154- The Gothic War

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome,

Episode 154: The Gothic War.

There is an old legend that a few days after the Battle of Adrianople, Fritigern and his triumphant Goths advanced on Constantinople.

Fear and trepidation seized the capital at the sight of this great horde advancing, because the people of the city knew there would be no stopping them.

The emperor was dead, and his army destroyed.

It seemed that only God Himself could deliver them all from doom.

But of course, as it turned out, it did not take God to deliver Constantinople from doom.

All it took was the Goths getting one look at the city walls.

Ferdegern's horde may have been the largest army for five hundred miles in any direction, but that did not mean they had the skills or the tools to lay siege to a fortified city.

There would be no sacking of Constantinople.

Instead, the Goths turned around and headed back into the heart of the Balkans, looking for prizes they actually had the means to win.

No one knows if this little anecdote is true in fact, but it is at least true in spirit, as it captures the essence of the stalemate that is about to ensue between the Romans and the Goths, a stalemate referred to, perhaps a bit grandiosely, as the Gothic War.

Way back during the episodes on Aurelian, I spent some time detailing how the Romans had changed their military posture in the face of the crisis of the third century to reflect the new realities of the world.

You'll recall that the Romans allowed their static frontier lines to become more permeable, but made up for this by strengthening the defenses of the individual cities cities dramatically.

We've seen in bits and pieces how this worked to the Roman advantage during the various barbarian raids of the last century, but nowhere is the success of the strategy more on display than during the Gothic War.

Between Pannonia and God like Syria, there was literally no Roman army big enough to do a thing about the Goths, and yet, for the next four years, Fridigern and his people were unable to do anything more than just sort of roam roam the countryside.

The existence of the Roman Empire was never truly threatened by the Goths, because the fortifications of the various cities were simply too great an obstacle for the barbarians to overcome.

So, like I said, the Gothic War played out as a stalemate.

The flip side to the Gothic inability to capture fortified cities, though, was the Roman inability to defeat the Goths in open battle.

Obviously, in the immediate aftermath of Adrianople, the Romans were unable to confront the Goths in the field.

But even after a few years had passed and a new army had been raised, the inexperience, rushed training, and poor morale of the new army left it far inferior to the veteran Gothic warriors.

So both sides struggled on, scraping up supplies as best they could until everyone realized that some kind of settlement needed to to be reached.

And as we will see, it will be the essence of that settlement, rather than the immediate consequences of military defeat, that tends to elevate Adrianople to its key place in the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

The Western Emperor Gratian had already left Sirmium in August 378 and was on his way toward Thrace when news of Adrianople broke.

Leading an army that was supposed to be overwhelming only after it linked up with Valens, when Gracian learned that there was no longer a Valens to link up with, he immediately turned his force around.

Back in the safety of Sirmium, Gracian and his advisors sat down to survey the damage and see if they couldn't figure out what to do next.

The problem they grappled with was twofold, one part military and one part political.

The military problem was was obvious.

An enemy army was loose in Roman territory, and there was no longer a Roman army around to fight it.

That needed to be rectified immediately.

But Valens had already siphoned off all the men and resources the far eastern frontier could bear to lose.

Siphon off any more, and you may as well cede the whole region to Shapur and the Sassanids.

Gratian, meanwhile, had redeployed a good chunk of his own Rhine defenses, but that redeployment had already sparked at least one Alemanni invasion.

Redeploy any more, and he risked throwing the whole West into chaos.

As much as Gratian and his war council hated to admit it, the Central Empire was more or less on its own.

The Eastern and Western Legions could provide leaders and some support staff, but other than that, the Middle Empire was going to have to raise a whole new army by itself, which is not exactly what they wanted to hear, I'm sure.

And as if the military problem wasn't bad enough on its own, Gratian also had to deal with the political problem, namely, that with Valens dead, there was now a massive power vacuum in the east.

Under normal circumstances, going with just one emperor was a dicey proposition, and I'm not really counting Valentinian II in all of this, since no one else seems to be either.

But given the absolutely dire circumstances facing Rome, going with just one emperor would have been insane.

So, it was time to play everyone's favorite game, let's pick a new emperor.

And remember, if you accidentally back the wrong man or speak out against the man who ultimately does win the prize, then your career will most likely be over and you may even wind up dead.

So, good luck, everyone.

Let's play the game.

But even though the need to fill the power vacuum was acutely felt by everyone, when they finally did land on a candidate they could agree on, they did not just elevate him to the purple right away.

Instead, they gave him military jurisdiction over the shattered Balkan provinces to see how he would handle the crisis.

Only after passing this initial test would the candidate be elevated to the purple, which he was, but not until almost six months after Valens disappeared at Adrianople.

