Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 268 - The Battle of Adrianople

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Bad customs officers cause an uprising so bad it contributes to the fall of rome. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Alessandro Barbero. The Day of the Barbarians. Peter Heather. The Fall of the Roman Empire. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/the-gothic-wars-battle-of-adrianople/ https://www.historynet.com/adrianople-last-great-battle-of-antiquity/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/roman-disaster-at-adrianople/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use

that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe and with me about 4,000 miles to the left is Tom. What up, buddy? Oh, you get intro music and I don't? This is bullshit. It's Tom time. I got control of the soundboard.

It's a Tom episode. This goes out to the Tom heads. It's all good. This goes out to every Tom except one's all good this goes out to every tom except one you know who you are yeah you know who you are i just hope every time listening takes that personally because i don't know any other ones other than you i mean to be fair two of my cousins who are both a year younger than me are called tom both their fathers are called tom and my grandfather's called tom so not too too many Toms. Are you junior, senior

or first, second, third, fourth or whatever? Third. Ah. If you were British and inbred, you'd be a king of some kind. And the best part is that my initials also spell my name. So it's like Thomas O'Mahony, T-O-M. It's Toms all the way down.

Yeah, layers of Tom. Look, this is a audio medium so nobody listening can hear can see what i'm seeing right now but tom is smoking a vape pen which is collapsed in the arms of a adjustable wrench yeah see like the problem i have when i'm in the studio i'm fine i'm recording from home today so if you hear the sounds of a bin collection going on, it's bin day in my area of London. But I always need something to fidget with when I'm sitting at home. So I have my vape, and then I saw that I had a spanner on the table,

and I was like, I wonder if I could tighten the spanner around the vape, and now I'm just holding it like a roach clip. The old vape wrench. And I think it's funny that you called that a spanner um this is the schism called this is a schism on the podcast that we'll simply never be able to heal the spanner wrench schism yeah the spanner wrench civil war of uh 2023 yeah uh no fucking so i got my shin absolutely blasted yesterday with a tattoo and the previous week uh i had been to a stacked bill hardcore uh tour package on thursday night if i remember correctly

this is specifically the one you're gonna you said you're to stay out of the pit yeah and did you? no it was so bad that so like it was fine I had a couple of drinks I was going hard and then like the next day I was really sore the next day like my hips were really sore as well I had like a bruise on my face all this shit

I swear working with Nate and I has made you age faster but uh went to go take a shower and uh my girlfriend was like what the fuck is wrong with your back and i'm like what and i looked in the mirror it's just like a massive bruise on my back where someone kicked me every time you go to a punk show or a hardcore show it's like every like early 20s woo woo sorority girl wondering where all the bruises came from after a night out but like it's so funny because a lot of people who are into hardcore and like especially like people who are maybe around my age or older who've been into it for a good while um there's like a schism going on because like hardcore is kind of blown up on tiktok and like a lot of people have come into the scene through tiktok and like a handful of bands getting really

popular and all like all these kids you know they're at the show and i'm like yeah you like i was talking to like a couple of people at the gig like i didn't know any of them just you know you start chatting and like a couple of them were talking about that and i was like yeah well i didn't see you in the pit and they were in the pit so like you know who oh you're like too you're too old and your bones hurt and i'm like how about you get over it and get in the pit every time you get into a pit and get your ass kicked like me and nate wake up the next morning and our backs hurt like psychically where else can you punch a 21 year old in the face legally i mean until you added legally i was going to say any bar in the world but you know yeah let's see what we're going

to do is uh we're going to do a hard pivot on this show into being involved in celebrity boxing so joe is going to train to box it's going to be me versus nate we're going to do like white collar boxing we're going to do chess boxing do you know what chess boxing is yes i do um i i vote for doing x-arm are you familiar with that okay okay so um x-arm was this very stupid mma i guess it's mma um production put on by one of the original owners of UFC after he got bought out by Zufa Entertainment. And what it is, you're both chained to a table. Yes. And you have to arm wrestle while simultaneously punching each other in the face. Oh, no, that is incredible. It's the dumbest sport ever conceived by man because every person

there immediately realized, why am I going to waste my time arm wrestling if I can just punch this guy in the face so every single X arm competition which I believe there was only a few ends with dudes being taped together and just raining single arm blows into each other's

