Only the prospect of chaos along the whole Danube frontier can have prompted Gratian’s intervention.

  As it happened, Frigeridus fell ill and returned to the West for a time, leaving Richomeres to lead the western troops to their rendezvous with Valens’ generals Profuturus and Traianus. In late summer 377, they brought the Goths to battle near a site called Ad Salices (‘the Willows’). The precise location of this site remains unknown, though it probably lay somewhere between the coastal town of Tomi and the opening out of the Danube delta into its many channels, very near the imperial frontier rather than in the immediate vicinity of Marcianople. The battle of Ad Salices that followed was a major one, but a draw, for the Goths were secure within their well-guarded wagon train and could retreat into it as necessary. The Roman forces seem to have been smaller than the Gothic, and Profuturus himself fell in battle, but superior drill and training saved the army from total destruction. Having suffered too many losses to continue the assault, the Roman troops retreated south again, back to Marcianople, where the revolt had first begun in earnest.[149] At roughly the same time, Frigeridus returned to the East, fortified Beroe, and inflicted a major defeat on another Gothic noble, Farnobius, who had been raiding through Thrace. Frigeridus sent the survivors of the slaughter back to Italy, where they were settled as farmers, a useful reminder that barbarian settlement within the empire could work perfectly well when managed with a minimum of care.[150]

  Despite Ad Salices, Richomeres and the other generals had inflicted serious damage on Fritigern’s Goths. Many of them withdrew into the safety of the Haemus mountains for the winter of 377–378. Richomeres went back to Gaul as autumn fell, planning to collect a larger force for the following year’s campaigning season. Valens, for his part, re-enforced his troops in Thrace with a more senior commander, the magister equitum Saturninus. He, with Traianus as his lieutenant, blockaded the Goths in the Haemus passes and deprived them of food. He hoped that by reducing them to desperate hunger and then removing the guards from the passes he could lure them into the open country and destroy them in pitched battle. The plan failed. Rather than moving north and standing to battle in the plains between the Haemus and the Danube, the Goths allied themselves with some unspecified Huns and Alans, and made their way south into Thrace. In that country’s wide open spaces, with their excellent roads, Fritigern could move freely, laying waste great stretches of land between the Haemus, the Rhodope, and the shores of the Hellespont and of the Bosporus near Constantinople.[151] So badly ravaged were the provinces of Moesia and Scythia that the emperor officially lowered their tax burden in 377.[152] Indeed, by early 378, much of Thrace itself was inaccessible to the outside world: Basil of Caesarea wrote to an exiled fellow-churchman, Eusebius of Samosata, then resident in Thrace, commenting on the unprecedented difficulty of communication and expressing surprise that Eusebius had managed to survive there at all.[153]

  Valens Prepares for War

  Valens’ generals Saturninus and Traianus may have had only limited success, but Gratian’s commanders managed to quarantine the revolt. By early 378, Frigeridus had fortified the Succi pass, the vital conduit between Thrace and the western Balkans.[154] Thereafter, Fritigern’s Goths were effectively confined to Thrace. In that same year, not just Richomeres but Gratian himself led a large portion of the western army into the eastern empire to assist his uncle. He had wanted to come sooner, but some Alamanni in the Rhineland detained him: hearing of the troubles in Thrace and Gratian’s plans to assist in their suppression, they seized a chance to raid into the western provinces.[155] Only in 378 could Gratian spare his main army for the Gothic war. By then, Valens had settled eastern affairs to the point where he felt able to march to Thrace. He arrived in Constantinople in spring 378, staying there for perhaps twelve days and facing down riots among a discontented populace, one no doubt frightened at the continuing Gothic presence on their doorstep.[156] Valens’ first move was to reorganize his officer corps, dissatisfied with their conduct up to this point, and not without good reason. In place of Traianus – whom Valens personally blamed for failing to stop the Goths at Ad Salices – the retired western general Sebastianus was made commander-in-chief and was perhaps given a strike force drawn from the emperor’s own seasoned palatine troops.[157] Certainly, he quickly won a couple of surprise victories over Gothic raiding parties.[158] But this welcome success brought an unexpected side effect: fearing lest his various followers be picked off piecemeal, Fritigern ordered them to form together and operate as a single unit. From their rendezvous point at Kabyle, a well-watered and easily defensible site in the plain between the Haemus and Rhodope mountain chains, the whole of the Gothic force began to make south for Adrianople. There Sebastianus was headquartered, sending back to Constantinople reports of his recent successes. On 11 June, Valens left Constantinople for what would prove to be his last journey.

