Adrianople
You play Emperor Valens
You let the Goths in. Now they are camped outside Adrianople. Do you fight them alone, or wait for your nephew?
In 376, on the far bank of the Danube, waits a whole nation of Goths, more people than anyone can count. They are running from something worse than Rome.
Your first call · Gratian: on his way
Attack now, before Gratian arrivesWait for Gratian's army
Sources
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 31.3 to 31.5, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Loeb, 1939) (the Huns drive the Goths from their lands; envoys beg Valens to receive them, promising a peaceful life and auxiliaries; flatterers praise the recruits and the gold paid in place of the annual levy; ferried over for days and nights in boats, on rafts and in hollowed tree-trunks, the river swollen by rains, many drowned; the officials give up trying to count them; Lupicinus, commanding general in Thrace, and Maximus; the Goths unsupplied; Lupicinus, fearing revolt, sends soldiers to make them move on; every dog exchanged for one slave, among them sons of chieftains; the dinner at Marcianople, the soldiers keeping the Goths from the town, fighting at the walls; Lupicinus 'drowsy and half drunk' kills the leaders' guards; Fritigern warns that only he can quiet his people and is let go; the Theruingi rise; Lupicinus defeated nine miles from the city and flees)
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 31.11 to 31.13 (Valens leaves Antioch for Constantinople and Melanthias; Sebastianus surprises Goths asleep near the Hebrus and destroys them; Gratian informs his uncle by letter of his victory over the Alamanni (31.10: the Lentienses, Gratian secretly crossing the Rhine against them); 31.12.1 Valens 'eager to do some glorious deed to equal his young nephew, whose valiant exploits consumed him with envy', Sebastianus 'exaggerating his exploits'; scouts report only ten thousand; camp near Hadrianopolis with a rampart of stakes and a moat; Richomeres brings Gratian's letter asking him to wait for the partner in his dangers; the council: Sebastianus urges battle, Victor, a cavalry commander of Sarmatian birth, urges waiting for the Gallic army; courtiers urge haste so Gratian will not share the victory; a Christian presbyter brings Fritigern's public letter asking for Thrace with its flocks and crops in return for lasting peace and a private letter asking Valens to show his army near at hand; the envoys doubted and dismissed; the march on the fifth day before the Ides of August with baggage, treasury and insignia left inside Hadrianopolis; at the eighth hour the wagons in a circle; the left wing still scattered along the roads; the Goths' cavalry under Alatheus and Saphrax far away; fires on the plain, heat, thirst and hunger; Fritigern's request for noble hostages; Richomeres volunteers; the archers and targeteers attack too early; the Gothic cavalry returns 'as a thunderbolt'; the left wing reaches the wagons and is crushed; infantry packed so close they cannot draw their swords; Valens falls at nightfall by an arrow among the common soldiers and is never found; barely a third of the army escapes)
- Jordanes, Getica 26.134 to 26.138 and 29.146 to 29.147, trans. C. C. Mierow (1915) (Fritigern and the Roman commanders Lupicinus and Maximus; the feast; the Goths 'appointed Alaric king over them'; Alaric, king of the Visigoths, the Goths who had crossed the Danube)