So, what is the name of this future emperor?

Why, Theodosius, of course.

Now, at the end of episode 150, I hinted at the fate of Valentinian's Mr.

Fixet, Theodosius the Elder.

But in the confusing rush of events that followed Valentinian I's death, I neglected to follow up on that hint.

So I will do so now.

You would think a resume as sterling as the elder Theodosius' would have given him a measure of protection in the post-Valentinian realignment, but alas, men that capable often make enemies as easily as they solve problems, and Theodosius was no exception.

The clique of high officials who came to power immediately after Valentinian's death was no fan of the elder Theodosius.

We don't know why he was disliked, but historians have speculated that the execution for treason of a particular general who was close to the click by Mr.

Fixett while he was serving in Britain was a potential catalyst for Theodosius' ultimate demise.

Sadly, though, not only do we not know what the exact charges were that brought him down, we don't even know who authored the charges.

That is, whether they sprang from the court of Gratian or the court of Valentinian II.

Whatever the charges were, though, and wherever they came from, Theodosius the Elder was executed in 375 while he was still in North Africa attempting to sort out the mess created by Romanus.

The fate of Theodosius' nearly thirty-year-old son during the next few years is equally difficult to nail down.

What we know for sure is that Theodosius the Younger was serving as a commander in Moesia around the time of Valentinian's death, and then later he was living in Spain, and then later still we find him back in charge of troops in Thrace.

But the timeline is garbled.

The most commonly told version of the story, though, is that the younger Theodosius was caught up in the intrigues that brought down his father, and he was driven out of public service.

He then retired to his home in Spain, where he married, started a family, and likely expected to pass the rest of his days living the comfortable life of a country aristocrat.

But then the wheel of destiny rolled over on the plains near Adrianople, and Gratian recalled Theodosius the Younger from retirement and ordered him to take charge of the shattered legions of the Middle Empire.

This version of the story relies on conjecture that there had been a turnover in the upper rungs of Gratian's court that brought to power a group of officials who had been friends of the elder Theodosius and knew the abilities of his son.

It also relies on conjecture that all the high-ranking military officials in the East who had survived Adrianople were all now discredited by the defeat, and that the Emperor was looking for a man untainted by the recent debacle to come in and salvage the situation.

There is another, less repeated version of the story that has Theodosius initially sacked not by a malicious clique targeting his family, but by Valentinian himself.

Why?

Well, because Theodosius was being held responsible for the failure of one of his legions during the quadi raid that had followed the diplomatic blunder of Marcellianus.

This version goes on to report that Theodosius was almost immediately reinstated to the army following the ascension of Gratian.

So in this telling, Theodosius was actually serving in Illyria at the time of Adrianople, and the reason he was chosen to go salvage the situation in Thrace and Moesia was that he was the nearest commander of noble Roman birth available to Gracian at that moment.

So his elevation to power was more a coincidence of proximity than anything else.

To be honest, I have only ever heard the version that Theodosius was in Spain, and didn't know there was even an alternate until I started doing research for these episodes.

But Dr.

David Woods of the University College of Cork thinks that we've been misreading unreliable sources for years, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

Whichever way it happened, after Adrianople, Gratian and his advisors decided that the now thirty-two-year-old Theodosius was the man for them.

As I just mentioned, though, the initial promotion did not come with purple robes.

Instead, Theodosius was simply given overall military command of Moesia and Thrace, the two provinces presently qualified as national disaster areas.

His mandate?

Oh my God, try to restore some order.

Theodosius spent the next six months getting a handle on the situation, trying to reorganize what was left of Valence's army, and ensuring that the various cities of the region could hold out without relief for a little while, because, be aware, no relief will be coming for a little while.

He acquitted himself well enough during this trial period that the further promotion, the one that really had been his to lose, was now offered.

On January 19, 379 AD, in a ceremony at Sirmium, Theodosius was elevated to the rank of Augustus.

He was given command over all of Valens' territories, with one notable addition.

The Western Diocese of Illyria, which had traditionally been controlled by the Western Augustus, as they protected the passes into Italy, were ceded over to Theodosius in order to create a unified theater of operations.

Though he was now emperor of the whole of the Eastern Empire, Theodosius' new mandate was crystal clear.

Defeat the Goths.

But that was, of course, easier said than done.

As we've seen, reinforcements could not just be called in from elsewhere.

The Empire was stretched as thin as it was going to stretch.

So Theodosius had to spend the next year raising and training a whole new army.

At this point in history, there were three sources of new soldiers for Theodosius to draw on, and he drew from all of them to help fill his ranks.

First, there were retired veterans, whose discharge contracts required them to return to service should the Emperor deem it necessary.

Second, there were raw draftees yanked from civilian life.