  The Battle of Adrianople

  What actually happened on the battlefield of Adrianople is remarkably ill documented for so decisive a moment in Roman history, and one so comprehensively discussed in contemporary writings. Unfortunately for the modern historian, contemporary interest was chiefly concerned to explain why the disaster happened, not how it unfolded. Ammianus, as so often, gives us our only detailed account of the battle, but his outline of events includes substantial gaps – some of his own making, some the product of a faulty manuscript tradition – so that a tactical description of the battle is impossible. Nevertheless, Ammianus’ broad outline seems clear and is corroborated by other sources. In the first week of August, Valens marched his field army – between 30,000 and 40,000 men, in all likelihood – out from its staging post at Melanthias, just west of Constantinople. The emperor made for Adrianople with all haste, supposedly jealous of the successes that Sebastianus had won and wanting a share of his general’s glory. Fritigern’s Goths bypassed Adrianople and its substantial garrison, making instead for the road-station at Nike. There the Gothic army was observed by the imperial scouts who fanned out in advance of the emperor’s main force. The intelligence they brought back was misleading, suggesting that the Gothic forces numbered only 10,000 men, much less than their real number. This news gave Valens, eager for battle and a victory he could call his own, all the excuse he needed to attack at once.[159]

  Advancing to Adrianople, he fortified a camp in the suburbs of the city and impatiently awaited the arrival of his nephew’s army. Perhaps on the 7th of August, the general Richomeres arrived with the western advance guard, advising Valens to wait the very short time it would take for Gratian’s main force to arrive.[160] Delay, however, did not suit Valens, and he called a meeting of his high command to debate the issue. The generals themselves were deeply divided, but which generals argued for which plan is unclear: in the aftermath of the disaster, contemporaries strove to shield their favourites from blame and shift it onto others, a task made easier by the death of almost all those who had witnessed the
debate. Thus Ammianus claims that Sebastianus led the group which argued for an immediate assault on the Goths, while the magister equitum Victor led those who argued for the delay that would guarantee victory. Eunapius, by contrast, defended Sebastianus, as is clear even from the very confused Eunapian chronology preserved by Zosimus.[161] Regardless, the council decided on the course of swift action. Valens favoured it, and his civilian officials played upon his natural jealousy, suggesting that he ought not to share with Gratian the glory of an inevitable victory.

  Roman victory was, after all, expected by everyone, not least the Gothic leader Fritigern. At Adrianople, within striking distance of the imperial army, he showed himself more eager for a peaceful settlement than at any time since the very first crossing of the Danube. Perhaps he feared risking battle in the continuing absence of the Greuthungi under Alatheus and Saphrax, whom he had long since sent for. Perhaps, on the other hand, he worried that the Goths could not defeat a proper imperial field army when their victories had thus far come only against smaller, provincial commands. Be that as it may, on 8 August he sent a Christian priest and some provincials of humble status to offer terms to the emperor: he and his followers, poor exiles driven from their own lands and with no place else to go, wanted only Thrace with its crops and its lands. In exchange for that, he could offer the emperor lasting peace. Thus ran Fritigern’s public message. With it came a private message for Valens himself, in which the Goth assured the emperor that he really did want peace, but that for him to enforce himself upon his followers, the emperor would have to keep his army mustered and active as a visible threat to the Goths. Valens distrusted these overtures, and at any rate wanted very much to fight a battle he was convinced he could win.[162]

  Thus on the morning of the 9th, leaving his civilian court officials and his treasury safely inside the walls of Adrianople, he marched his troops northeastward out of their encampment into the rolling plain where Fritigern and his army were based. We cannot really be sure how many men either side fielded, but tens of thousands of men went into battle on that August morning. Not long before noon, the Romans spotted the Gothic camp, probably near the modern village of Muratgali. Massing on a low ridge line in front of their wagon circle, the Gothic warriors were well rested and eager for battle. Valens began to dispose his troops in line of battle, cavalry units on each wing, and the mass of his infantry in the centre. Neither side was as prepared for a pitched battle as they might have been: the left wing of the Roman army was still scattered in columns-of-march, while the Greuthungi under Alatheus and Saphrax had not yet arrived. Fritigern therefore played for time, sending envoys to beg for peace while the imperial forces roasted in the blazing sun, and choked on the fires which he had lit to punish them further. Watching as the condition of his troops deteriorated, Valens thought better of his refusal to negotiate – possibly he even decided wait for Gratian – and made ready to send higher-ranking officials to meet representatives of the Goths.[163] This was a mistake, and one cannot imagine Valentinian or Constantius Ⅱ opening protracted negotiations with the enemy while their soldiers’ readiness withered away in the wake of a forced march. Yet as so often happened in ancient battles, fighting began by accident, before either side was ready.

