378 AD the Romans won at the Battle of Adrianople

Valens did everything wrong he could do. He had his troops march 18 kilometers, in the summer heat of Bulgaria, without food and water. Also, he didn't wait for Gratian's troops who were further west. Winning shouldn't be that hard.
 
If you read the stuff he did, he was crazier than even Caligula, but the stuff was less sexy so he didn't become as popular a figure with so many poeople.

Some of it may have been exadurated by the historians of the day, but if you just assume that all the bad stuff was made up, then you're inventing history out of thin air.

This is my favourite story of him:


The point, surely, is why should it have mattered?

The Empire had had nutty and/or nasty rulers before, notably Caligula, Nero and Domitian. Yet it hadn't mattered in the least. They were just "hiccups" and the Empire simply carried on. This, indeed, is pretty much what it did after the death of Commodus - Septimius Severus' family were no worse than Vespasian's - but not after 235. It was then, not 192, that things took a new course.
 
With a victory at Adrianople (non-Phyrric) the Roman Empire would have likely survived. Without the loss of man-power or morale brought about by the defeat it would have left the Empire with a native military force and a greater national confidence.
The Empire would have declined and lost a lot of its territories but more of the Western Empire would have survived and if it was combined with the stronger Eastern Empire they could have rebounded and become a sort of European China. A state that gets invaded, conquered and under the rule of foreign dynasties but that would have a constant cultural identity that would have adapted and assimilated all the invaders cultures.
 
Nice necro.

I find it bemusing that a military disaster in the Eastern Roman Empire that destroyed part of the Eastern Roman armies made the demise of the Western Roman Empire inevitable, according to some of the people who have posted in this thread.
 
Nice necro.

I find it bemusing that a military disaster in the Eastern Roman Empire that destroyed part of the Eastern Roman armies made the demise of the Western Roman Empire inevitable, according to some of the people who have posted in this thread.

Well the West was already militarily strained to the breaking point and the East getting defeated allowed the Goths to roam unchecked into the West and towards Rome.
 
Rome was doomed ever since Marcus Aurelius made Commodus his heir IMHO. Before that the five good emperors had chosen their successors yet the bequething of the empire to a very incapable heir set a dangerour precedent for the decades of barracks emperors. The Roman empire was in decline for centuries, it just kept up a few pretenses of royal power- the death of Marcus Aurelius and the admittence of the Goths into the mperor were the two greates blunders in Roman Imperial history.

I also have a bone to pick with this idea. Yes Commodus was not of the same calibre as his predecessors however Roma was not "doomed" since his ascension. The fragility of the Emperorship that lead to countless plots, conspiracies and civil wars, the poor state of the economy the failure of most Emperors to establish a lasting dynasty and a series of outside factors all contributed to Roma's fall. And unless Commodus is a vampire and has been running around ever since his apparent death instigating all of this none of it can be at least solely attributed to Commodus.

As for Adrianople while it is an interesting POD it's not going to be enough all it really achieves is preserving the Easts military might, it however does not solve all the other internal problems.
 
Well the West was already militarily strained to the breaking point and the East getting defeated allowed the Goths to roam unchecked into the West and towards Rome.
I might agree with you if that was what actually happened.

But not even Peter Heather, King of the "Goths Were A Consistent, Self-Contained Migratory People" Theory, would claim that the group that Alareiks led in the first decade of the fifth century was the same thing as the Tervingi and Greuthungi that fought at Ad Salices and Hadrianopolis.
 
I also have a bone to pick with this idea. Yes Commodus was not of the same calibre as his predecessors however Roma was not "doomed" since his ascension. The fragility of the Emperorship that lead to countless plots, conspiracies and civil wars, the poor state of the economy the failure of most Emperors to establish a lasting dynasty and a series of outside factors all contributed to Roma's fall.
Why was the economy so poor? Was it all the destruction caused by civil wars and barbarian invasions? Was it the plagues? The over reliance on slave labor? Something else?
 
Why was the economy so poor? Was it all the destruction caused by civil wars and barbarian invasions? Was it the plagues? The over reliance on slave labor? Something else?
The real answer is that the economy wasn't actually poor, as far as we can tell, until the fifth century when most of the Western Empire ceased to be run by the emperors anyway. In some indicators, trade was actually up.

There is no causal relationship between the imperial fisc and the decisive events that got the ball rolling, e.g. the civil wars of the 380s and 390s, the Rhine invasions, the rebellion of Constantinus "III", and the premature death of Constantius III (not the same person).
 