grill it is it's almost as dumb as when Dana White started that slap fight competition which of course he promoted by beating his wife um yeah on camera i'm watching i'm watching x farm videos right now um sorry there's a neurofen ad before it uh feels very targeted but yeah it's like you know the way the russians have like tried to make these different versions of you know okay you're in a phone box and you have to fight or like like russian slap fighting is like really really popular yeah that's what he was trying to

rip off when he came up with the the slap fight thing the only cool russian sport that is so goddamn russian is like the the the night MMA where they're in full suit of armor and just giving each other irreparable fucking brain damage. Oh, I'm watching XR. Jesus! Yeah, there's a dude who's just pulling him forward and hitting him inside the head. If you want to watch the same video,

you need to type in, this might be the dumbest, most entertaining sport of all time. That's right. XR championship. Now, speaking of dumb sports sports not a good segue uh wait let me try again speaking of idiots giving each other brain damage um that's just about us as as all all of the hosts mcfoley compete in this no fucking way mcfoley competed to that there's a dude who's like that looks suspicious well it's mcfoley no he's just this boxing coach he looks like mcfoley does he have two ears it just it

just a disheveled drunken man who would compete in something like that all kind of look like mcfoley i mean look before we can we talk about just how insanely bitter mcfoley is i love mcfoley he's he's like one of the few guys that come out of like early 90s wrestling and not have a sex crime charge levied against him yeah someone's gonna write it and correct me on that i'm gonna fucking hate it um but like it's it's so interesting like he is he's one of the few people who like came out of that era and like talks very honestly about... He wrote several books while he was still competing.

Yeah. There was... I can't remember what the first one is called, but then he wrote the second one. It was like Foley is Good, because at the time there was a crowd chant that said Foley is God. And he was kind of uncomfortable with that.

But yeah, he spoke very frankly about the catastrophic injuries he was kind of uncomfortable with that um but yeah he spoke very frankly about the catastrophic injuries he was facing um like when he fell off the cell when the rock handcuffed him and gave him like 12 unprotected headshots with a chair um which was more than they originally discussed because because uh the rock is a fucking asshole yeah like i i get intense and it was in front of mcfoley's entire family yeah yeah i i have always got intensely bad vibes off the rock yeah i mean great entertainer garbage person that was you know uh buoyed by strong family connections with vince mcmahon and and like his dad who was also a massive dick for other reasons i'm not going to go into but like yeah all around

bad guy um makes terrible movies these days so he's got that going for him yeah what we what we should do is this halloween do a combined uh between me, you, and Nate, where we each go as either Mankind, Cactus Jack, or just Mick Foley. I feel like I can pull off Mick Foley better than either of you. Can we cut off part of your ear? I mean, I believe... It's not like you use them. I can't hear anyway. I believe in method acting, so I'll have no choice.

Okay. And if the Patreon gets to, I don't know, let's say 6,000 supporters, I will throw Tom off of a hell in the cell. I mean, look at... I will absolutely murder Tom for 6,000 supporters.

If we... And also, since this is going on the free feed, we have recorded an incredible episode about the time Muammar Gaddafi tried to sell a SAM missile to a Chicago street gang. And in that episode,

which is Patreon exclusive, sign up to Patreon, I found out that there is a plethora of Muammar Gadfi fanfic the less the less we visit that the better and that's just on ao3 so if we get to 5500 i will read the mulmar gaddafi joseph stalin and leon trotsky love triangle fanfic and we will critique it on the show on the Patreon I'm going to throw myself off hell in the cell now Tom I have

to ask you a question what if a shitty customs officer contributed to the downfall of an empire I mean that would just happen if they tried to stop me bringing like 800 cigarettes into the UK but yeah that's either Tom entering the uk with an with an

albanian grandfather's amount of nicotine or frontex i'm not entirely sure which one but uh the short answer is no i don't know what would happen uh we're gonna be talking about the battle of adrian opal in 378 but of course before we there, because we haven't taken long enough to get there already, we have to talk about the background as to why such a dumb catastrophic event even took place. So of course, this brings us to the Huns. Now, I'm not going to go into the Huns a whole lot here. We don't think we've ever actually talked about the Huns on the show before. That'll change at some point. Forgive me. So there are nomadic people with various possible origin stories. And to make a long story short, they're vaguely considered Eurasian in nature.

