Treaty of 382: Visigoths Settle as Foederati
Theodosius I concluded a treaty with the Goths on 3 October 382, four years after Adrianople, on terms Rome had never granted anyone. He had spent those years unable to beat them. The eastern field army had been destroyed with Valens, replacements were raised with difficulty, and a campaign in 380 went badly enough that Theodosius withdrew to Constantinople and changed his approach entirely. The settlement gave the Goths land in Thrace and Lower Moesia, inside the empire, as federates. What made it unprecedented was that they kept their own leaders, their own law and their own tribal organisation, and served as allied contingents under their own commanders rather than being distributed through the regular units. They were exempt from taxation and received an annual subsidy, and they were not subject to the ordinary conscription. Previous barbarian settlements had broken groups up and absorbed them; this one preserved an autonomous people inside the frontier, which some contemporaries said plainly was the surrender of sovereignty over a piece of the empire. The panegyrics of the period work hard to present it as a victory. Its practical effect was to supply the army with excellent troops cheaply, and Theodosius used them at the Frigidus in 394 against a western usurper, where a Gothic contingent took heavy losses in the first day's fighting. Alaric commanded there, concluded that the Goths were being spent rather than employed, and revolted the following year when Theodosius died. He sacked Rome in 410. The treaty is where historians who argue that Rome fell by accommodation rather than by conquest begin.
- Year: 382 CE
- Category: Political
