378 – Gothic War: Battle of Adrianople: A large Roman army led by Emperor Valens is defeated by the Visigoths. Valens is killed along with over half of his army.
The Gothic War is the name given to a Gothic uprising in the Eastern Roman Empire in the Balkans between about 376 and 382. The war and in particular the Battle of Adrianople, is commonly seen as a watershed in the history of the Roman Empire, the first of a series of events over the next century that would see the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, although its ultimate importance to the Empire’s eventual fall is still debated.[1][2]
Background
In the summer of 376, a massive number of Goths arrived on the Danube River, the border of the Roman Empire, requesting asylum from the Huns.[3] There were two groups: the Thervings led by Fritigern and Alavivus and the Greuthungi led by Alatheus and Saphrax.[4] Eunapius states their number as 200,000 including civilians but Peter Heather estimates that the Thervings may have had only 10,000 warriors and 50,000 people in total, with the Greuthungi about the same size.[5] The Cambridge Ancient History places modern estimates at around 90,000 people.[6]
The Goths sent ambassadors to Valens, the Eastern Roman Emperor, requesting permission to settle their people inside the Empire.[7] It took them some time to arrive, for the Emperor was in Antioch preparing for a campaign against the Sasanian Empire over control of Armenia and Iberia. The bulk of his forces were stationed in the East, far away from the Danube.[8] Ancient sources are unanimous that Valens was pleased at the appearance of the Goths, as it offered the opportunity of new soldiers at low cost.[9] With Valens committed to action on the Eastern frontier, the appearance of a large number of barbarians meant his skeleton force in the Balkans were outnumbered.[10] Valens must have appreciated the danger when he gave the Thervings permission to enter the empire and the terms he gave them were highly favorable. This was not the first time barbarian tribes had been settled and the usual course was that some would be recruited into the army and the rest would be broken up into small groups and resettled across the empire at the Emperor’s discretion. This would keep them from posing a unified threat and assimilate into the greater Roman population. The agreement differed with the Thervings by allowing them to choose the place of their settlement, Thrace and allowed them to remain united. During the negotiations, the Thervings also expressed a willingness to convert to Christianity. As for the Greuthungi, Roman army and naval forces blocked the river and denied them entry.[11]
The Thervings were probably allowed to cross at or near the fortress of Durostorum.[12] They were ferried by the Romans in boats, rafts and in hollowed tree-trunks and “diligent care was taken that no future destroyer of the Roman state should be left behind, even if he were smitten by a fatal disease,” according to Ammianus Marcellinus. Even so, the river swelled with rain and many drowned.[13] The Goths were to have their weapons confiscated but the Romans in charge accepted bribes to allow the Goths to retain their weapons or perhaps due to there being so many Goths and so few Roman soldiers, not all of them could be adequately checked.[14][15][a] The Romans placed the Thervings along southern bank of the Danube in Lower Mœsia as they waited for the land allocations to begin.[17] In the interim, the Roman state was to provide them food.[18]
Breakout
So many people in so small an area caused a food shortage and eventually the Thervings began to starve.[19] Roman logistics could not cope with the vast numbers and officials under the command of Lupicinus, simply sold off much of the food before it reached the hands of the Goths. Desperate, Gothic families sold many of their children into slavery to Romans for dog meat at the price of one child per one dog.[20][21]
This treatment caused the Therving Goths to grow rebellious and Lupicinus decided to move them south to Marcianople, his regional headquarters.[22] To guard the march south, Lupicinus was forced to pull out the Roman troops guarding the Danube, which allowed the Greuthungi promptly to cross into Roman territory. The Thervings then deliberately slowed their march to allow the Greuthungi to catch up.[23] As the Thervings neared Marcianople, Lupicinus invited Fritigern, Alavivus and a small group of their attendants to dine with him inside the city. The bulk of the Goths were encamped some distance outside, with Roman troops between them and the city. Due to the persistent refusal of the Roman soldiers to allow the Goths to buy supplies in the town’s market, fighting broke out and several Roman soldiers were killed and robbed. Lupicinus, having received the news as he sat at the banquet with the Gothic leaders, responded by ordering the executions of Fritgern’s and Alavivus’ attendants and holding the leaders hostage. This was done in secret but news of the killings came to the Goths outside and they prepared to assault Marcianople. Fritigern advised Lupicinus that the best way to calm the situation was to allow Fritigern to rejoin his people and show them that he was still alive. Lupicinus, indecisive, agreed and set him free. Alavivus is not mentioned again in the sources and his fate is unknown.[24][25]