They first appeared to Roman sources. They're just like you. That's right. I even have a horse in my living room, just to complete the look. They first appeared to Roman sources around 370 and they crossed the Volga River rapidly moving westward crashing into the various tribes that made up Europe at the time

and to make things a lot simpler rather than going into all the details of the various different tribes they're vaguely considered goths and make all the jokes you want about that what happens what happens if horsemen invaded a hot topic horsemen just like

listening to uh what's the fucking oh fuck i listen to like merciful not merciful fate fuck there's sisters of mercy gerard way just catches this fucking spear to the chest defending the guyliner section section yeah see our uh our polls when you mentioned goth are completely different you're thinking of like 2006 whereas i'm thinking of like 1986 no i'm thinking of uh the commercial goths uh who were i don't want to know if i'm not sure if i'd consider them more or less depressed than 80s goths i'm not that old i don't know the fragmented gothic tribes didn't have a lot of options when it came to fighting them and i i'm sorry i just keep thinking

all the various gothic tribes we could think of here you got like the the mid-2000s goths the 80s goths the emos are trying to sign like a peace accord in the middle um you have the like 90s like industrial goths that are listening to Fear Factory and Machine Head. Nine Inch Nails. Nine Inch Nails. Yeah. All of them being invaded by dudes on horseback. The submission to the Huns was, in general, a pretty bad time.

Hundreds of thousands of gothic people, rather than bend the knee to the Huns, began a mass migration towards the Danube River, seeking the protection under the loving embrace of the Eastern Roman Empire. Now, as weird as that sounds, Rome, and then later its fragmented imperial self, was actually kind of good at absorbing and integrating outsiders into Roman society. Land, food, and other things to be given in order to resettle them within the borders of Rome, specifically the frontier borders of Rome. Of course, there was a good reason for this on the part of Rome rather than some kind of benevolent love for immigration.

Rather, these so-called barbarian newcomers would be resettled in the border regions and allowed to live their lives. In doing so, they act as a kind of buffer between Rome and any possible outside threat because they'd have to plow through all the Germans who had moved in. threat because they'd have to plow through all the germans who had moved in um so you know and the people that moved in would benefit from roman trade and protection not have to worry about you know people like the huns over the generation there is a cultural exchange as well goths and other people became heavily romanized which of course the romans wanted and the romans absorbed them into the military and society though this absorption and assimilation kind of sort of started to fail as the empire fractured in half goths kept their identity and became important parts of the roman military hierarchy and this

system became the backbone of the continued survival of the empires as time went on now i'm going to say this up front there's a very very racist theory and the so-called fall of rome called the barbarization of rome which is very very barbarians are at the wall yes yes yes the idea is that so many of these barbarians moved in so you know quote unquote barbarians that it diluted roman society um and like so it became so full of outsiders that rome inevitably would collapse under this failed assimilation that is i don't not only untrue it's a gross oversimplification of the failure of something as large as the roman empire i'm not going to go super far into it it's just a really popular theory um and unfortunately it's popular even by people who don't recognize how insanely

racist it is and how it's championed by the worst people on earth for very very specific reasons i was gonna say i'm sure people with a marble statue profile pictures on twitter love this theory 100 i mean like to be fair it's it's like's like that tweet that I sent you earlier on that was like, oh, I love the Christianity destroyed the West variant of fascism. one way or another and it ignores the generations long decline of the roman empire empire and then empires as well as imperial mismanagement corruption plagues economic collapse all these things that happen because old cities caught catching on fire it does tend to happen yeah it's it's very stupid now various roman emperors never had much of a problem with the system as they knew it worked for them and kept them in power, as well as kept things about as peaceful as they would ever be on the Roman frontier. Though things began to change as the Huns drove more and more people towards the borders of Rome.

