Rome's Gothic Wars

AS THE LAST CHAPTER SUGGESTED, THE SÂANTANA-DE-MUREŞ/Černjachov culture was the material expression of Gothic hegemony in the lower Danube region. That is to say, it was the product of a relative political stability that the imperial support for Gothic hegemony ensured. But the same stability held inherent dangers for the Roman empire. Constantine's defeat of king Ariaric in 332, and the subsequent thirty years of peace between the empire and the Tervingi, did nothing to retard the growth of Tervingian military power. Thus when a Roman emperor next came to fight a major Gothic war, as Valens did in the later 360s, he confronted an opponent whose power would have surprised Constantine. More shocking still was the Gothic victory at Adrianople which, in 378, wiped out the larger part of the eastern Roman army. For us, it would be very satisfying to know just how Gothic power grew so great in this period. Unfortunately, we know remarkably little about the history of the Tervingian region in the three decades of peace that followed Constantine's victory – not even whether we should talk about a Tervingian kingdom or kingdoms – and still less about more distant Gothic groups.

As we have already seen, it is impossible to be sure whether Ariaric was the only Tervingian king involved in the campaigns of 332, and how or whether he was related to later Tervingian rulers. The evidence for the mid fourth century is just as uncertain. In the year 364/365, we hear of more than one Gothic king sending troops to support an unsuccessful claimant to the imperial throne. But in the later 360s and early 370s, our main narrative sources regard one particular Goth, Athanaric, as the sole leader of the Tervingi, even though they refer to him as iudex, ‘judge’, rather than as king.