Sometime in the autumn of 376 word came from Constantinople that the Tervingian Goths were allowed to cross the Danube. The settlement of 'barbarians' within the Empire was not new, and there was much to recommend this option to the Emperor Valens. Firstly, the Tervingians of Fritigern and Alaviv were Christians - unlike the followers of the pagan Athanaric who they'd left behind north of th river. Secondly, they were (loosely speaking) Arian Christians, as was Valens himself. Thirdly, they were seeking land on which they could live, and Valens had vacant estates to give them in Thrace. Finally, they were a warrior people who would willingly furnish troops for Valens' armies. He was in the process of gearing up for a war with Persia over Armenia and had already taken on a number of Gothic warriors as troops. He saw Fritgern and Alaviv's people as a solution to several problems.

So the Tervingians were allowed to cross and to enter the Empire as *dediticii* - supplicants on the Emperor's mercy seeking to be settled as *colonii*. It's unclear whether they were disarmed as they crossed the river, but earlier examples of dediticii seem to indicate that they would have been. But while the entry of the Tervingians solved some problems for Valens, it created some others.

To begin with, the sheer numbers of people involved were daunting and a resettlement on this scale had not been attempted before. Additionally, Fritigern and Alaviv's people were not the only refugees seeking sanctuary in the Empire - the Greuthungian Goths led by Alatheus and Saphrax had now arrived on the Danube and were also petitioning to cross. Another group of Greuthungian refugees from Ermanaric's kingdom, this one led by Farnobius, and a band of Germanic Taifalians and their Hunnic allies also appeared on the northern bank of the Danube. Valens could not admit all these people at once, so he chose the largest group, Fritigern's, and ordered the troops in Thrace to keep the others out.

Dealing with Fritigern's Tervingians was difficult enough. The terms of the agreement between Valens and the two Gothic chiefs was that they were to be given land to cultivate and beyond that they were not to be a drain on Imperial resources. The problem was how the Goths were to feed themselves in the meantime, and Ammianus Marcellinus tells pitiful stories of Goths selling their own children into slavery to buy food in the crowded refugee camps south of the Danube. Valens also needed to find a way to break up the large and potentially dangerous confederation of Tervingian Goths the two leaders had brought over the river. It was, perhaps, with this in mind that Lupicinus, the Roman commander in Thrace, was ordered to kidnap a group of Gothic nobles, including Fritigern and Alaviv, after having invited them to a banquet at his headquarters in Marcianople.

Whatever Lupicinus' plan, it failed dismally. A fight broke out, Lupicinus had the chiefs' escorting warriors cut down and then the situation got completely out of control. Fritigern fought his way out of the trap, but Alaviv seems to have been killed in the fracas. News spread to the Tervingian warriors outside the city and they, already distrustful of the Romans and plagued by hunger, rose in open revolt. With Fritigern at their head, now the undisputed chief of the Tervingian Goths, they began to plunder and burn the area around Marcianople.

Lupicinus struggled to get the situation under control. Many troops had already been recalled from the Danube frontier, which had allowed the Greuthungian bands under Altheus, Saphrax and Farnobius to force a passage and enter Thrace. But Lupicinus' main problem was Fritigern. The Tervingians outnumbered his forces, but they were poorly armed and the Roman commander knew that a quick victory over the rebel dediticii would soon bring them to heel. But despite gathering all the available forces in Thrace and confronting Fritigern a mere nine miles from his headquarters, Lupicinus was completely defeated and his army massacred.

Now, with Valens still engaged with the bulk of the Eastern Roman Army in Armenia, Thrace was wide open to the army of the Tervingians, and other smaller forces of Greuthungians, Taiflai, Alans, Sarmatians and Huns. The defeat of the army in Thrace gave a signal to others and Thracian gold miners, Gothic slaves, dispossessed peasants and some Gothic units in the Roman Army now rallied to Fritigern and his tribesmen. Humbled by their defeat at the hands of the Huns and humiliated by their treatment by the Romans, the Goths went on the rampage and soon all Thrace was in flames.

(To be continued ...)