By the summer of 376, hundreds of thousands of Goths appeared on the Danube. I don't know. Think of a music festival. We're going to Rock'em Ring. We're going to see Pentagram. It's like

early 2000s Warped Tour. 99% emo bands stealing goth aesthetic. But all on the border of the Danube. 99% of them don't know how to talk to a woman over the age of 18 i mean listen to the lyrics of course they don't um roman imperial border officials were taken aback by the massive number of people no there's never been this many people that have

shown up at once being like yo let us in however one person wasn't shocked or like that originally the the imperial border officials were like get the fuck out of here we don't know what to do with all you people one person that wasn't shocked by all this or taken aback or rejecting it was eastern roman emperor valens he had come into power a little more than a decade before valens was at least at this stage of the eastern empire a decent emperor but people did not fucking like him. He was short, fat, bow-legged and hated his own subjects. He was vindictive and paranoid.

And he would be the namesake of a song... Well, millennium later when they asked, like, who kills liberty? Valens? I'll have to take your word for it. Someone will get that joke. If you get that joke, tweet out the show. Whenever you and Nate start talking about music, I just have to lean back in my chair

because you guys are pretty much talking in a foreign language to me. Now, Valens wasn't actually in Constantinople at the time. Rather, he was out with his army far away in Roman Armenia, fighting another war against the Parthians, where it finally got to him, but the hundreds of thousands of refugees at his gate. One of the leaders of the Gothic migration, Fritigern, made his way to Valens and pled his people's case. He told Valens that in exchange for protection, land, and food, his men would offer military services to Rome and Fritigern to further underline his, you know, loyalty, if you want to call it that, to Valens specifically. He converted to Valens' particular brand of Christianity, Arianism.

No, not that kind of Arianism. Now, this kind of Arianism holds the idea that Jesus, the son of God, was was not a man but rather a timeless metaphysical being that always existed and always will you know okay so i have some very interesting thoughts on this because i have been reading 14th century gnostic christian monk theology for the past like two weeks i'm not gonna ask why but please go on it's just you know what honestly there's a dude on tiktok who reviews books and i watch his videos and he reviewed this uh collection of writing called um uh the cloud of unknowing um it's written by an anonymous christian monk in like the 14th century goes against the idea of the physical personification of christ or physical personification of god and essentially works with the uh

the idea of this school of thought called the via negativa which means that like god exists outside of how we can perceive god as either a being but also as an idea sure i mean like i'm not i'm not super well read about theology um and our arianism was not the majority uh not the majority belief of christ within Rome at the time. A lot of people believe it to be heresy. And I believe the next Emperor Theodosius would make it officially heresy for a while. So the idea that Fritigern would convert to Valens' particular brand of Christianity impressed him because Valens is an idiot. And he immediately agreed to send word back to Rome that not only to let in all of these people,

but to feed, house, and clothe them, as well as to use the Roman Navy to taxi them across the Danube River. Because it's summer. Spring has just sprung. The river is bursting with water it's a dangerous crossing to make yeah and it's hard to swim in jinkos and like all that leather all of the chains attached to their pants are really weighing them down it's just that video of the cyber goth dancing under the bridge, except they're trying to swim across a river. Someone's going to make that video, and it's grim.

Now, obviously, it's the 378 or whatever. It takes a long time for word to get from Eurasia back across the Balkans into the Danube. So months had passed. And by the time Fritigern had shown back up, like, good news, everybody, all of the Goths had already eaten the food that they brought with them, and they were starving to death on the other bank of the Danube,

as well as the Huns had continued their advance. So panic began to spread, like, fuck, we're going to get caught against this river, or, you know, the Hun huns we have no fucking food so soon people began to slap together rafts out of whatever they had as well as simply saying fuck it and trying to like michael phelps their way across the danube now a lot of these boats fell apart people drowned and by the time the roman navy actually showed up the river was a track traffic jam of homemade rafts and dead bodies. Starving and worried about being murdered by the Huns, nobody could blame them for not waiting for the Romans.

Which, at this point, I will say was not the Romans' fault. The Roman Navy wasn't exactly prepared for this kind of thing, let alone the sheer number of people they were tasked with helping. And I should point out, this is the last time I'm going to give the Romans the benefit of the doubt during this episode. Oh, God. Or ever, for that matter. Despite Valen's best intentions, the people he put in charge of this operation ended up being just about the worst people on earth for the job. Now, that was Lupinicus, the local governor, and Maximus, the commander of the local troop station on the frontier. Given orders to supply the Goths while a settlement was prepared