Why was the economy so poor? Was it all the destruction caused by civil wars and barbarian invasions? Was it the plagues? The over reliance on slave labor? Something else?

Overinflation, constant warfare shortlived Emperors and a shift from offensive to defensive warfare which is where the Empire got a lot of its precious metals. However I could be thinking 3rd Century in which case I may well be wrong and I take it back. Still a victory at Adrianople will ultimately be nothing more than a victory unless you have the Emperor making reforms that will firstly shore up the power of the Emperor and ensure an uninterupted dynasty. The lack of shall we say sacredness of the Emperor's position and his heirs ultimately cause a lot of turmoil that would distract Emperors from the real issues and force him to focus more and more on keeping his title. Romanos Diogenes IV is a great example of this Manzikert was an unnecessary battle at least in my opinion the he only fought to secure his position and ultimately they lost because the Emperorship wasn't respected as it should've been. If somehow victory leads to the Emperor I don't know how securing a dynasty and ensuring unwavering loyalty to the Emperor it could have a massive effect on the Empire
 
I think that rome may in a best case scenario survive 40 more years or so with a victory at andrianople. If it is a pyyric victory for rome though nothing changes, they would have to win it.by a large margin
 
Overinflation, constant warfare shortlived Emperors and a shift from offensive to defensive warfare which is where the Empire got a lot of its precious metals. However I could be thinking 3rd Century in which case I may well be wrong and I take it back.
Yeah, you are. The hyperinflation (which may possibly have been overrated pace Alaric Watson) was more or less solved by the fourth century. It reared its ugly head again in the mid-fifth due to, of all things, Suebi minting on Roman soil (not Gothic minting, that didn't happen until like the 470s), by which point that was among the least of the emperors' worries.

The stocks of precious metals do not appear to have been a concern, and at any rate I don't believe that anything close to a majority of Rome's precious metals ever did come from across the northern frontier.

Anyway. Economic problems were not the reason that the crisis of the 380s started, and the crisis of the 380s is what got the ball rolling on the collapse of the West, not the Battle of Hadrianopolis.
 
What i'm wondering is, if the romans had the same mindset and ability to gather forces that they had in the punic wars then they would have gathered another huge army, gone and crushed the invaders and then probably also raided across the danube to take revenge on the barbarians.

Sure, a few tens of thousands of elite forces were killed, but why couldn't they match the numbers they had more than half a millenium before with much less territory ? Why couldn't they overwhelm the barbarians numerically if not tactically ?

Sorry about necro posting :)

The Republic was facing an enemy as powerful as itself. The Empire was not, apart from the recurring civil wars, and its only rival was in the east, with only relatively minor powers in Europe. So it didn't have much reason to mobilize it's full resources against the Gothic refugees.

The Empire still mobilized quite large forces at Hadrianopolis - by my guess, most of two field armies. Each of the Praesental armies had 15,000 to 21,000 troops, including 5,000 to 6,000 cavalry, and the Scholae account for an additional 3,500 cavalry. The food-and-fodder requirements for such forces are more than 3/4 as high as for the largest Republican armies.

Valens did everything wrong he could do. He had his troops march 18 kilometers, in the summer heat of Bulgaria, without food and water. Also, he didn't wait for Gratian's troops who were further west. Winning shouldn't be that hard.

Ammianus gives the march as 8 miles, so only 12 to 13 km, and states that Gratian had only brought some light-armed troops with him, presumably with the other troops some distance behind, and had been attacked, presumably near the Iron Gates. To wait for Gratian to assemble his forces and advance toward Hadrianopolis could have added two months to the campaign, and given more opportunities for the Goths to defeat either army in detail.

However, I'm still at a loss to explain how the Romans managed to lose that battle...
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Rome was doomed the day Tiberius Gracchus was slain on the stones of the city Forum, it was just a matter of how long they could keep the ghost going.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Ι guess this ghost went way to far...:D

Think about every ghost movie you've ever seen: It's some guy or girl who lived into their 20's or 30's at the most and died in the 18th or 19th century. The ghost was around a lot longer than the living person it corresponds to ;)

Still, to continue with the biological analogy, the Roman Republic had acquired a cancer and the Gracchi killings were simply chemo and radiation treatments failing. The Principate was kind of like an exoskeleton and the Dominate was a parasite wearing the skin of the old creature. Byzantine longevity had a lot to do with the ability of the skin to be easily transferred from parasite to parasite.
 
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