Romans Routed at Adrianople

The Gothic War showed the deep flaws that would lead to the Roman Empire’s downfall

In AD 376, the Roman Empire was still strong. It was run as well as it ever had been and boasted a large and efficient army. So when a group of migrating Gothic tribesmen and their families arrived that year at the River Danube, which marked the frontier of the Roman Empire, there were well-established precedents for dealing with them.

Emperor Flavius Julius Valens was pleased at the thought of settling them on land in the Roman provinces, thinking they might provide recruits for his army. His local commanders sensed an opportunity for profit, for they controlled the food supplies on which the migrants would depend as soon as they crossed the frontier. After Lupicinus, the magister militum (governor general) of Thrace, had extorted their valuables—in some cases even their children, whom he would sell as slaves—he invited the leaders of the Goths to dinner. During the meal a rebellion started, which turned into a bitter, six-year war.

On August 9, AD 378, near the city of Adrianople (modern Edirne in European Turkey), these Goths and their allies defeated a Roman army and killed Valens himself. This disaster is often seen as a landmark event—a key moment in a process that led to the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire a century later. The Goths who sacked Rome itself in 410 doubtless included many men whose fathers and grandfathers had fought at Adrianople, and just possibly a few old warriors who had been present at that great Gothic victory.

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