for them in Thrace, they decided to exploit the Gothic people so fucking hard it would lead to a war. Now, at this point, the Goths were starving. Rather than simply giving them food, which is what Emperor Valens told them to do, they instead demanded the Goths trade for the food being offered, giving them already rotten food in exchange for their worldly possessions that they had carried on their back. Now, it did not take long to burn through anything the Romans considered of worth. Then they began to demand one slave for one pound of bread. Now, now that sounds pretty grim and it is but the goths also kept slaves so at first this is kind of a lateral transfer of slaves

okay until the slaves ran out oh no because what do you do when the slaves run out welp bad news so one pound of bread for one human being and there's hundreds of thousands of people out there means they purposefully were still starving them so when the slaves ran out the romans offered them dogs to eat in exchange for their own fucking children i mean you can't eat your own children you could i mean but most people were pretty offended at the idea that they were going to trade dogs for food um in exchange it's a dog it's a dog for it's a child for dog food program yeah uh something that the un will quickly put into place somewhere i wouldn't be surprised if they're doing it in libya already yeah um so you know rather than submit their own children to Roman slavery in exchange for some shitty dog meat, they had finally had enough.

Fritiger knew these guys were fucking with them, having spoken personally with Emperor Valens and questioned, why the fuck were you doing this to us? You know, so finally they simply broke out of the camp that the officials had set up for him. Now, this is not a rebellion. This is not a a revolt they didn't kill anybody on the way out they simply i mean they they just so vastly outnumbered the romans but yeah i'm like we're fucking leaving and they march south to marcian opal now lupinicus and maximus couldn't do anything to stop this massive number of people and they couldn't exactly send out word for reinforcements either because they would have to admit we kind of told the emperor to go

fuck himself and try to steal these people's kids yeah we were just we got a bit greedy you know like it got a little bit out of hand Terry you know Terry from like that you know battalion he was like well why don't we trade their kids we got all these dogs here also it makes me wonder how many dogs the romans have on standby for this i mean look at you know

dog it's a solid currency everyone wants dogs you know at a pinch you could eat a dog i personally wouldn't eat a dog but i mean back then people had no qualms about that for sure but like they couldn't have had at this point they'd already been rat fucking them for bread and slaves and then they were going to try to steal their own kids in exchange for scraps of dog meat like that's a low even

for Romans like I remember when I was growing up my mother would make these like meatballs and mashed potatoes except the meatballs came out of a tin and looked like dog food and i remember uh like in my like family whatsapp group my brother put a picture in all just in the supermarket like the tin the design of the tin hadn't changed at all it's still the same tins yeah it's working the back catalog. I am tempted to actually buy a tin of it

and eat it now as an adult and see if they are as okay as I remember. You absolutely should. You realize, wow, these are terrible. If you want to force me and Joe to eat horrible food, send us MREs.

You're going to DHL me a can of meatballs from a fucking supermarket. Our poor person food that was almost certainly dog food is called Hamburger Helper. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was so fucking bad, man.

But isn't... So, I had this conversation with Nate in the studio a while ago. I thought Hamburger Helper was like the actual meat it's just the seasoning it's just mincemeat yeah it's it's like the food like the ground meat that falls off the bottom of whatever it is they send to prisons that says like not for human consumption and then they put a seasoning packet and noodles with the expectation you're almost certainly going to cover it in government cheese to cover up the taste which is exactly what we did i mean like that doesn't sound

too bad it wasn't good um i think it's the reason now that whenever i see i mean whenever i go back i've never seen a box of shit anywhere else other than the united states but whenever i go back to the u.s and i see it on a store shelf i like speed up my walking uh to get away from it like it's like the hand is gonna reach out and pull me back in hamburger helper induced ptsd that's right add it to the other kinds of induced ptsd um so after the uh the goths broke out of containment um the lupinicus and Maximus came up with a plan that blew up in their faces so goddamn hard

it would contribute to the fall of Rome itself. As the Goths moved south, the Romans invited the Gothic leadership to a feast at the governor's palace. The idea was to get them drunk, full, and swimming in hookers

until they were so tired they could easily be murdered. In order to calm the Gothic leadership down from what was very obviously a plot against their lives, they didn't disarm them in hookers until they were so tired they could easily be murdered in order to calm the gothic leadership down from what was a very obviously a plot against their lives they didn't disarm them and even allowed them to bring bodyguards as they came into the palace now this plan probably would have worked but the entire thing was ruined by angry roman civilians you see hundreds of thousands of goths had been hanging around the town for weeks, which...

