After the attempt to hold the Dniester against the enemy ended in failure and near encirclement and destruction, the Thervingi retreated; a part into what is now Romania under Athanaric, while the rest led by Fritigern fell back to the Danube, where they asked permission from the Roman Emperor Valens to be allowed to cross the river, which they thought could be held against the fearsome Asian barbarians.
[5] Valens, then emperor in the east, yielded his consent, but on the terms that their wealth, arms, and a certain number of their high-born youth, should be surrendered to him as pledges of their loyalty; and that they were to become the faithful servants of the Roman Empire, subject to the obligations as well as the benefits of residence within her boundaries; the desperate barbarians eagerly accepted his conditions, and close to a million Goths, including 200,000 effective warriors, according to Gibbon, were ferried across the Danube by the governors of Thrace.
Increasingly alarmed, Valens' generals resolved to disperse the Goths throughout the provinces, and gave orders for Fritigern, their leader, to march to Marcianopolis, where the respective places for each colony would be assigned.
As soon as the noise of the fighting reached Fritigern in Lupicinus's palace, he broke out with the rest of the chiefs, swords drawn, and rejoined the Gothic camp outside the city.
The veteran legions fought with marked bravery, but Lupicinius fled as more than half of his army was killed, and ultimately succumbed to the numbers and ferocity of the enraged barbarians.