Adrian Coombs-Hoar - Eagles in the Dust: The Roman Defeat at Adrianopolis AD 378

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Pen & Sword Military
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Copyright Adrian Coombs-Hoar 2015

ISBN: 978 1 78159 088 1
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47385 234 1
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47385 240 2

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Contents

Maps & Diagrams

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those people who have inspired me to undertake this work, and also those who provided me with the encouragement and support to be able to complete it.

I would like to thank Pavel Simak for his excellent cover art Eagles in the Dust The Fall of Valens. I would also like to thank John Hills for supplying the map and diagrams plus his thoughtful comments.

I would like to thank Michael King Macdona for helping me with translations where needed, for his knowledge of the Battle of Adrianople, and for the many interesting conversations we have had in connection with the Late Roman Empire. I would also like to thank Francis Hagan for similar reasons and for the insights he has provided.

Further mention must be made to Chris Richards and David Mather for their comments and suggestions.

I would like to thank all those historians, academics and researchers whose invaluable work I have been able to consult during my own research for this book. And I would like to thank Ammianus Marcellinus for providing me with many hours of entertaining reading.

Due to the amount of material that is available concerning the Late Roman Empire, its army and its enemies, it would be difficult to give acknowledgment to all those whose works I have consulted and so I apologize to those who I have not done so.

Finally I would like to thank Ann for putting up with piles of books and papers lying around the house and for supplying me with endless cups of tea and other beverages upon demand!

To all those I have loved and lost

Introduction

The annals record no such massacre of a battle except the one at Cannae, although the Romans more than once, deceived by trickery due to an adverse breeze of Fortune, yielded for a time to ill-success in their wars, and although the storied dirges of the Greeks have mourned over many a contest.

S o wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman Tribune and historian who wrote one of the more graphic accounts of the Battle of Adrianopole. At approximately 6.00 am on 9 August AD 378, a Roman army led by Valens, the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, marched from the city of Adrianople to meet a Gothic army led by Fritigern, a Gothic Chieftain at a distance of between eight and twelve miles from that city. By 8.00 pm that evening two thirds of Valens army lay dead or dying on the battlefield, including Valens himself who perished fighting alongside his army on that day.

This book not only examines that battle in depth, but also discusses the events leading up to it, the causes of the Roman and Gothic conflict leading up to the battle, and its aftermath. It will pose questions such as how Valens war against the Goths may have been prevented, how the disaster at Adrianople may have been averted etc.

I will also discuss the Roman Empires relationship with the Goths from when they first entered into the Roman histories up to the time of Valens first campaigns against them and on to the battle and its immediate aftermath.

The most important ancient historical sources, several by those contemporary with the battle, have been included as have biographies of the main characters that featured before and during the battle.

I have also included a chapter concerning a number of what if scenarios that may have changed not only the course of the battle but may ultimately have changed the course of history itself.

The completion of this book is culmination of thirty years interest and research into not only the battle but the events leading up to the battle during the previous one hundred years. This was a time of transition for the Roman Empire, from when it almost fell during the Crisis of the third century, the rebuilding during the early to mid fourth century and then to the Empire having to make an accommodation with a barbarian tribe that they could not eject from within their frontiers. The wealth of literary material concerning the Late Roman Empire that has appeared over the last fifteen years or so has been astounding, almost every month a new article or book appears discussing aspects of the Roman Empire that the time frame of this book covers. There were so many excellent works to choose from whilst carrying out research for this book that I must apologize if some of them do not get a mention.

By looking at the whole picture of the Romano/Gothic relationship I have chanced upon some aspects of this relationship that I believe have been overlooked and which had a bearing on the Battle of Adrianople. I will be discussing these and more in the relevant chapters.

Chapter One

The Goths

Their Origins, Tribal Structure, Home Life and Warlike Ability

The Goths, who were they and where did they come from?

I f you were to ask the vast majority of people about Goths they would more than likely tell you about those rather morose young people who have a penchant for wearing black, listening to sombre music and a strange fascination with vampires!

A much smaller number would probably remember something about some barbarians who sacked the city of Rome a long time ago.

It is a sad reflection of these modern times that a group of peoples that had so much influence over European history have almost disappeared from the memory of those who live in those lands that felt their influence.

The origins of the Goths are still very much a matter of debate. The earliest surviving account of the origins of the Goths is that contained within De Origine Actibusque Getarum, better known as The Origin and Deeds of the Goths. Written in the AD 550s by an Eastern Roman bureaucrat by the name of Jordanes, who himself claimed Gothic descent; it was an abbreviation of a much larger work, now sadly lost, by Cassiodorus. Jordanes stated that the Goths originated from Scandza, which was a great island situated in the surge of the northern Ocean, and that this island was in the shape of a juniper leaf with bulging sides that taper down to a point at a long end. The location of Scandza was in the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the Vistula River in northern Poland, putting it off the eastern coast of Sweden.

According to Jordanes, the Goths left Scandza in a fleet of boats under their king, Berig, and where they landed was then known afterwards as Gothiscandza. This was in all likelihood in the vicinity of the area of northern Poland where the Vistula River flowed into the Baltic. Although Jordanes work no doubt contains much fantasy and myth, there is probably an element of truth in it; its just dividing the fact from fiction that is the main problem. This area of Poland was the location of the Wielbark culture. This culture stretched south-eastwards, following the course of the Vistula until it encountered the Prezeworsk culture which stretched further south/south eastwards. Its believed that the expansion of the Wielbark culture into the Prezeworsk culture led to the creation of the Satana-de-Mures/Cernjachov culture further east around the region north and west of the Black Sea including the Danube, the Carpathians and the northern shore of the Black Sea itself. This version of the origin of the Goths is roughly that espoused by authors such as Wolfram (1990, 1997) and Heather (1991, 1998, and 2009), although not shared by all historians, notably Kulikowski (2009).