Smoking cigarettes, listening to Korn, you know. Everything smells like patchouli and cloves. Get the fuck out of here! Now, they were living off the land, and by living off the land, I mean stealing from local farms. And this obviously pissed off local civilians who were living a life of subsistence farming and so when they saw the goths in town in this case fritigern's body guards they rioted and it went to what started like curses and throwing stones quickly escalated to them going back home and getting farm implements to use as weapons and attack them now see that we

know what side the romans are on in the the cure versus morrissey beef you can assure lupinicus and maximus are fully on the side of morrissey in the situation and future morrissey have you ever seen that quote like so robert smith from the cure notoriously fucking hates morrissey have you ever uh seen that quote like so robert smith from the cure notoriously fucking hates morrissey and just thinks he's a massive bitch i mean he's not wrong like you know but uh robert smith obviously is like a goth in his 60s like has like weird hair still wears makeup and everything but there's an incredible quote from robert smith about one time he ran into marcy at a party and he like went up and like you know very friendly punched him in the arm and that marcy started to cry do you think he accidentally gave him a vaccine now now the the gothic leadership inside the palace heard what was going on inside, as did the Romans.

So the Romans panicked and sprung their trap early before everybody was adequately drunk and tired from weird Roman group sex. So a battle broke out inside as well as outside. Fritigern decided, I have to get the fuck away from here or we're all going to die, stole a horse and rode off into the sunset. At this point, all hell was breaking loose and the massive population of Goths parked outside fully knew that the Romans had once again rat fucked them. This was the final straw and now it was time for them to resort to the old ultraviolence. They killed the Romans posted to keep watch over them, looted their weapon stores and made for the countryside, pillaging and burning everything and everyone in their way. Lupinicus, trying one last thing to end this rebellion before he had to tell his boss how badly he fucked up, sent what little forces he had out to fight them,

which are almost entirely wiped out, though Lupinicus himself, of course, managed to escape, leaving everybody else to their fate. Now, as they destroy the one frontier army in the area, this left the Roman Balkans wide open for looting,

burning, and killing, which, you know... I... I... So, for everyone listening at home, I know something bad, really bad is about to happen because Joe always looks fucking directly into the camera and not the script i have i have to give you the script eyes um and most importantly they're freeing slaves that were

captured by the romans many of whom were goth themselves, and they then joined their cause. Then, several Roman army units, also made up of Goths, said fuck the Romans and joined their people. Now, Valens had finally gotten word what was happening and deployed some of his armies back towards the growing problem under the command of Trajan and Profuturus, which sounds like a sick

rap name, and began asking the Western Roman Emperor Gratian, who was his nephew nephew for help now great we got a large we got a large nephew involved gratian it was like i believe it is like 20 years old uh and he did send help however he sent the worst troops he had because he was dealing with his own shit and as soon as those worst troops were sent out they immediately said you know what sucks being in the military and then they deserted he's just like a 20 year old

like roman frap bro he's like so dude I love to send troops to you but like Amber is being like such a bitch what's kind of ironic is compared to Valens Gratian is remembered much more fondly.

Yeah. And Trajan was at least mostly competent in his job and figured, you know, it's easier than actually fighting people, letting nature do the job for us. So he wanted to block the Goths in the Balkan mountains and wait for the environment to take its course you know starving bad weather things like that however the goths simply went around him meanwhile the goths knew that the roman war plans were coming for them and decided to wait they built what was called a corago or

a field fort made from wagons um then they oh what was on the wagons joe what was on the wagons, Joe? What was on the wagons, Joe? Manifest. It's time for Manifest. Slaves and stolen Roman goods, probably. And they sent out a call throughout the countryside for any non-Romans to come and help them. Soon the ranks swelled with thousands of more warriors and the Roman army, numbering about 12,000,

found them. Now, we don't know exactly how many Goths there were, but it's safe to assume they outnumbered the Romans at least two to one. Then something weird happened. The two sides marched towards one another in a pretty uniform shield wall movement. This is because, like we had already pointed out, the Goths had become an integral part of the Roman army. They used the same tactics. However, the cultural exchange was probably not what you thought it would be. These are not the Roman legions that people picture when they think of Rome in films and video games.