  Two units of the elite scholae palatinae, the Scutarii under Cassio and the Sagitarii under Bacurius, probably on the right wing and near to the emperor where scholae were usually posted, advanced prematurely and engaged the enemy.[164] Their move disrupted the imperial line of battle, which was then disordered still further by the sudden appearance of Alatheus and Saphrax and their followers, in company with a unit of Alans. What followed was a military disaster, described by all our sources in lurid colours. The Roman left wing drove too far beyond the Gothic line and was cut off, surrounded and slaughtered. With the main infantry’s left flank thus exposed, the Roman line was compressed in on itself, hampering the ability of the soldiers to fight and causing many to die from wounds inflicted by their own side. Towards late afternoon, the Roman infantry line broke and the rout began. The imperial bodyguard and the scholae palatinae must have been almost totally destroyed, for Valens was forced to take cover with the Mattiarii, a unit of the regular field army rather than an imperial schola, but seemingly one of the few Roman units to have stood its ground. Some of the generals attempted to rally the auxiliaries who had been held in reserve, but these had already melted away off the battlefield. Seeing that further attempts at rallying the disintegrating army were useless, the generals Victor, Richomeres and Saturninus fled the field. There, the butchery continued until nightfall.[165]

  The fate of Valens was uncertain even at the time. Some said that towards evening he was struck by an arrow and fell dead amongst the common soldiers. Others claimed that, mortally wounded, he was carried off the field by a few loyal bodyguards and eunuchs, and hidden in a farmhouse; there, as the emperor lay dying, Goths surrounded the farmhouse and, rather than waste time breaking in, set the house ablaze and burned to death the emperor and his attendants. Only one man escaped through a window and explained that the Gothic firebrands had just deprived themselves of the glory of capturing a Roman emperor on the field of battle. Whichever story – if either of them – was true, Valens’ body was never recovered.[166] With him at Adrianople fell the generals Traianus and Sebastianus, the tribune and Valens’ relative Aequitius, thirty-five senior officers, and fully two-thirds of the army that had taken the field on the morning of 9 August 378.[167] As Themistius would put it five years later: ‘Thrace was overrun, Illyricum was overrun, armies vanished altogether, like shadows’.[168]

  Chapter 7 Theodosius and the Goths

  The psychological impact of Adrianople was immediate. Pagans at once interpreted the defeat as punishment for the neglect of the traditional gods. In distant Lydia, the pagan rhetor Eunapius of Sardis composed what has been termed an instant history, to demonstrate that the empire had headed inexorably towards the disaster of Adrianople from the moment of Constantine’s conversion. For Eunapius, it seems, the Roman empire itself had ended at Adrianople: ‘Strife, when it has grown, brings forth war and murder, and the children of murder are ruin and the destruction of the human race. Precisely these things were perpetrated during Valens’ reign’.[169] From a distance of longer years, and with considerably greater penetration, Ammianus made the same argument, choosing the disaster as the terminal point for his history and loading it with coded venom towards the Christians on whom he, like his hero Julian, blamed the empire’s decline. No Christian response was immediately forthcoming, though Nicene Christians seem to have blamed Adrianople on divine punishment for the homoean beliefs of Valens, and Jerome ended his Chronicle in 378, just as Ammianus did his history. This dialogue of blame and excuse, the pagan side of which is now largely lost to us thanks to suppression by the Christian winners, went on throughout the fifth century, exacerbated by Alaric’s sack of Rome. After all, how could the barbarian scourge have stung so painfully if God or the gods were not murderously displeased?

  For the modern scholar, too, the battle of Adrianople is a turning point of major importance, though we seek historical rather than divine explanations. As we saw in the last chapter, the causes of the disaster lay not in any single event but in a series of human errors. The aftermath of the battle, however, represents a new phase in the history of both the Goths and the Roman empire. In this new phase, the historian’s framework of analysis changes dramatically. We can sum up the core of the change quite simply: until 378, Gothic history was fundamentally shaped by experience of the Roman empire. The central fact of Gothic existence was the Roman empire looming on the other side of the frontier, and much of the political and social life of the Goths can be explained by reference to their relations with Rome. For the empire, by contrast, the Goths were one of dozens of barbarian neighbours, and by no means the most important. They were a marginal force even in the political life of the empire, and invisible to its social and institutional history. After 378, howeve
r, the Goths were a constant and central presence in the political life of the empire. Even though the material damage of Adrianople was repaired more rapidly than anyone at the time could have imagined possible, tens of thousands of Goths now lived permanently inside the Roman frontiers. In a very short time, that fact profoundly altered the way in which the imperial government dealt not just with the Goths, but with barbarian peoples more generally. Before long, imperial institutions from the army to the court changed in response to the challenges of the new situation, and the social world of many regions was profoundly altered. In many ways, the Gothic settlement in the aftermath of Adrianople laid the foundation of the new and changed world of the fifth century.