Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- MAPS
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Prologue BEFORE THE GATES OF ROME
- 1 THE GOTHS BEFORE CONSTANTINE
- 2 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND BARBARIAN SOCIETY
- 3 THE SEARCH FOR GOTHIC ORIGINS
- 4 IMPERIAL POLITICS AND THE RISE OF GOTHIC POWER
- 5 GOTHS AND ROMANS, 332–376
- 6 THE BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE
- 7 THEODOSIUS AND THE GOTHS
- 8 ALARIC AND THE SACK OF ROME
- Epilogue THE AFTERMATH OF ALARIC
- GLOSSARY OF ANCIENT SOURCES
- BIOGRAPHICAL GLOSSARY
- FURTHER READING
- NOTES
- INDEX
7 - THEODOSIUS AND THE GOTHS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- MAPS
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Prologue BEFORE THE GATES OF ROME
- 1 THE GOTHS BEFORE CONSTANTINE
- 2 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND BARBARIAN SOCIETY
- 3 THE SEARCH FOR GOTHIC ORIGINS
- 4 IMPERIAL POLITICS AND THE RISE OF GOTHIC POWER
- 5 GOTHS AND ROMANS, 332–376
- 6 THE BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE
- 7 THEODOSIUS AND THE GOTHS
- 8 ALARIC AND THE SACK OF ROME
- Epilogue THE AFTERMATH OF ALARIC
- GLOSSARY OF ANCIENT SOURCES
- BIOGRAPHICAL GLOSSARY
- FURTHER READING
- NOTES
- INDEX
Summary
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF ADRIANOPLE WAS IMMEDIATE. Pagans at once interpreted the defeat as punishment for the neglect of the traditional gods. In distant Lydia, the pagan rhetor Eunapius of Sardis composed what has been termed an instant history, to demonstrate that the empire had headed inexorably towards the disaster of Adrianople from the moment of Constantine's conversion. For Eunapius, it seems, the Roman empire itself had ended at Adrianople: ‘Strife, when it has grown, brings forth war and murder, and the children of murder are ruin and the destruction of the human race. Precisely these things were perpetrated during Valens’ reign'. From a distance of longer years, and with considerably greater penetration, Ammianus made the same argument, choosing the disaster as the terminal point for his history and loading it with coded venom towards the Christians on whom he, like his hero Julian, blamed the empire's decline. No Christian response was immediately forthcoming, though Nicene Christians seem to have blamed Adrianople on divine punishment for the homoean beliefs of Valens, and Jerome ended his Chronicle in 378, just as Ammianus did his history. This dialogue of blame and excuse, the pagan side of which is now largely lost to us thanks to suppression by the Christian winners, went on throughout the fifth century, exacerbated by Alaric's sack of Rome. After all, how could the barbarian scourge have stung so painfully if God or the gods were not murderously displeased?
For the modern scholar, too, the battle of Adrianople is a turning point of major importance, though we seek historical rather than divine explanations. As we saw in the last chapter, the causes of the disaster lay not in any single event but in a series of human errors. The aftermath of the battle, however, represents a new phase in the history of both the Goths and the Roman empire.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rome's Gothic WarsFrom the Third Century to Alaric, pp. 144 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006