Gothic Refugees Cross the Danube and Revolt

The Huns arrived on the steppe with speed and fire, scattering Gothic polities that had anchored the north of the lower Danube for generations. By late 376, the Tervingi and Greuthungi—later remembered as Visigoths and Ostrogoths—gathered at the river in rafts and boats, with herds, families, and carts piled high. They petitioned to cross, asking Rome for the same bargain it had granted to strangers before: food, land, and a place within the imperial peace [1][10].

Imperial officials nodded. The Danube line near Durostorum and the stretch toward Novae opened in controlled crossings. On parchment, it seemed routine: register names, issue grain, sort fighters from families. On the ground, the system creaked. Supplies stacked in warehouses at Marcianople and along the Via Egnatia were late or siphoned by profiteers. Children cried with hunger; soldiers’ bronze scales gleamed while wagons stood idle. The promise of charity curdled into a racket.

Ammianus Marcellinus, a former officer writing close to events, seethed at the mismanagement—he names commanders and quartermasters who sold dog-flesh as meat and ransomed bread for hostages [1]. Desperation turned to fury. When Roman units tried to disarm groups while withholding provisions, the Goths rallied around carts that doubled as ramparts. The air filled with the thud of slingstones and the sharp crack of bowstrings. A refugee column had become a mobile army.

War rolled across Thrace. From the plains near Marcianople to the vineyards south of Hadrianople (Adrianople), Roman detachments skirmished, then fell back as more bands, including Greuthungi horsemen, crossed the river despite orders to hold the line [1][10]. Villages burned. The sound was a constant: iron on iron, hooves on dry road, orders shouted in Latin and Gothic. The imperial court in Constantinople—its halls hung with purple draperies—watched a frontier policy turn into a regional revolt.

Valens, the Eastern emperor, gathered forces. Western reinforcements under Gratian moved from the Danube through Sirmium toward Thrace, but distance and delay stretched the calendar. In the meantime, Roman commanders tried to contain the uprising with piecemeal actions near the Hebrus (Maritsa) River. The Goths, clustered around wagons, used a laager as both shield and signal. They were no longer petitioners at a gate. They were an armed people moving inside Roman soil.

As winter neared, the lines hardened. The refugees who had been counted and cataloged only months before now carried spears of ash and shields painted in scarlet and black. Ammianus’ narrative, dry where it can be, turns hot where it must: a system that could list a unit in the Notitia could not feed a child in Thrace [1][10]. The revolt did not end with a single battle. It fed the battle to come.