Valens Takes In the Fleeing Goths

Not long after the barbarians had made a friendly alliance among themselves, they were defeated again, this time by other barbarians, their neighbors, called the Huns. Driven out of their own country, they fled into Roman territory, offering to be subject to the emperor and to carry out whatever he commanded. When Valens learned of this, without the least foreboding of the consequences, he ordered that the suppliants be received with kindness, showing himself compassionate in this one instance alone. So he assigned them certain parts of Thrace to live in, and thought himself especially fortunate in the matter. For he reckoned that from then on he would have a ready and well-equipped army against all attackers, and he hoped the barbarians would be an even more formidable guard for the frontiers of the empire than the Romans themselves. For this reason he afterward neglected to fill up his army with Roman recruits. Despising the veterans who had fought bravely and defeated his enemies in earlier wars, he set a money value on the recruits that the people of the provinces had been accustomed to supply, village by village. He ordered the collectors of his taxes to demand eighty pieces of gold for every soldier, although he had never before lightened the public burdens. This change was afterward the beginning of many disasters for the Roman empire. [a]