The short sword, the segmented armor, the large rectangle shields, the pelium throwing sphere, those all vanished a long goddamn time ago. Instead, they adopted Germanic weapons and armor on foot while absorbing cavalry traditions from Persians, Parthians, and Armenians. This is for a lot of different reasons, but probably not a deeper one than this is a much cheaper army to field. Those early armies had pensions, salaries, and most importantly, the state was expected to issue out all of that equipment, which was expensive and hard to make. So after several upheavals, plagues, and military setbacks, the Roman tax base had shrank quite a bit to the point that funding those professional armies with sick pensions and all that just wasn't realistic anymore. And not to mention, over time, the privileges that you were afforded for being a Roman legionnaire began to fade.

So there wasn't people that were like, oh, I'm going to go join the Roman army, get a plot of land, sick pension, and write out my time growing wine or whatever. Those days were long past. Yeah, you're going to die in the dirt. Yep. They relied a lot on conscription, which is never a good sign for a functioning state security apparatus.

So anyway, right before the two sides are about to slam into one another, they stopped about a few meters away and then began screaming war cries at one another for a few minutes. Ironically, the war cry that the Romans were screaming was Germanic in origin because there's so many goths in the ranks they're just doing like a yemenese agusa like they're they're gonna stop and do the haka war dance in the middle um and then finally the romans charged pretty much nothing came from this the two armies slammed into one another around dawn fight fought each other until dusk and pulled back back with neither side winning. Then the Romans should have break the Gothic wagon forts, failed, and marched away, having accomplished pretty much nothing. Vance fired Trajan and replaced him with a guy named Sebastian, who you can best envision in your head as a large crab. That's right.

Once again, everything becomes crab sebastian was actually pretty good at his job at least compared to trajan and he managed to march around the goths splitting them in half and trapping a portion of them in the balkan mountains like trajan originally intended where they began to go hungry fritigern then decided he would dip into a little bit of the universal fuck that guy theory that we love so much on this show. He sent messengers over to the Huns and told them, hey, if you come over here and help us, we can both get really goddamn rich off Roman loot. So they agreed. They stormed in, broke the Roman army around the Balkan mountains, and soon they all united once again, free to go looting and burning across the countryside as roman forces now badly outnumbered

decided to pull their forces back towards towns and cities to protect them and leave everything else to be put to the sword just like a dude posting on this equivalent of like their ig doing like a money spread with loads of roman gold except it's all ones. They're still wearing a Vesu jeans, though. By 378, Valens finally made his way back home, as his military commanders told him the only way to deal with the Goths was a joint eastern and western military effort. When Valens got back, he was greeted with riots, as people blamed him for not only everything that was happening, but also failing to protect and defend them. Constantinople was going so crazy with riots that he had to move to a city 12 miles away just to be sure someone wouldn't try to assassinate him. At this point, Valens, already an angry and paranoid man, was getting more and more pissed off, especially because he'd have to once again ask his nephew Gratian for help.

In the meantime, he reformed his army and gave everybody a sweet raise to stave off any of that dissent from the capital, making it into the ranks. Then he deployed a distraction force to hit Gothic allied raiding parties and hit and run attacks to try to... He didn't have the means to meet them in open battle quite yet,

and he figured this was a way to try to check them the best they could. Now, this actually worked over the course of the next several months, and a lot of these raiding parties actually did get wiped out. And it was just long enough for Gratian to finally come sailing down the Danube with his army, a real one, not made out of scrubs this time. Valens marched with his army to meet Gratian at the city of Adrianople. While this was happening, Fritigern saw the writing on the wall. These two Roman armies were about to join forces and bring the hammer down on him.

