[4][5] In the summer of 376, a massive number of Goths arrived on the Danube River, the border of the Roman Empire, requesting asylum from the Huns.

[7] Eunapius states their number as 200,000 including civilians, but Peter Heather estimates that the Thervings may have had only 10,000 warriors and 50,000 people in total, with the Greuthungi about the same size.

[14][15] With Valens committed to action on the Eastern frontier, the appearance of a large number of barbarians meant his skeleton force in the Balkans were outnumbered.

This was not the first time barbarian tribes had been settled; the usual course was that some would be recruited into the army and the rest would be broken up into small groups and resettled across the empire at the Emperor's discretion.

[26] Roman logistics could not cope with the vast numbers, and officials under the command of Lupicinus simply sold off much of the food before it reached the hands of the Goths.

[30] As the Thervings approached Marcianople, Lupicinus invited Fritigern, Alavivus and a small group of their attendants to dine with him inside the city.

Lupicinus, having received the news as he sat at the banquet with the Gothic leaders, ordered Fritigern and Alavivus held hostage and their retainers executed.

[31][32] Having survived the chaos of the night and the earlier humiliations, Fritigern and the Thervings decided it was time to break the treaty and rebel against the Romans, and the Greuthungi immediately joined them.

All the junior officers were killed, the military standards were lost and the Goths secured new weapons and armor from the dead Roman soldiers.

Finally many aged men, crying that they had lived long enough after losing their possessions and their beautiful women, were led into exile with their arms pinioned behind their backs and weeping over the glowing ashes of their ancestral homes.

The Romans hoped to weaken the enemy with the rigors of winter and starvation and then lure Fritigern into open battle on the plains between the Haemus mountains and the Danube to finish him off.

Behind these were led last of all grown-up girls and chaste wives, weeping and with downcast faces, longing even by a death of torment to forestall the imminent violation of their modesty.

Among these was a freeborn man, not long ago rich and independent, dragged along like some wild beast and railing at thee, Fortune, as merciless and blind, since thou hadst in a brief moment deprived him of his possessions and of the sweet society of his dear ones; had driven him from his home, which he saw fallen to ashes and ruins and sacrificed him to a bloody victor, either to be torn from limb to limb or amid blows and tortures to serve as a slave.

[55] The Goths marched on Augusta Trajana to attack the general Frigiderus but his scouts detected the invaders and he promptly withdrew to Illyria[56] but the city was also destroyed.

[58] Although Valens had completed negotiations with the Persians earlier in 377, he had been forced to remain on the Eastern frontier for the rest of the year because of a major uprising by the Saracens affecting provinces from Phoenice south as far as Egypt.

[60][61][62][63] According to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Socrates Scholasticus, the citizens of the capital accused Emperor Valens of neglecting their defense, exposing them to the raids of the Goths who now threatened Constantinople itself and urged him to leave the city and confront the invaders instead of continuing to delay.

[64] Valens initially used Saracen auxiliaries newly recruited at the close of his recent war with them to begin clearing Gothic raiders from the outskirts of Constantinople.

[66][67][68] Blaming Traianus for the bloody draw at The Willows, Valens demoted him and appointed Sebastianus, who had arrived from Italy, to command and organize the Eastern Roman army.

Sebastianus set out with a small force, drawn from the Emperor's own Scholae Palatinae,[c] to engage separated Gothic raiding bands.

Noel Lenski has argued that Gratian's delays in moving eastward to support his uncle can in part be attributed to a rivalry between the two detectable in various sources.

Around 7 August Ricomer returned from the West with the Western armies' advanced guard and a new message: Gratian was nearing the Succi pass which led to Adrianople and he advised his uncle to wait for him.

On the morning of 9 August, Valens left his treasury, imperial seal and civilian officials in Adrianople and marched north to engage the Goths.

Fritigern sent more peace envoys and had long since sent for the aid of the Greuthungi cavalry under Alatheus and Saphrax who were separated from the main Gothic body.

Valens reconsidered the peace offer and was preparing to send Ricomer to meet with Fritigern when two Roman elite Scholae Palatinae units, the Scutarii under Cassio and the Sagittarii under Bacurius, engaged the Goths without orders.

[80][81][82] And so the barbarians, their eyes blazing with frenzy, were pursuing our men, in whose veins the blood was chilled with numb horror: some fell without knowing who struck them down, others were buried beneath the mere weight of their assailants; some were slain by the sword of a comrade; for though they often rallied, there was no ground given, nor did anyone spare those who retreated.

After his father fell victim to court intrigue following the death of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian I, Theodosius decided to retire to his estates in Spain.

Gratian offered little help to Theodosius for dealing with the Goths, outside of giving him control of the Western imperial dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia.

Having ended the Gothic invasion of Pannonia, Gratian met Theodosius at Sirmium and directed his generals Arbogast and Bauto to help drive the Goths back into Thrace, which they successfully accomplished by the summer of 381.

[108][109]All that [military] ingenuity of ours has proved useless; only your [Theodosius'] advice and your judgment provided an invincible resistance and the victory you won through these inner resources of yours was finer than it would have been had you prevailed by arms.

The Therving Goths would now be able to negotiate their position with Rome, with force if necessary, as a unified people inside the borders of the Empire and would transform themselves into the Visigoths.