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To: ClaireSolt

No, you should go and reread history. Here's a little for you:

In the summer and fall of 376, tens of thousands of displaced Goths and other tribes arrived on the Danube border of the Roman Empire, requesting asylum from the Huns. Goth leader Fritigern appealed to the Roman emperor Valens to be allowed to settle with his people on the south bank of the Danube, where they hoped to find refuge from the Huns who lacked the ability to cross the wide river in force. Valens permitted this, and even helped the Goths cross the river, probably at the fortress of Durostorum.

Valens promised the Goths farming land, grain rations, and protection under the Roman armies as foederati. His major reasons for quickly accepting the Goths into Roman territory were to increase the size of his army, and to gain a new tax base to increase his treasury. The selection of Goths that were allowed to cross the Danube was unforgiving: the weak, old, and sickly were left on the far bank to fend for themselves against the Huns. The ones that crossed were supposed to have their weapons confiscated; however, the Romans in charge accepted bribes to allow the Goths to retain their weapons.

With so many people in such a small area a famine quickly broke out among the Goths, and Rome was unable to supply them with either the food they were promised nor the land; they herded the Goths into a temporary holding area surrounded by an armed Roman garrison. There was only enough grain left for the Roman garrison, and so they simply let the Goths starve. The Romans provided a grim alternative: the trade of slaves (often children and young women) for dog meat. When Fritigern appealed to Valens for help, he was told that his people would find food and trade in the markets of the distant city of Marcianople. Having no alternative, some of the Goths trekked south in a death march, losing the sickly and old along the path.

When they finally reached Marcianople's gates, they were barred out by the city's military garrison and denied entry, and to add insult to injury the Romans unsuccessfully tried to assassinate the Goth leaders during a banquet. Open revolt began. The main body of Goths spent the rest of 376 and early 377 near the Danube plundering food from the immediate region. Roman garrisons were able to defend isolated forts but most of the country was vulnerable to Gothic plunder.

In late winter 377 war began in earnest and would last for six years before peace would be restored in 382. The remaining Goths moved south from the Danube to Marcianople, and next appear near Adrianople. The Roman response was to send a force under Valens to meet and defeat the Goths. In 378 Valens moved north from Constantinople and was defeated (and himself killed) at the Battle of Adrianople (modern Edirne in western Turkey). The victory gave the Goths freedom to roam at will, plundering throughout Thrace for the rest of 378. In 379 the Goths met only light Roman resistance and advanced north-west into Dacia, plundering that region.

In 380 the Goths divided into the Tervingi (Visigoth) and Greuthungi (Ostrogoth) tribes, in part because of the difficulty of keeping such a large number supplied. The Greuthungi moved north into Pannonia where they were defeated by western emperor Gratian. The Tervingi under Fritigern moved south and east to Macedonia, where they took "protection money" from towns and cities rather than sacking them outright. In 381, forces of the western Empire drove the Goths back to Thrace, where finally in 382, peace was made on October 3.

By the end of the war, the Goths had killed a Roman emperor, destroyed a Roman army and laid waste large tracts of the Roman Balkans, much of which never recovered. The Roman Empire had for the first time negotiated a peace settlement with an autonomous barbarian tribe inside the borders of the Empire, a situation that a generation before would have been unthinkable.
The lesson was not lost on other tribes, as well as the Goths themselves, who would not remain peaceful for long. Within a hundred years the Western Empire would collapse under the pressure of continued invasions as the Empire was carved up into barbarian kingdoms.



24 posted on 06/13/2006 6:16:01 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie
Your page does not say who you are or what your historical credentials might be. Historian was my profession with the best possible credentials, SoCalPubbie. I challenged your interpretation. That would not normally be answered by text from the encyclopedia.

A fundamental parallel remains. Just as the Romans had colonized Gaul for 400 years, so also did Europeans colonize Africa, the Middle East and South America. In spite of much contact over centuries, however, huge gaps in development remained. Then migrations overwhelmed the developed world and destroyed civilization. Can it and will it happen again?

25 posted on 06/13/2006 8:04:38 PM PDT by ClaireSolt (.)
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