Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity) (29 page)

The critical editions of Greek and Latin authors from which I cite are listed at the start of the endnotes. Fortunately for the beginning student and general reader, nearly all the primary sources that bear on the Goths are now readily available in English translation, which should allow readers to check the basis of my conclusions if they wish to do so. Among Latin writers, our most important source is Ammianus Marcellinus, available in an excellent but abridged translation by Walter Hamilton in the Penguin Classics and an occasionally misleading but complete version by J. C. Rolfe in the Loeb Classical Library, which also includes the text of the
Origo Constantini
. For the later period, the poems of Claudian are indispensable, and can be read in the two-volume Loeb translation of M. Platnauer, while Rutilius Namatianus is included in the Loeb
Minor Latin Poets
, volume 2. Lactantius’
Deaths of the Persecutors
is translated in the edition of J. L. Creed (Oxford, 1984), and the Latin panegyrics are translated by Barbara Saylor Rodgers and C. E. V. Nixon,
In Praise of Later Roman Emperors
(Berkeley, 1995). Orosius’
Seven Books against the Pagans
is available in a Fathers of the Church translation by R. Deferrari (Washington, DC, 1964). Jordanes deserves to be read in full, if only to demonstrate how far-fetched the narrative that surrounds his migration stories really is, and the translation of C. C. Mierow (Princeton, 1915) is sound if slightly archaic.

Among the Greek sources, Zosimus’
New History
can be read in the translation of R. Ridley (Canberra, 1982). The fragments of Eunapius and Olympiodorus are readily available in R. Blockley,
The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of Late Antiquity
, volume 2 (Liverpool, 1983), with facing Greek text. The emperor Julian’s works are translated in a three-volume Loeb edition; Basil of Caesarea’s letters are in a four-volume Loeb. Several relevant Themistian orations are translated in Peter Heather and David Moncur,
Philosophy, Politics and Empire in the Fourth Century: Select Orations of Themistius
(Liverpool, 2001). Substantial parts of Libanius’ corpus are now available between four Loeb volumes and two volumes in the Liverpool series: A. F. Norman,
Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius
(2001) and Scott Bradbury,
Select Letters of Libanius
(2004). Gregory Thaumaturgus, the documents bearing on Ulfila, the
Passio Sabae
, and the other Gothic martyrologies are all translated in an excellent collection by Peter Heather and John Matthews,
The Goths in the Fourth Century
(Liverpool, 1991). The major Greek church historians, unfortunately, are not well served in English translation: Socrates and Sozomen are available in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (second series, vol. 2), but the translations were made from old and inaccurate editions, as was the version of Philostorgius in Bohn’s Library (London, 1855).

Among the secondary literature, Peter Heather’s
Goths and Romans, 332–489
(Oxford, 1991) is the best treatment of its subject available in any language, even though my interpretation of motive and causation in Gothic history differs substantially from his. Unfortunately, Heather’s more recent works,
The Goths
(Oxford, 1996) and
The Fall of the Roman Empire
(Oxford, 2005), restate the same arguments as the first book and shear them of all their nuance, advocating instead a neo-Romantic vision of mass migrations of free Germanic peoples. Heather’s
idée fixe
– that the Huns were responsible for the fall of the Roman empire and the end of the ancient world – is simple, elegant, and wrong. The literature on ethnogenesis is vast, but Herwig Wolfram’s
History of the Goths
(1979; English trans., Berkeley, 1988) is the most widely available. Its mixture of outlandish philological speculation, faulty documentation, and oracular pronouncement remains very influential. Less bizarre, if wholly derivative, accounts of ethnogenesis are available in works by Wolfram’s Anglophone apostles: see especially Patrick Geary’s contribution to
Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Post-Classical World
, edited by Peter Brown, G. W. Bowersock and Oleg Grabar. Far better are the many works of Walter Pohl, the best of which are not available in English; however, see his contributions to the Transformation of the Roman World series (in
Strategies of Distinction
, 1998;
Kingdoms of the Empire
, 1998;
Regna and Gentes
, 2003). Among older literature in English, the work of E. A. Thompson must have pride of place. His
History of Attila and the Huns
(Oxford, 1948),
Early Germans
(Oxford, 1965),
Visigoths
in the Time of Ulfila
(Oxford, 1966), and
Goths in Spain
(Oxford, 1969) were all pioneering, even if their mixture of rigorous empiricism and Marxist dogma reads oddly today. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill’s ‘Gothia and Romania’, reprinted in
The Long-Haired Kings
(Oxford, 1962), also broke new ground in its day.

Much of the most important work on the Goths was done in more general studies of the later Roman empire. J. B. Bury’s
Later Roman Empire
(London, 1923) can still be read with great profit and A. H. M. Jones’ massive
Later Roman Empire, 284–602
(Oxford, 1964) remains the basic work of reference. Several useful articles appear in the new volumes 13 and 14 of the revised
Cambridge Ancient History
. The only good introduction to the third century in English is David S. Potter,
The Roman Empire at Bay,
AD
180–395
(London, 2004), though its treatment of the fourth century is less reliable. For the tetrarchy, Stephen Williams’
Diocletian and the Roman Recovery
(London, 1985) is generally sound, but the key text is T. D. Barnes’
Constantine and Eusebius
(Cambridge, MA, 1981). Hugh Elton’s
Warfare in Roman Europe
(Oxford, 1996) is useful on the Roman approach to fighting barbarians. For the reign of Constantius, T. D. Barnes’ complex and difficult
Athanasius and Constantius
(Cambridge, MA, 1993) provides the only reliable narrative in English. For Valens, we now have Noel Lenski’s
Failure of Empire
(Berkeley, 2002); while it is perhaps too kind to Valens, its approach to Gothic history betters Heather on such points as Gothic conversion. Simon MacDowall,
Adrianople
AD 378
(New York, 2001) is an excellent, if speculative, reconstruction of the battle aimed at the hobbyist audience. No reliable modern study of Theodosius has been published in English.

One will get considerably more out of the ancient sources after having read a few studies of them. The literature on Ammianus, in English and every other language, is vast. John Matthews,
The Roman Empire of Ammianus
(London, 1989) and T. D. Barnes,
Ammianus and the Representation of Historical Reality
(Ithaca, 1998) are essential. On Claudian, Alan Cameron’s
Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius
(Oxford, 1970) is unsurpassed. Zosimus has yet to attract the English study he deserves, but one can consult the introduction and
commentary to the five-volume French edition by François Paschoud (1979–1993). The literature on Jordanes is large and partisan, for the reasons discussed at length in chapter three, and modern Germanist fantasy is regularly retailed as fact. Two responsible alternatives are Brian Croke, ‘Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes’,
Classical Philology
82 (1987): 117–34; and Walter Goffart, ‘Jordanes’ Getica and the disputed authenticity of Gothic origins from Scandinavia’,
Speculum
80 (2005): 379–98. For literary reactions to Adrianople, the basic study is Noel Lenski, ‘
Initium mali romano imperio
: contemporary reactions to the battle of Adrianople’,
Transactions of the American Philological Association
127 (1997): 129–68. Almost nothing in English exists on the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture apart from summaries in Heather and Matthews,
Goths in the Fourth Century
, and Heather,
Goths
. Both of these are broadly accurate treatments of the evidence as it was known in the later 1980s, but lack theoretical rigour in relating archaeological and historical evidence.