Having survived the chaos of the night and the earlier humiliations, Fritigern and the Thervings decided it was time to break the treaty and rebel against the Romans and the Greuthungi immediately joined them. Fritigern led the Goths away from Marcianopole towards Scythia. Lupicinus and his army pursued them 14 km (8.7 mi) from the city, fought the Battle of Marcianople and was annihilated. All the junior officers were killed, the military standards were lost and the bodies of dead Romans provided the Goths with new weapons and armor. Lupicinus survived and escaped back to Marcianopole. The Thervings then raided and pillaged throughout the region.[26][27]
At Adrianople a small Gothic force employed by the Romans, was garrisoned under the command of Sueridus and Colias. The two Goths had received news of the events but had preferred to remain in place “considering their own welfare the most important thing of all.”[28] The Emperor, afraid of having a Roman garrison under Gothic control so close to a Gothic rebellion, ordered Sueridus and Colias to march east to Hellespontus. The two commanders asked for food and money for the journey, as well as a postponement of two days to prepare. The local Roman magistrate, angry at this garrison for having earlier pillaged his suburban villa, armed people from the city and stirred them against the garrison. The mob demanded that the Goths follow orders and leave immediately. The men under Sueridus and Colias initially stood still but when they were pelted with curses and missiles from the mob, attacked and killed many. The garrison left the city and joined Fritigern and the Goths besieged Adrianople. But lacking the equipment and the experience to conduct a siege and losing many men to missiles, they abandoned the city. Fritigern declared he now “kept peace with walls”. The Goths once again dispersed to loot the rich and undefended countryside. Using prisoners and Roman traitors, the Goths were led to hidden hoards, rich villages and such places.[29]
“ For without distinction of age or sex all places were ablaze with slaughter and great fires, sucklings were torn from the very breasts of their mothers and slain, matrons and widows whose husbands had been killed before their eyes were carried off, boys of tender or adult age were dragged away over the dead bodies of their parents. Finally many aged men, crying that they had lived long enough after losing their possessions and their beautiful women, were led into exile with their arms pinioned behind their backs and weeping over the glowing ashes of their ancestral homes.[30] ”
377: Containing the Goths
Many Goths inside Roman territory joined Fritigern, as did assorted slaves, miners and prisoners.[31] Roman garrisons in fortified towns held out but those outside of them were easy prey. The Goths created a vast wagon train to hold all the loot and supplies pillaged from the Roman countryside and they had much rage against the Roman population for what they had endured. Those who had started as starving refugees had transformed into a powerful army.[32][33]
Valens, now recognizing the seriousness of the situation from his base in Antioch, sent general Victor to negotiate an immediate peace with the Sassanids. He also began to transfer the Eastern Roman army to Thrace. While the main army mobilized, he sent ahead an advance force under Traian and Profuturus. Valens also reached out to the Western Roman Emperor Gratian, his co-emperor and nephew, for aid. Gratian responded by sending the comes domesticorum Richomeres and the comes rei militaris Frigeridus, to guard the western passes through the Haemus mountains, to contain the Goths from spreading westward and for eventual linkup with the Eastern army. These huge movements of troops and the cooperation of the West, spoke to the grave threat the Goths posed.[34][35]
Traian and Profuturus arrived leading troops of Armenians but Frigeridus, leading the Pannonian and the transalpine auxiliaries, fell ill from gout. Richomeres, having led a force cut from Gratian’s palatine army, by the mutual consent of the other leaders took command of the combined forces, probably at Marcianople.[36][37][38] The Goths withdrew north of the Haemus mountains and the Romans moved to engage.[39] At a place called Ad Salices[b] (“The Willows”), they fought the Battle of the Willows. The Romans were outnumbered and during the battle their left wing began to collapse. Only with hasty reinforcements and Roman discipline was the situation retrieved. The battle lasted until dusk when the opposing armies broke off, the Goths withdrawing into their wall of wagons, leaving the battle a bloody draw. Both sides counted heavy losses, including Profuturus who was slain on the battlefield.[41][42]
After the battle the Romans retreated to Marcianople and the Goths of Fritigern spent seven days within their wagon fort before moving out. Frigeridus destroyed and enslaved a band of marauding Goths under Farnobius and sent the survivors to Italy. In the fall, Richomeres returned to Gaul to collect more troops for the next year’s campaign. Valens meanwhile sent magister equitum Saturninus to Thrace to linkup with Traian. Saturninus and Traian erected a line of forts in the Haemus passes to block the Goths. The Romans hoped to weaken the enemy with the rigors of winter and starvation and then lure Fritigern into open battle on the plains between the Haemus mountains and the Danube to finish him off. The Goths, once again hungry and desperate, tried to break through the passes but were repulsed each time. Fritigern then enlisted the aid of mercenary Huns and Alans, who boosted his strength. Saturninus, realizing he could no longer hold the passes against them, abandoned the blockade and retreated. The Goths were thus free to raid anew, reaching as far as the Rhodope Mountains and the Hellespont.[43][44]
