THE GENERAL SITUATION
Since the beginning of the Roman Empire in 510 BC, clean-shaven Roman aristocrats were determined to outdo the scope of Alexander’s Greek Empire through an unremitting fury of blood-spilling macho aggression. Power and togas mattered to the Romans. Once enemies were subdued by sword or treaty, power kept the peace and filled the coffers with gold. As the empire expanded, the Romans often incorporated the gods of the vanquished people under the big tent of Pax Romana while press-ganging many of their army-eligible men as soldiers and gobbling up their resources as booty and foodstuffs. Those generals who mastered the rape-and-pillage paradigm of forcibly welcoming non-Romans (i.e., “barbarians”) into the empire marched into Rome in triumph, trailing gold and slaves, with the power to stake their claims to be emperor, with the help of the imperial guard.
It didn’t matter anymore if the general were a Roman aristocrat, or gods forbid, a Vandal, Goth, or Hun. If the guard gave you the thumbs-up, you were in. This flexibility allowed the Roman republic to become the world’s first superempire.
By AD 364 the vast size of the Roman superempire required the emperor to spend most of his time battling barbarians on far-flung borders, closely guarded by his cohort of imperial guards, who traveled with him at all times, in case of one of those awkward moments when they found themselves with a dead emperor on their hands.
Which happened when Emperor Julian got himself inconveniently killed that year in combat against the Romans’ long-standing nemesis, the Persians. Then Julian’s replacement died on the way to Rome. The guard huddled yet again and settled on Valentinian I as the best of a weak field of blood-soaked soldiers short-listed for the position. He was a compromise figure, chosen because he was not from one of the dynastic families of former emperors jousting to regain power. After appointing Valentinian, the imperial guards, wise to the challenges and risks of helming the giant war machine, requested in their nonrefusable way that he nominate a co-emperor to run the eastern half of the empire. Valentinian shrewdly chose the one person he knew wouldn’t outshine him and whom he could control, his little brother Valens.
The imperial guards accepted Valentinian’s choice of Valens because he was weaker and even more inexperienced than Valentinian. They arrogantly assumed that even a weak emperor, not to mention his dumb little brother, was no threat to the continued existence of the superempire. Valens was seven years younger than Valentinian and had grown up on his family’s farm in the eastern Balkans while his brother was out campaigning in Africa and Gaul with his father, a soldier. Instead of a harsh life in an army camp, Valens was raised in a fairly gentle bucolic environment. He was known for sporting bowed legs and a potbelly, common enough afflictions but apparently unusual enough in a Roman emperor to be duly sniffed at by his contemporaries.
At first, things started off well for Valens and his new empire, which comprised modern-day Turkey, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Egypt. He astutely hired people who spoke the local languages who could explain the incomprehensible bleatings of his new constituents. He married the daughter of a soldier and began treating everyone fairly. But Valens soon ran into problems. Once he attempted anything more than basic administrative tasks, things had a way of backfiring for him. He and his emperor-brother decided to improve the quality of the coins by making them more pure. These new coins helped stabilize the currency in the mind of the average Roman citizen, but by minting new coins with more and finer gold, the ruling brothers were actually robbing themselves. Many of Valens’s decisions ended up hurting only himself.
Valens soon had bigger problems, however. The Goths, barbarians out of what is now lower Ukraine and the northeastern Balkans, were up to their old tricks. After being defeated by Emperor Constantine in AD 328 while unifying the empire under his control, Constantine had forced the Goths to contribute troops for the constantly undermanned eastern empire legions.
Now smelling weakness in the plodding new emperor Valens, the Goths invaded the eastern empire in AD 365. As per the emperor handbook, Valens dutifully dispatched legions to start working them over. Now an even bigger problem cropped up. He was facing a revolt in Constantinople, his very own capital. A former imperial secretary named Procopius, a relation of Emperor Julian in the Constantine dynasty, was struck for some reason with the happy thought that he deserved to be emperor. Procopius convinced Valens’s two legions to join his coup, made a deal with the invading Goths, and declared himself emperor. He struck new coins and started appointing his people in Constantinople. It was yet another classic Roman power-grab.
Valens sent a distress call to his brother Valentinian, the western emperor. Valentinian was too busy to send help. His excuse was that he was tied down battling Germans in Gaul. Valens, on his own, managed to defeat Procopius in AD 366 with the critical support of a respected general in the army named Arbitio, who defected to Valens after his estates were stolen by Procopius. The smooth-talking Arbitio convinced half of Procopius’s army to desert, and the remaining half, sizing up the situation, quickly flipped to Valens’s side. Celebrating his first martial victory, Valens gleefully slaughtered Procopius and in time-honored imperial Roman fashion shipped his severed head to big brother Valentinian in Rome. In reality, Valens had dodged only one bullet. There were more soon to follow.
Valens now declared a full-on war against the Goths for supporting Procopius’s coup, but he couldn’t manage to pin down the slippery barbarians, despite beating Athanaric, the Goth king, in open battle in July 369. But Valens didn’t follow the victory up with the coup de grâce. He turned away to rest his troops below the Danube for the winter, and let the moment pass against the reeling Goths, who sent emissaries to Valens and appealed for mercy. Mercy from a Roman emperor? This was an unheard-of proposition, but Valens was willing to try out this shiny, modern idea. He and King Athanaric of the Tervingi Goth tribe signed a peace treaty in mid-Danube, in effect bowing to the barbarian king’s refusal to set foot on Roman territory. It was another very un-Roman act, which violated the unwritten Roman law of running the empire as a mercy-free zone. Until then all Roman treaties had been signed in Rome or on the field of battle under Roman standards.
After that three-year slog in the eastern Balkans, Valens was free to return to the more glorious pursuit of reconquering Armenia from the Persians, who had been staying sharp by raping and pillaging the countryside. Kicking around the Goths was not seen by anybody as anything more than day-to-day empire maintenance; crushing the Persians and regaining Armenia would impress his brother much more. So, in 370 Valens set out to attack the Persians.
Valens still suffered from the chronic manpower shortage of the eastern empire. Despite a law that the sons of veterans were compelled to serve, inducements were often handed out to keep up the recruitment numbers, costing the empire’s treasury dearly. And Roman soldiers hated serving in the east. Dragooning barbarians was the cheapest way to staff up the legions. Propping up the Armenian king by attacking the hirsute Persians would require all of his forces. Unfortunately, that midriver treaty with the Goths had ended the payment of tribute in gold to the Goths and also ended the requirement of the Goths supplying troops to the Roman emperor, as had been established under their treaty with Constantine. Valens had exacerbated his chronic manpower shortage just when he needed bodies the most. In spite of this, the glory-deficient Valens gave himself the title of
Yet another blow came in 375, when Valentinian dropped dead of a stroke while berating barbarian ambassadors trying to justify their invasion of the superempire. Valens had lost his guiding hand and erstwhile protector, and now found himself competing with his nephew, the teenaged Gratian, now Emperor Gratian.
Valens was now the emperor-weakling. Gratian’s regents kicked sand in his face when they elevated Valentinian I’s other son Valentinian II, all of three years old, to co-emperor alongside his half-brother Gratian. This was a direct thrust at Valens, whose only son Galatens — consul at the ripe age of three — had died soon after the Procopius rebellion, reportedly bringing Valens to his knees in grief.
Upon the naming of Valentinian II as emperor, the regents handed him chunks of Valens’s territory in the
