Battle of Naissus

The result was a great Roman victory which, combined with the effective pursuit of the invaders in the aftermath of the battle and the energetic efforts of the future Emperor Aurelian, largely removed the threat from Germanic tribes in the Balkan frontier for the following decades.

The text of Dexippus has survived only indirectly, through quotations in the fourth-century Augustan History and extracts in ninth-century Byzantine compilations.

The first wave came during the reign of Gallienus in 267 and started when the Heruli, raiding on 500 ships,[10] ravaged the southern Black Sea coast and unsuccessfully attacked Byzantium and Cyzicus.

They were defeated by the Roman navy but managed to escape into the Aegean Sea, where they ravaged the islands of Lemnos and Skyros and sacked several cities of the southern Greek province of Achaea, including Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta.

On the contrary, there is a theory that the victory at Nessos was so decisive that Claudius' efforts against the Goths (including the battle of Naissus) were no more than a mopping-up operation.

[14] After Gallienus was assassinated outside Milan in the summer of 268 in a plot led by high officers in his army, Claudius was proclaimed emperor and headed to Rome to establish his rule.

An enormous coalition of "Scythians"—actually consisting of Goths (Greuthungi and Thervingi), Gepids, and Peucini, led again by the Heruli—assembled at the mouth of river Tyras (Dniester).

After failing to storm some towns on the coasts of the western Black Sea and the Danube (Tomis, Marcianopolis), the invaders attacked Byzantium and Chrysopolis.

While their main force had constructed siege works and was close to taking the cities of Thessalonica and Cassandreia, it retreated to the Balkan interior at the news that the emperor was advancing.

Large numbers on both sides were killed but, at the critical point, the Romans tricked the Goths into an ambush by pretended flight.

In 271, after Aurelian repelled another Gothic invasion, he abandoned the province of Dacia north of the Danube in order to rationalize the defense of the Empire.