And third, there were barbarian fighters not aligned with the barbarian fighters the Empire was currently fighting.

The first needed only be notified that they were being recalled, the second needed only to be drafted, and the third needed only be paid.

As Theodosius found out, though, the first and third sources of troops were fairly easy to manage, but that second source turned out to be a sticking point.

Many people have asked why an empire as large as the Roman Empire ever had trouble with military recruitment, especially since they were able to replace their armies practically overnight when they were just a regional Italian power.

A big part of the problem is something that Theodosius is about to find out.

Very few people these days are crazy enough to want to join the army.

Life in the army of late antiquity was harsh, uncomfortable, dangerous, and just swarming with draconian punishments of every shape and size.

Only the phony tough or the crazy brave willingly signed up for a life that promised little more than a choice between death by disease, death by sword, or death by a senior officer who had woken up on the wrong side of the cot.

Part of the reason Diocletian instituted the laws that forced men to inherit their father's profession was to keep the ranks of the army reasonably well stocked.

Otherwise, the frontiers would have wound up unmanned two generations back.

But compounding the problem with soldiering being a really unattractive profession was the attitude of rich landowners.

Though their enlightened self-interest should have led them to support military recruitment, after all, being rich doesn't count for much when your empire is undefended,

but unfortunately, the immediate self-interest of the landowners usually led them to do everything in their power to hinder military recruitment.

The manpower shortage that afflicted the army was just an extension of the more general manpower shortage that was afflicting the whole empire.

And every poor sod who joined the army was one less poor sod available to work the enormous estates of the landowners.

So, what wound up happening is that when the draft officials came around demanding a landowner provide his quota of poor sods, the landowner would lie about how many poor sods he had.

When pressed, the landowner might hand over the oldest, lamest, and feeblest of his workers, but the best of the bunch would usually be hidden away from view.

This willful obstruction of military recruitment during a national security crisis enraged the emperors, and a series of laws threatening horrible punishment to anyone who held able-bodied men back flew out of the imperial courts, usually to no avail.

It was also well known to soldiers already in service that if they decided to desert, and they managed to make it to a large estate, that the owner would often secretly shelter them in exchange for a pledge of servitude.

This was also well known to the emperors, and so another series of laws came flying out of the imperial courts prohibiting the practice, again, usually to no avail.

This tension between the economic interests of large landowners and the military interests of the state was, you guessed it, another one of the 257 different reasons why the Western Empire is nearing collapse.

When Theodosius finally gathered up an army large enough to maybe do something about the Goths, he drilled them and trained them and drilled them some more.

But despite all the training, Theodosius' army was never going to be more than a ragtag bunch of misfits.

The recalled veterans were experienced, but they were old.

The new recruits were young, but not at all professional soldiers, and, having been pressed into service, their morale was low and their desertion rate was high.

And then there were the auxiliary barbarians, some of whom were ethnically Goth.

who knew where their loyalties lay.

Theodosius was smart enough then to do two things.

First, for the whole of 379, he never risked putting this army into battle.

Not only would a loss have been catastrophic, but given the gulf of ability between the seasoned Goths and the Green Romans, a loss was very likely going to be the outcome.

This meant that the Goths had a full year during which they basically had the run of the Middle Empire.

But still, a Roman loss would have been catastrophic.

It simply could not be risked.

The other thing Theodosius was smart enough to do was not treat this army like a professional force of willing volunteers.

Discipline was tight, but not draconian.

Deserters were not killed as long as they came back.

Floggings for minor infractions were kept to a minimum.

He needed these men to fight for him someday.

Beating them mercilessly because they weren't digging that hole right would have been counterproductive.

Not that any of this really mattered.

It would have made for a heartwarming story had this ragtag bunch gone out and saved the day.

But unfortunately for Hollywood executives everywhere, that's not the way it went.

When Theodosius finally led his army out into battle in three hundred eighty, the hope, of course, was that he was leading them out to avenge Adrianople and crush the barbarians.

But it was not to be.

And this is even after the Goths helped the Romans out by having the Grutungai and the Tervingai decide to go their separate ways earlier in the year, leaving Theodosius with a much less daunting task ahead of him.

Citing the fact that there was not enough food around to feed them all, the Grutungai decided to head northwest, where they were eventually crushed by a Western army guarding the Illyrian frontier.

This left the Odosius with only Fritigern and the Tervingai to deal with.

But when the two sides met in battle at some unknown point later in three hundred eighty, the Goths once again won the day.

The sources point to some unknown bit of treachery just before the battle, possibly the defection of some of those barbarian auxiliaries, but all other details have been lost to history.

However, despite the Roman defeat, Theodosius made sure that it was not another Adrianople,

and the new emperor extracted his army from the fray before things got out of hand.

