Rome's Gothic Wars_ From the Third Century to Alaric - Michael Kulikowski [80]
Instead of direct Hunnic involvement along the Danube, we see during the 380s and 390s a continuation of the political realignments that had started in 376. Although the details of these changes are almost totally invisible to us until the disintegration of the Hunnic empire in the 450s, several different Gothic groups emerge at that point from the shadow of Hunnic hegemony. This suggests that in the decades between 376 and the mid fifth century, many Gothic leaders – men like the megistanes whom we met in the Passion of St. Saba – retained the authority they had possessed before 376, while others arose to take the place of those who had departed for the empire. Most Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov sites west of the Prut river continue without disruption in the last quarter of the fourth and the first quarter of the fifth century, and it is not until after 410 that we begin to see real changes to the material culture of the region.[197] Thus the literary and the archaeological evidence – limited as they are – both suggest that, despite the convulsions of the 370s, a substantial Gothic population survived beyond the old ripa Gothica. Indeed, after the events of 376, we have very limited evidence for further Gothic crossings into the empire: only two are on record in the Greek and Roman sources.
The first of them might cause some surprise to readers of the last two chapters, concerning as it does the old Tervingian iudex Athanaric. It would appear that, by 380, Athanaric’s attempt at going it alone had failed. Deserted even by those who had earlier preferred him to Alavivus and Fritigern, he finally had to make his peace with the empire. The fact that Valens was dead no doubt made the inherent humiliation of this reversal easier to bear, and Theodosius did his best to make the transition painless. The emperor welcomed Athanaric to Constantinople on 14 January 381 with great honours and gave him a lavish state funeral when he died of natural causes soon afterwards.[198] In the midst of a still ongoing Balkan war, the peaceful reception of a noble Goth like Athanaric must have had significant propaganda value for Theodosius, even if the old man had arrived with virtually no following and had no practical influence on the Goths already inside the empire. In fact, it was Athanaric’s very harmlessness that made him ideal for Theodosius’ needs, and more dangerous Gothic outsiders were not made welcome in the same way. We discover this in the case of our second documented Danube crossing, in 386, when Theodosius celebrated a triumph over some Greuthungi whose request for admission to the empire he accepted, before having them treacherously slaughtered as they made their way across the frontier.[199] This episode illustrates both how central the maintenance of peace in the Balkans had become to Theodosian policy, and also how fluid the political life of the barbaricum remained if, as late as 386, a group of Greuthungi without any known connection to the Gothic settlers of 382, felt that settlement inside the empire was preferable to life beyond its frontiers.
Gothic Officers in the Roman Army
The treaty of 382 marked the beginning of a new phase in the relationships between Goths and empire in more than one way: beginning in the 380s, we find a remarkable number of Goths, aristocrats ‘who were paramount in reputation and nobility’ as Eunapius puts it, pursuing careers as officers in the imperial army.[200] There was, to be sure, nothing particularly noteworthy about Goths serving in the Roman military. Whether as the result of treaty terms or simply as mercenaries recruited ad hoc, they had done so for many years. On the other hand,