Eagles in the Dust: The Roman Defeat at Adrianopolis AD 378

178 Pages·2015·1.48 MB·English

by  Adrian Coombs-Hoar

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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South Yorkshire
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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
The right of Adrian Coombs-Hoar to be identified as the Author of
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Contents
Maps & Diagrams
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Goths: Their Origins, Tribal Structure, Home
Life and Warlike Ability
Chapter 2 The Goths’ Part in the ‘Crisis of the Third Century’:
And Roman-Gothic Relations Up To the Reign of
Valens
Chapter 3 Valens, Procopius, and the Goths
Chapter 4 Valens’ Gothic Campaigns 367–369
AD
Chapter 5 Crisis Beyond the Danube 369–376
AD
Chapter 6 367–376 – Friends and Enemies
AD
Chapter 7 376 – The Beginning of the End
AD
Chapter 8 The Battle of the Willows: A Blueprint for Disaster?
Chapter 9 The Roman Offensives 377–378
AD
Chapter 10 The Calm Before the Storm: The Last Fateful Days
Before the Battle of Adrianople, the Decisions Made
and Why
Chapter 11 9 August 378: ‘The Day the Eagles Fell’
AD
Chapter 12 Aftermath
Chapter 13 ‘What If …’
Chapter 14 The Location of the Battle of Adrianople
Chapter 15 The Roman Empire and its Army During the Reign
of Valens
Chapter 16 Biographies
Chapter 17 The Sources
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Maps & Diagrams
Map 1: Edirne (Adrianople) with distances to probable battlefield
locations
Diagram 1: Gothic wagon laager in single ring
Diagram 2: Gothic wagon laager in concentric rings
Diagram 3: Gothic wagon laager in spiral formation
Diagram 4: Gothic wagon laager in group formation
Diagram 5: Roman deployment in front of Goth wagons with direction of
Gothic cavalry attacks displayed
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 378, a Roman army led by Valens, the
AD
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 Empire’s 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 ‘550s’ by an Eastern Roman bureaucrat by the name of
AD
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