[continued from previous message]   
      
   	stability in the region. Moreover, the trouble then had   
   	come from the north-west (present-day Poland and Byelorussia),   
   	not the north-east (modern Ukraine). The last time the   
   	north-east had posed a problem was when the Sarmatians had   
   	swept all before them in the fifty years either side of the   
   	birth of Christ, three centuries earlier. But the Romans   
   	quickly learned the error of their ways.   
      
   	In the summer of 376, a vast throng of people -- men, women   
   	and children -- suddenly appeared on the north bank of the   
   	River Danube asking for safe haven in Roman territory. One   
   	source, not our best, reports that 200,000 refugees appeared   
   	beside the river; Ammianus, that there were too many to   
   	count. They came with innumerable wagons and the animals   
   	to pull them, presumably their plough-oxen, in the kind of   
   	huge procession that warfare has generated throughout   
   	history. There were certainly many individual refugees and   
   	small family groups, but the vast majority were Goths   
   	organized in two compact masses and with defined political   
   	leaderships. My own best guess is that each was composed   
   	of about 10,000 warriors. One group, the Greuthungi, had   
   	already moved a fair distance from lands east of the River   
   	Dniester, in the present-day Ukraine, hundreds of ilometres   
   	from the Danube. The other comprised the majority of   
   	Athanaric's Tervingi, now led by Alavivus and Fritigern,   
   	who had broken away from their former leader's control to   
   	come here to the river.2   
      
   	If the size of the immediate problem for Roman frontier   
   	security was bad enough, the refugees' identity was even   
   	more ominous. Though the first reports had concerned fighting   
   	a long way from the frontier zone, the two large bodies of   
   	Gothic would-be immigrants camped beside the river were   
   	from much closer to home. The Tervingi, in particular, had   
   	been occupying lands immediately north of the Danube, in   
   	what is now Wallachia and Moldavia, since the 310s at the   
   	latest. Whatever was going on in the far north-east was no   
   	local skirmish; its effects were being felt throughout the   
   	region north of the Black Sea.   
      
   	The Romans quickly learned what lay behind all the mayhem.   
   	Again in Ammianus' words: 'The seed-bed and origin of all   
   	this destruction and of the various calamities inflicted   
   	by the wrath of Mars, which raged everywhere with extraordinary   
   	fury, I find to be this: the people of the Huns.'   
      
   Heather makes the point that the Romans had a well-established   
   procedure for bringing refugee groups, including men-under-arms   
   into the Empire, and goes into why they were not able to follow the   
   procedure here, and how it still *almost* worked.   
      
   In fact there are a number of *almost* points in the book, which   
   would server (and probably have served) as jumping off points for   
   alternate histories.  In particular, Heather makes the point that   
   the kife-blow to the Western Empire was the loss of North Africa   
   to the Vandals.  Rather surprisingly (to me) this region of very   
   little economic importance today, was the economic engine of the   
   Western Emperors, and its loss left them unable to maintain the   
   apparatus of the State (particularly the Army, of course).  In fact   
   there were two *almost*-s here.  Once the West was putting together   
   a joint expedition with Constantinople which had to be scrapped   
   when the East came under threat, and second, after the fall of the   
   West, Constantinople tried a naval expedition that seems to have   
   failed due to maritime incompetence as much as anything else.   
      
   Along the way, Heather makes interesting points about the Romans &   
   the Germans (in his view the loss to Arminius was not a game changer   
   and the Romans simply later rationally decided that conquering   
   Germany would bring in very little benefit compared to the cost),   
   and the economy of the post-Domation Romain economy (in his view   
   it had *not* been over-stressed to meet the Persian menace, but   
   according to fairly recent archeological finds, remained vibrant   
   into and through the start of the troubles).  There are also   
   entertaining stories about the envoy from Constantinople to the Huns   
   who was unaware that he was the beard for a mission to assassinate   
   Atilla, and the stuck-up Roman orator who got humbled by a Provincial   
   (although in Heather's opinion, the Empire was really good at making   
   Provincials, at least the land-owning class, into actual Romans)   
   --   
   columbiaclosings.com   
   What's not in Columbia anymore..   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)