Rome's Gothic Wars_ From the Third Century to Alaric - Michael Kulikowski [60]
In the aftermath of this treaty, both sides could claim some sort of victory. The obliging Themistius, addressing the senate of Constantinople in early 370, preserves for us the official line: Valens’ philanthropy has inclined him to mercy. Why, after all, should a conquered and subjugated foe be wholly destroyed when he might be preserved and put to use on the battlefield? Valens, for his part, used the cessation of hostilities, and the concomitant propaganda triumph, to deal with growing trouble on the eastern frontier, taking up residence at Antioch in Syria for nearly half a decade. Athanaric, by extracting from the emperor a dignified peace on equal terms, was free to reassert his authority among the Tervingi. He chose to do this in part by launching a persecution of Gothic Christians, which may have led him into war against other Gothic chieftains and provoked further Roman intervention. Certainly, the opposition he experienced gives us some hint as to how low his prestige had fallen in three years of inconclusive warfare against Valens. As usual, the available sources leave much open to debate, and it is not at all clear that Gothic Christians had played any active role in helping Valens or opposing Athanaric before he began to persecute them. But, as had been the case with Diocletian decades earlier, suspicion might be grounds enough for persecution. Not only could Christians appear to poison the health of the state by refusing to honour its protecting deities, they were, from Athanaric’s point of view, potentially spies for the emperor. If, as seems quite possible, Ulfila’s Gothic community in Moesia maintained ties with co-religionists across the Danube, then Athanaric’s suspicions are thoroughly explicable. In times of peace, this sort of contact might be unproblematic, not much different than the to and fro of trade that so characterized the lower Danube of the mid fourth century. But once the Romans went to war against the Goths, and when Valens’ activities cut trade down to a tiny trickle, perspectives were necessarily altered. Gothic Christians might come to look less like fellow subjects of the Gothic kings and more like prospective sympathisers with Valens. If, as the fifth-century church historian Socrates tells us, Valens began to send missionaries into Gothia in 369, the case against Gothic Christians was that much clearer.[120] Persecution followed, its effects well documented in the extant sources.
The Story of Saba
The most extensive of these sources is the Passion of St. Saba, written shortly after 373, within a year or two of the death of its protagonist Saba. The Passion was sent to Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, perhaps the single most influential Greek bishop of his day.[121] Basil corresponded with the Cappadocian native Junius Soranus, who had been appointed to a military command in Roman Scythia – as dux Scythiae – in 373. This sort of letter exchange was a normal part of life for provincial elites, and the accession of a fellow provincial to an imperial office in a distant province usually meant an extension of patronage towards natives of the home region. Maintaining one’s network of correspondents was therefore an essential prerequisite of being able to serve one’s clients, and Basil’s letter collection is one of many that survive to show us how sedulously