Peter Heather

There is some ice core evidence that it was getting a bit hot and dry.

It may be, therefore, that the nomad world is facing a problem about grazing and animals.

But...

That's certainly a plausible candidate.

The other would be that actually it's empire building going on because they do that as well.

But what we find out is in the mid-370s, a previously unknown in the West group of nomads called Huns start to impact upon Rome's frontier clients in the Danubian region, first off Goths north of the Black Sea.

Yes.

Yes.

They're faced with a dilemma as to what to do.

There are several different Gothic groups.

They don't all do the same thing.

But in the autumn of 376, two separate large groups of Goths, one called Tevingi, one called Grutungi, ask for asylum inside the Roman Empire.

Well, Valens is in the middle of another war with Persia.

So all his army is in Syria and Iraq.

What he decides to do is to let one group in and keep the other group out.

No Roman emperor who claims to be chosen to be emperor by the supreme creator of the cosmos can ever admit that he's forced to do anything by a barbarian.

This is an admission that he's not actually divinely supported because he shouldn't be being forced to do things, if he were.

So Valens' propaganda says, yeah, great, we love to see the Goths.

But actually what he does is only let in one and try to keep the other one out.

And he also...