From that moment on, Theodosius' strategy for winning the war changed completely.

He no longer believed that he could deliver the kind of outright military victory that he was expected to win, win, and so he focused all his energy on reaching a peace agreement that would be acceptable to both sides.

After three years of wandering aimlessly trying to feed themselves on ever-diminishing spoils of war, Theodosius was betting that the Goths were probably getting as ready for a settlement as he was.

In January of 381, the Emperor was gifted an opportunity to demonstrate his honorable intentions when Athenaric, the old enemy of Rome, who had sworn never to set foot in the Empire, arrived at the Danube with what remained of his people, begging for asylum.

The old Gothic king was sick and dying, and after years of hiding out in the Carpathian Mountains hounded by the Huns, he finally decided enough was enough.

He wanted to die in peace, and Theodosius jumped at the chance to give him the opportunity.

He welcomed Athenaric into Constantinople, which the emperor himself had only set foot in for the first time just three months before,

and he treated the Gothic king like, well, a king.

And when Athenaric died of his illness two weeks later, Theodosius gave him a state funeral.

The message Theodosius was hoping to send to Fridigern's people was clear: Romans and Goths are much better served when they are friends, not enemies.

If you give me a chance, I am prepared to treat you as well as I have just treated Athenaric and his people.

To the outlaw Goths still out in the Roman countryside, this was a message they were willing to hear.

But it would still be another year and a half before the war officially came to an end.

Throughout that end phase, perpetuating the stalemate became Theodosius' sole military objective.

keeping the city supplied, making sure they could continue to hold out, and never risking an open battle.

By the autumn of 382, trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns and perpetual insecurity, the Goths were finally ready to deal.

The terms agreed to by the Romans and the Goths were, as I said, the true essence of why Adrianople was such a big deal.

The agreement wound up being pretty simple.

The Goths would put away their swords if the Romans allowed them to settle within the Empire.

But critically, the rule book governing how barbarians were to be settled within the Empire was thrown out, and a whole new book was written on the spot.

The particular details are lost, but the big overarching themes are visible.

For example, the Goths were not broken up and scattered into small settlements, but instead allowed to live together in a large group.

This of course meant that at all times they had to be seen as a potential military threat, but it also meant that they were better able to maintain their own separate Gothic identities.

That is not good.

On top of that, the Romans agreed to recognize Gothic leaders and bargain with those leaders when they wanted something out of the Goths.

So, that whole breaking of the tribal power structure thing that had been the foundation of how the Romans handled barbarian resettlement was now tossed out.

In its place, that whole tribal power structure was allowed to persist.

This is also not good.

Although I will mention here that somewhere along the line, Fritigern magically vanishes from the historical record.

No one knows if he died in battle or if he was overthrown by his war-weary people, but there is some speculation that his ouster may have been one of the Roman conditions for peace.

You know, we'll deal with your leaders, that's fine, but we won't deal with that leader.

Perhaps it was a teensy, tiny measure of revenge for Adrianople.

Finally, though many of the settled Goths wound up joining the Roman army as individuals, both sides agreed that if the emperor deemed it necessary, he would be allowed to call on the Gothic nation as a whole to come fight for Rome.

However, they would not be required to fight under Roman officers.

Instead, they would be allowed to fight in their own way under their own leaders.

Basically, they would be nothing more than an emergency auxiliary force serving next to the legions, rather than being a group of Roman citizens serving in the legions.

All of this boiled down to the same thing.

The Goths were not going to become integrated members of the Empire.

Instead, they were going to continue on as a foreign nation who just happened to be living on Roman soil.

To say that this was a break with precedent is the understatement of the millennium.

Romanization of their enemies had been like the overriding goal of Roman foreign policy going back I don't even know how far, maybe forever.

That overriding goal was now Kaput.

Backed up against the wall, bargaining from a weak position, and desperate just to get the Goths to go to bed, Theodosius chose to deal with them not as mighty empire and puny mortal, but as just another flawed and vulnerable nation trying to secure a peace with just another flawed and vulnerable nation.

The ripple effect of this choice would be felt for the next century, and yes, proved to be yet another one of the 257 different reasons why the Western Roman Empire fell apart.

But the Roman Empire is not done yet, and next week will be a time of much rejoicing.

The five-year-long Gothic reign of terror was at an end, and things could finally go back to normal.

Theodosius, Gratian, and the rest of the Romans were allowed to bask in the glow of this quasi-victory for almost a whole year, before, on the complete other side of the world, yet another massive threat to the stability of the Empire would pop up.

This threat would also lead to the death of an emperor, although instead of coming from outside the empire, this one would come from within.

So, at least it was a nice change of pace.

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