Theodosius’ plan for pacifying the Goths proved to be as damaging as Valens’ original decision to let them cross the Danube. He would grant them the right to occupy Thrace if they would swear loyalty to the empire and become Roman soldiers. Peace was restored, but at a tremendous cost. With the empire lacking the human resources to replace its losses in the wake of Adrianople, the Roman army was transformed into an army of Goths fighting for the emperor. As the 4th century ended, the Goths bloodlessly gained control of the army. For the first time in its history, the Roman army was no longer composed primarily of Romans.

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Scholars have given a variety of dates for the fall of Rome, the latest being 1453, when Constantinople, capital of the eastern Roman empire, fell to the Ottoman Turks, but that was a new, Byzantine, Greek-speaking empire far removed from the Caesars. The fall of the western empire is set at 476, when its last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, surrendered to the Ostrogoths. That, however, was just the coup de grâce following a succession of disasters, such as the murder of Valentinian III in 455, the loss of the African provinces to the Vandals in 429 and Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410.

It might be argued that ancient Rome received its mortal blow in 378, and simply took almost a century to die. The empire had been in bad shape before, but not so bad that a single strong leader could not have saved the situation. After Adrianople, however, Rome’s decline became irreversible. Once the Romans had to rely on the Goths to fight their wars for them, the emperor’s power collapsed, and the new Goth-dominated army was unable to fend off other marauding peoples who spilled over the eastern frontiers.

It may be stretching the point for military historians to pronounce Adrianople a victory of cavalry over infantry that ushered in the era of the medieval knight. After that battle, however, Roman armies lost their classical character. Cavalry came to predominate, and because horsemen, especially those from the East, were also archers, their ability to attack at long range severely limited the power of infantry formations. Not until the 15th century did weapons such as the longbow and crossbow begin to overturn the effectiveness of cavalry on the battlefield.

As the reliability of the native Roman army declined after Adrianople, emperors, generals and even private citizens began to hire bands of retainers, usually Germanic in make?up. By the mid-5th century, Roman field armies had evolved into large bands of mounted warriors owing their allegiance directly to powerful warlords rather than to the state. Those armies had more in common with a feudal host than with Rome’s republican or imperial legions of classical times.

Although it was fought in the East, the Battle of Adrianople had its most direct effect on the affairs of Rome’s western provinces. It initiated a huge influx of Germanic peoples who continued their migrations to overrun the western Roman empire within the next century. In ironic contrast, the eastern Roman empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would survive the fall of Rome itself and, adapting to the eastern environment in which it was isolated amid a sea of barbarians, endure for another 1,000 years.

For further reading, Cary, N.C., based contributor Joe Zentner recommends: Adrianople ad 378: The Goths Crush Rome’s Legions, by Simon MacDowall; and Barbarians, by Tim Newark.

This article was written by Joe Zentner and originally published in the October 2005 issue of Military History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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