The Final Pagan Generation (Transformation of the Classical Heritage) by Watts Edward J

Author:Watts, Edward J. [Watts, Edward J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780520283701
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2015-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

YOUNGER MEN’S RULES

The Eastern empire felt similar stresses in the late 370s and early 380s, but the situation in the East presented much more dire risks than that in the West. In 376, the emperor Valens allowed large groups of Goths to cross into Roman territory.29 Their numbers quickly overwhelmed the Roman administration’s capabilities, and, by the summer of 377, the Goths rebelled.30 In August 378, the Goths faced a Roman field army commanded by Valens, defeated it in open battle, and killed the emperor as well as perhaps two-thirds of his army.31 The Eastern court and its army then needed to be quickly rebuilt while Goths wandered unchecked through the Balkans.

Gratian and his advisers selected a thirty-two-year-old Spaniard named Theodosius to confront these dual challenges in January 379. Theodosius was a westerner, selected by a Western court, and appointed by a Western emperor to deal with a problem in the Balkans, a peninsula that (except for its eastern corner) had been largely controlled by the West in the fourth century.32 Many of his earliest appointees to the highest offices in the East were Spaniards and other Western Christians who were closer in age to the younger Theodosius than they were to Valens. While westerners made policy, easterners implemented it on the provincial level. Theodosius understood the need to build relationships with established Eastern elites, and he entrusted most of the governorships and midlevel administrative appointments to Eastern provincial notables.33 This not only kept these figures invested in his regime but also helped to ensure that revenue continued to flow regularly from the provinces not threatened by the Goths.

The first years of his reign saw Theodosius aggressively court Eastern elites in other ways too. Soon after his appointment, he set up his court in Thessaloniki to prepare for a campaign against the Goths. While there, the new emperor received large numbers of petitioners asking for favors. Theodosius turned few of them down34—a perfectly natural response given his lack of familiarity with the cases and his need to build relationships with the Eastern elite.35 These efforts to build support among leading figures in the East were essential, but, in 379 and 380, Theodosius placed far greater emphasis on military affairs. He had been selected to defeat the Goths militarily, and he was expected to do so quickly. Unfortunately, the war did not go as planned. Theodosius spent two full campaigning seasons without a decisive victory. He spent much of 379 rebuilding the Eastern field army destroyed at Adrianople, a task so complicated that he could not have made much progress that year.36 In 380, his new field army was so soundly defeated in Macedonia that Gratian summoned Theodosius to a meeting in Sirmium and took control of eastern Illyricum back from him.37 While Theodosius slunk back to Constantinople, Gratian’s forces drove the Goths out of Illyricum in 381.38 The Goths retreated to Thrace, territory still controlled by Theodosius, and ultimately agreed to a peace treaty with him in October 382 that allowed them to stay in the empire, essentially unpunished.

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