“ Then there were to be seen and to lament acts most frightful to see and to describe: women driven along by cracking whips and stupefied with fear, still heavy with their unborn children, which before coming into the world endured many horrors; little children too clinging to their mothers. Then could be heard the laments of high-born boys and maidens, whose hands were fettered in cruel captivity. Behind these were led last of all grown-up girls and chaste wives, weeping and with downcast faces, longing even by a death of torment to forestall the imminent violation of their modesty. Among these was a freeborn man, not long ago rich and independent, dragged along like some wild beast and railing at thee, Fortune, as merciless and blind, since thou hadst in a brief moment deprived him of his possessions and of the sweet society of his dear ones; had driven him from his home, which he saw fallen to ashes and ruins and sacrificed him to a bloody victor, either to be torn from limb to limb or amid blows and tortures to serve as a slave.[45] ”
Archaeological finds in this region and dated to this period reveal Roman villas with signs of abandonment and deliberate destruction.[46] The devastation forced Valens to officially reduce taxes on the populations of Mœsia and Scythia.[47]
More on wiki:
1940 – Linda Keen, American mathematician and academic
Linda Jo Goldway Keen (born 9 August 1940 in New York City, New York) is a mathematician and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Since 1965, she has been a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Lehman College of The City University of New York and a Professor of Mathematics at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York.[1]
Professional career
As a high school student she attended the Bronx High School of Science. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from the City College of New York, then studied at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, earning her Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics in 1964. She wrote her thesis on Riemann surfaces under the direction of Lipman Bers at NYU.[2]
Keen has worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Hunter College, University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Boston University, Princeton University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as at various mathematical institutes in Europe and South America. After her initial appointment in 1965, in 1974 Keen was promoted to Full Professor at Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is currently Executive Officer of the Mathematics Program at the Graduate Center.
Keen served as president of the Association for Women in Mathematics during 1985-1986 and as vice-president of the American Mathematical Society during 1992-1995. She served on the Board of Trustees of the American Mathematical Society from 1999-2009 and as Associate Treasurer from 2009-2011. In 1975, she presented an AMS invited address and in 1989 she presented an MAA joint invited address. In 1993 she was selected as a Noether Lecturer.[3]
Keen worked with the mathematicians Paul Blanchard, Robert L. Devaney, Jane Gilman, Lisa Goldberg, Nikola Lakic and Caroline Series among many others.
Contributions
In addition to studying Riemann surfaces, Keen has worked in hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups and Fuchsian groups, complex analysis, and hyperbolic dynamics. In the field of hyperbolic geometry, she is known for the Collar lemma.
Personal
She is married to Jonathan Brezin and resides in New York.
Awards and honors
She has been honored with: AAUW Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, 1964–65 National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, 1964–65 Edwin S. Webster-Abby Rockefeller Mauze Award, M.I.T. 1990 Finish Mathematical Society Invited Foreign Speaker, JAN 1991 AWM Emmy Noether Lecturer, 1993 Joint Irish and London Mathematical Societies Invited Speaker, 1998 Lehman College Foundation Faculty Award, 1998 MAA Invited hour Address, Boulder CO, 1989 Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences Kovalevsky Days Programme Main Speaker, 2006
In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[4]
Books
Complex Dynamics with Robert L. Devaney
Hyperbolic Geometry from a Local Viewpoint with Nikola Lakic
The Legacy of Sonya Kovalevskaya}; Proceedings of a Symposium held at Radcliffe College and 3 AMS special sessions. Ed. L. Keen, Contemp. Math. 64, AMS 1987.
Lipa’s Legacy, Proceedings of the Bers Colloquium}, Ed. J. Dodziuk, L. Keen, Contemp. Math. 211, AMS 1997
Complex Dynamics: 25 years after the appearance of the Mandelbrot set, Eds. R. Devaney, L. Keen, Contemp. Math., 396, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2006.
Lipman Bers, a Life in Mathematics, Eds. I. Kra, R. Rodriguez, L. Keen, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2015.
By Justin T. Westbrook: In Russia, A Green Light Sometimes Means ‘Watch Out For The Armored Personnel Carrier’
Adam Clark Estes: The Guy Who Invented Those Annoying Password Rules Now Regrets Wasting Your Time
Comments?
By Arcadia Power: Get Access To Clean Energy For Your Home + 4 LED Lights For Free
By Sari Horwitz: Justice Dept. sides with Ohio’s purge of inactive voters in case headed to Supreme Court
By Scott Thurm: The Guy Who Wrote the ‘Google Memo’ Just Might Sue
By Amber Madison: Three Tough Lessons On Bias From The Google Memo
Widget not in any sidebars
Widget not in any sidebars
Widget not in any sidebars
Widget not in any sidebars
