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All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front continued

Valens’ allowance of the return of Athanasius to Alexandria as well as the recall of the pagan general who had turned a poor situation worse by acting as a butcher, Vindaonius Magnus brought a temporary end to the conflict in Egypt, but the Emperor’s actions had not endured the man to the Egyptians. Indeed, Valens’ standing among the Egyptians would continue to decline as his anti-corruption measures caused the local landowners to chafe under his increasingly watchful eye. Valens’ 368 law installing a fine of twenty-five pounds of gold on small farmers caught bribing local garrisons to defend them against lawful curial tax collectors, though an empire-wide edict was greeted poorly by the Egyptians and was followed just two years later by the splitting of Egypt from the Diocese of Oriens during a great Phrygian famine in the same year. The economic and political pressures placed upon the Egyptians, coupled with his renewed religious persecutions would all come to a boiling point in 373 with Athanasius’ passing. However, before that, we must discuss Valens’ successes and failures in dealing with Shapur and the question of Armenia.

The precarious troop situation Valens had been left within the aftermath of Julian’s debacle and the division of what remained between himself and his brother the Senior Augustus had forced the Emperor to sit in Antioch what Shapur interpreted his treaty with Jovian as liberally as he possibly could. Though the Persian Shah’s invasion of Armenia proper, to depose its king had clearly been in violation of the Armenian neutrality the Shah had agreed upon, there had been little that Valens could do about the situation. At the same time, there had been little the Emperor had needed to do. Though the tremendous successes recorded in the Epic Histories of Armenia are almost certainly exaggerated, the simple fact was that Shapur’s Armenian adventure had not been going as planned. His initial attempts to undermine Arshak and bring the squabbling Armenian nakharars to his side had failed, and indeed on several occasions, nakharars who seemed to be coming over to the Persian Shah’s side turned out to be little more than saboteurs still loyal to Arshak. Though the Armenian petty kings and princes often saw themselves on the opposite side of the power struggle in Armenia, the kingdom’s Christianization had proven to be a powerful asset for the Arsacid monarchy against the machinations of the Sasanians. It was amidst these failures, that the Persian Shah would violate his treaty with Rome so flagrantly that Valens would be pushed into action when Shapur invaded Sophene[1].

While Valens “directed” the war against the Persians from the safety of Antioch, his generals were soon marching into Armenia, cutting off Shapur from retreating the same way he had entered western Armenia from. The great army that Shapur had expected to batter the unsecured west with and smash Arshak between a hammer and an anvil had now been placed between Arshak’s fortified position in the east and an advancing Roman field army. Weary of a set-piece battle and what it might mean for the balance of power, a war of maneuvers took place as Shapur attempted to deny the Romans a solid confrontation on their terms and the Roman commanders, Victor and Arinthaeus, did the same. While the Romans had a logistical train than kept them maintained, Shapur was forced to live off the Armenian countryside, ravaging the land, hoping that the devastation he wrought might force some of the nakharars to peel away their allegiance to Arshak and bolster his forces so that he might break the stalemate.

Back in Antioch, Valens’ unique mixture of impatience and caution continued to make the emperor eager for a resounding victory over Shapur, but too wary of the consequences of defeat to press his commanders to meet the Shah in a set-piece battle. By early 369, the Eastern Augustus, was acutely aware of his brother’s successes against the Alamanni, the subsequent invasion of Germania, and the push to retake Roman Britannia, while he was nearly 2 years into a war with Shapur with nothing to show for it, except an increasing number of angry Armenian nobles. Trying to bolster his available forces, Valens increasingly drew auxilia from the Saracen Tanukhids, a move that increasingly strained relations between the Romans and the barbarians as Valens demanded larger troop commitments. As if answering Valens’ prayer for more men, in mid 369, the Thervingi chieftain Fritigern sent embassies to the Emperor Valens’ court in Antioch, requesting asylum and resettlement for his people. Evidently, the Thervingi chieftain had for the previous few years fought with a competing Thervingi leader, Athanaric, and was in the losing position.[2] Valens’ only dealings with Athanaric had been when he had sent two legions to secure the frontier from possible Gothic raids some five years prior[3] and his subsequent calls for auxilia from the Goths for his Persian War. Where his brother’s economic policy towards the barbarians was restrictive and protectionist going hand in hand with his hyper-aggressive campaigning across the Rhine, Valens, possible because of benign neglect or possible because of time as a farmer, had maintained the same relatively cordial relations between the Roman world and Gothicum. Free trade had continued largely uninterrupted, with Roman coins flowing into the lands of the Thervingi and Gothic auxilia still fighting for the Romans[4].

