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Scritto da
Wakko Warner
Wakkus Horribilis
il 2016-12-02 13:48:08.0 alle 2016-12-02 13:48:08.0
Trollate totali: 6779
http://gatesofvienna.net/2016/11/the-barbarians-wh... 
In 410 A.D. the walls of Rome were breached and the city plundered by a barbarian army under the leadership of Alaric the Goth. This was the first time since the Gallic sack of the city around 390 B.C. that the imperial metropolis had been entered by a hostile enemy. The fall of Rome shocked the world at the time, but what is not generally known nowadays is that the Gothic army that carried out the atrocity had entered the Empire thirty years earlier as refugees.
[CUT]
By the summer of 376 an enormous host of Goths, generally estimated at around 100,000, arrived at the River Danube and pleaded with the Roman authorities to be allowed into the Empire.
The Eastern Emperor Valens, at that moment stationed in Antioch, eventually gave permission for the Therving tribe, which comprised about half the total number of Gothic refugees, to be ferried across the river. For at least two centuries prior to this the Romans had actively recruited barbarians into the army (necessary because of Rome’s abysmally low birth-rate) and Valens reasoned that the Goths would provide a valuable pool of new and cheap recruits. The operation to ferry these people across the Danube was an enormous and costly one and took several weeks to complete and, as Ammianus Marcellinus sarcastically comments, “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.”
Unsurprisingly, within a few weeks of their entry into the Empire, the first clashes with the Roman authorities occurred, and by the end of the summer the Goths were at war with Rome. After several military disasters, the Emperor Valens made a hasty return to Constantinople to personally take charge of the campaign, and was killed in battle at Adrianople in 378 — just two years after he had sanctioned the mass immigration.
In 410 A.D. the walls of Rome were breached and the city plundered by a barbarian army under the leadership of Alaric the Goth. This was the first time since the Gallic sack of the city around 390 B.C. that the imperial metropolis had been entered by a hostile enemy. The fall of Rome shocked the world at the time, but what is not generally known nowadays is that the Gothic army that carried out the atrocity had entered the Empire thirty years earlier as refugees.
[CUT]
By the summer of 376 an enormous host of Goths, generally estimated at around 100,000, arrived at the River Danube and pleaded with the Roman authorities to be allowed into the Empire.
The Eastern Emperor Valens, at that moment stationed in Antioch, eventually gave permission for the Therving tribe, which comprised about half the total number of Gothic refugees, to be ferried across the river. For at least two centuries prior to this the Romans had actively recruited barbarians into the army (necessary because of Rome’s abysmally low birth-rate) and Valens reasoned that the Goths would provide a valuable pool of new and cheap recruits. The operation to ferry these people across the Danube was an enormous and costly one and took several weeks to complete and, as Ammianus Marcellinus sarcastically comments, “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.”
Unsurprisingly, within a few weeks of their entry into the Empire, the first clashes with the Roman authorities occurred, and by the end of the summer the Goths were at war with Rome. After several military disasters, the Emperor Valens made a hasty return to Constantinople to personally take charge of the campaign, and was killed in battle at Adrianople in 378 — just two years after he had sanctioned the mass immigration.
Gli Svizzeri non sono tutti ricchi - Mattia
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Ripasso di storia @ 2016-12-02 13:48:08.0 di Wakko Warner