[Sidenote:  The Empire in 376.]

In the year 376 the Empire still seemed to stand unshaken within the limits of Augustus.  If the legions had retired from the outlying provinces of Dacia and Carduene, they more than held their ground on the great river frontiers of the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Rhine.  If Julian’s death had seemed to let loose all the enemies of Rome at once, they had all been repulsed.  While the Persian advance was checked by the obstinate patriotism of Armenia, Valens reduced the Goths to submission, and his Western colleague drove the Germans out of Gaul and recovered Britain from the Picts.  The Empire had fully held its own through twelve years of incessant warfare; and if there were serious indications of exhaustion in the dwindling of the legions and the increase of the barbarian auxiliaries, in the troops of brigands who infested every mountain district, in the alarming decrease of population, and above all in the ruin of the provinces by excessive taxation, it still seemed inconceivable that real danger could ever menace Rome’s eternal throne.

[Sidenote:  The Gothic war (377-378).]

But while the imperial statesmen were watching the Euphrates, the storm was gathering on the Danube.  The Goths in Dacia had been learning husbandry and Christianity since Aurelian’s time, and bade fair soon to become a civilized people.  Heathenism was already half abandoned, and their nomad habits half laid aside.  But when the Huns came up suddenly from the steppes of Asia, the stately Gothic warriors fled almost without a blow from the hordes of wild dwarfish horsemen.  The Ostrogoths became the servants of their conquerors, and the heathens of Athanaric found a refuge in the recesses of the Transylvanian forests.  But Fritigern was a Christian.  Rome had helped him once before, and Rome might help him now.  A whole nation of panic-stricken warriors crowded to the banks of the Danube.  There was but one inviolable refuge in the world, and that was beneath the shelter of the Roman eagles.  Only let them have some of the waste lands in Thrace, and they would be glad to do the Empire faithful service.  When conditions had been settled, the Goths were brought across the river.  Once on Roman ground, they were left to the mercy of officials whose only thought was to make the famished barbarians a prey to their own rapacity and lust.  Before long the Goths broke loose and spread over the country, destroying whatever cultivation had survived the desolating misgovernment of the Empire.  Outlaws and deserters were willing guides, and crowds of fresh barbarians came in to share the spoil.  The Roman generals found it no easy task to keep the field.

[Sidenote:  Battle of Hadrianople (Aug. 9, 378).]