We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, that the mood of the court in Antioch was jovial at the prospect of Fritigern’s group of Thervingi being admitted into the Empire as it would bring gold and troops for the war effort. Though normal circumstances would have dictated that the Goths be fragmented and spread across the Empire, Fritigern had hoped that his band of Thervingi might be kept whole and settled in Thrace. Valens would meet the Gothic chieftain halfway, allowing the Goths to remain a cohesive group, but decided to settle them in and around the transtigritanian fortresses that had been denuded of their Roman and Christian populations when they’d been surrendered to Shapur by Jovian once they were restored to Roman control.[5]

Bolstered by the Saracens and Fritigern’s Thervingi, Valens was as confident as ever that he would be able to muscle Shapur out of Armenia and restore Rome’s territorial integrity. Before the Goths could even reach Selukia though, Valens would receive letters from the West and East. According to legend, he received them on the same day. One announced the death of his young nephew Gratian while the other announced the death of his foe Shapur II. The 10-year-old Gratian had taken ill and passed after a fortnight of being laid up in his bed. The Senior Augustus had been devastated by the death of his son and retreated from Germania to mourn the death of his son[6]. The other momentous death, that of Shapur II, had come in the form of camp fever. That Ardashir II could have remained in Armenia and even successfully defeated Valens seems entirely possible, but the new Shah was required in the far east so that he might attempt to put down a revolt in Bactria as well as secure the backing of the powerful Pahlav families before they sparked civil war by backing different members of the Sasanian dynasty. The new Shah offered Valens the near full reversal of his brother’s treaty with Jovian, save one key detail. Armenia was to remain a neutral kingdom. The Armenians would be returned Shapur II’s eastern conquests and the Romans would be returned the transtigritanian provinces, but Valens must withdraw from Armenia and take no part in the business of king-making in Armenia. If the Emperor thought he could force greater concessions out of the Persian Shah, he made no attempt to act on these thoughts, something that later historians have argued would prove to be a mistake, but that is neither here nor there.

For the time, Valens’ war with the Persians was over, Fritigern and his Goths were moving to the restored provinces, Arshak II was reigning in Armenia, while the Persian Shah went off to fight barbarians in the far east. It seemed that Valens’ half of the empire was safe and secure. Yet things were not what they seemed.
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[1]: IOTL Shapur was peacefully allowed to pass through Sophene by swaying the local ruler into coming over to his side. Here, though the Romans are certainly slightly distracted with the Isurian Revolt and the Alexandrian riots, the Emperor and his army are sitting in Antioch waiting for a way to violate the treaty themselves, rather than being off on the Danubian frontier. Thinking that Valens has his back, Meruzan Arkruni rebuffs Shapur’s courting and as a result, has found himself being invaded by Persia.
[2]: Without Valens’ first Gothic War, the conflict between Fritigern and Athanaric still happens, but without Valens’ support Fritigern is defeated by Athanaric and forced to look to the Romans to provide refuge several years earlier than he did IOTL.
[3]: the troops that IOTL revolted for Procopius.
[4]: The disastrous peace that brought an end to Valens’ first Gothic War ended the practice of the Goths sending auxilia and ended the free trade between the Goths and the Romans. Neither of these things was good for either party. Here, no Gothic War means no bad peace. It also means no persecution of the Christians under Athanaric.
[5]: The idea of settling Balkan invaders in the East along the Persian frontier isn’t far fetched; it had been done before and it would be done again in a much more massive population movement of Slavs along the frontier with the Caliphate.
[6]: More on how Valentinian has been holding up in the next update.