• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 320 0

was angry with the followers of Sueridus and Colias for the damage they had done to his suburban property. Now it is true that the quartering of a Roman army – any Roman army, regardless of who composed it – was a severe burden on townsfolk, but the magistrate was not acting solely out of anger. While cities were obliged to house and feed Roman units quartered on them, the legal obligation of the curia to give troops supplies for a march was by no means clear. Indeed, on most readings of late Roman practice, imperial officials should have taken charge of equipping Sueridus and Colias’ troops for their journey, without involving the curia of Adrianople at all.

The curia armed and brought out the staff of the local imperial arms factory – the fabricenses – and with that force at their back ordered Sueridus and Colias to be on their way at once. Even if the legal right was on their side, for the curia to have refused the generals’ request with such brusqueness was political stupidity of the highest order. Sueridus and Colias were genuinely shocked by the unexpectedly heavy-handed treatment and made no move to go. At that point, no doubt egged on by their magistrates, the townsfolk and fabricenses began to harass the soldiers, pelting them with makeshift missiles and attempting to drive them off by force. Thus provoked, the soldiers of Sueridus and Colias fought back and, as usually happened when imperial troops were turned loose on civilians, massacred whomever they got their hands on. That done, and presumably well armed with the stores from the imperial fabrica, they marched their followers off to join Fritigern.[145]

As this one example shows, the Gothic rebellion in Thrace was not a single, planned affair, still less a barbarian migration. It was, on the contrary, a series of local revolts that in time converged into a mass uprising which threatened not just those regions in which the rebels were active, but the security of the Danubian provinces as a whole. There is no point in tracing in detail every skirmish mentioned in our sources.[146] They are too similar and we know too little about how they were connected to one another. However, one vital point is abundantly clear: the Goths under the overall command of Fritigern transformed themselves into a potent fighting force in a very short space of time. Equipped with Roman arms and armour, they also constructed a substantial supply train which allowed them to carry with them foodstuffs and other necessities gathered from the well-stocked regions through which they passed. This large force was made up of Goths from many different backgrounds, as well as all sorts of provincial malcontents. It was no longer the group of Tervingi that Fritigern and Alavivus had led across the Danube the year before, and Ammianus recognizes this fact by ceasing to speak of Tervingi and beginning to speak generically of Gothi, ‘Goths’. These Gothi roamed more or less at will in the land between the Haemus mountain chain and the Danube during 377 and most of 378. The rationale behind these movements is totally obscure, but it is striking that neither the Roman nor the Gothic side seem to have made any effort to negotiate throughout this period of more than a year. It is possible that Valens is to blame. If the Roman generals on the spot acted indecisively, it may be that they had received no guidance from an imperial court more interested in Persian affairs. The Goths, after all, were barbarians, and northern barbarians had always taken second place to Persia. In those circumstances, lacking direction from above and not wanting to take the wrong decision with so unpredictable an emperor as Valens, Rome’s Balkan commanders can hardly be faulted for trying to contain the Gothic threat rather than suppress it.

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