So he consolidated his forces, which had broken off into different raiding parties because despite him generally being the leader, the Gothic force was made up of dozens of different tribes and they really didn't have any unifying anything between them other than the Romans are coming to stab us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people went off to do their own thing and he managed to get them

all back under the control and took over a town about 16 miles away from Adrianople which would lay in position between Valens and Gratian if they both got to Adrianople and then wanted to go back to Constantinople which is where their supplies would

come from. So they're like, oh God, they're going to cut us off. Valens got to Adrianople first, and while he was waiting for his nephew to show up, he got word that the Goths had ran into Gratian's force and delayed him. Then he heard the Goths had moved in just south of him, believing him to be cut off from Constantinople. Valens freaked out about the concept of like a

siege forming and Adrianople despite the fact that the Goths had no siege engines which is why they've been leaving the cities alone and the generals around him told him that he needed to strike fast and now oh and don't worry our scouts say

the Goths only have about 10,000 men which was accurate and about half the size of the Roman army. Then some weird shit happened. An Arian priest, again, not that kind of Arian, We're not talking about the Vril or the Bavaroman. insisted that he was an official emissary sent from Fritigern and arrived at Valens' office. official emissary sent from Fritigern and arrived at Valens' office. He told the emperor that Fritigern would lay down his weapons if the Romans reinstituted the original deal that led to this whole thing. Give us land in Thrace, food, whatever, we'll give you military service,

we'll forget any of this happened. He brought another warning. Many of the Gothic warriors saw laying their weapons down without doing anything as shameful, but they still wanted to avoid a battle. So a show of force, just bringing the Roman army to within eyesight would be enough to state their honor demands. And they would then drop their weapons and go along with the plan. This is perfect for Valens. Gratian was unlike him in every way. His people liked him. He was popular. He was known for a series of military successes. Valens had none of that. And the last thing he wanted to do

was share the glory of the Gothic surrender with his young nephew. So, with the priest's word as an assurance, he led his army out of Adrianople on August 9th, 378, without telling Gratian what he was doing whatsoever. Ah, for fuck's sake, you just said a date. Also, we have no idea who this priest was. It was Rob Halford.

There's a very good chance that it was a trap sent by Fritigern, but we honestly don't know. Ooh, I am totally on your side. You have to trust me, I'm wearing these fancy robes. Don't trust the mechanicum. The Romans took a single road and a long winding column in the middle of a brutally hot day and they found several

of the Goth's signature wagon forts. At this point, the Roman army had been marching for miles and hours, going thirsty as the temperature reached nearly 100 degrees and soldiers became exhausted simply by existing in layers of chain mail and remember

they didn't valence wasn't expecting a battle so he brought nothing with him like you guys don't need water we're just gonna go they're gonna surrender and all this is gonna be over problem solved yeah now as soon as he saw the wagon forts, he ordered his army to get in a battle formation, totally ignoring the surrounding hills, which, of course, the Goths said, hey, what the fuck does Romans there, and quickly set up on top of. He also

forgot to send out any kind of scouting party to check out the area around him. That turned out to be a pretty massive oversight, because about 5,000 Gothic horsemen had just taken their horses out to forage before the Roman army had shown up. As the Romans formed up for battle, Fritigern needed to buy time as well because he wanted the hungry, hungry horsemen to come back. So he set the surrounding brush on fire as the wind changed direction to point towards the Romans, blowing in clouds of hot smoke directly towards soldiers who are on the verge of heat stroke already

and desperately thirsty. And at this point... It all comes down to water. It all comes down to water. Almost like logistics are important. Don't make me tap the fucking sign. Also, don't trust strange men in robes that you don't know.

Exactly. And at this point, Val... Good advice. That still applies. Also, don't trust strange men in robes that you don't know. And at this point, Val... Still applies. Good advice. That still applies. Yes. And Valens at this point was kind of starting to figure out, like, I don't think these guys are going to surrender. He also set diplomats across the line to talk to Valens,

not to accomplish anything, but to buy time. Fritigern wanted those horsemen to showens, not to accomplish anything, but to buy time. Fritigern wanted those horsemen to show up, and Valens needed more time because his army was so fucking tired and now choking on smoke that they were moving into battle formation incredibly slowly and was worried that the Goths might launch

an attack before they were done. There's just one dude who's like chain-smoking throughout the whole march, and he's like I don't know what are y'all complaining about it's totally fine My lungs always feel like this Those are the local levees from the Balkans I'll have to cut that as well Then Fridigern managed to stretch out the negotiations more and more

While the Romans continued to sit in a cloud of wildfire smoke under the burning sun. Then, someone within the Roman ranks had enough. The Roman cavalry on his left flank charged the Gothic line on their own without any fucking orders at all. As soon as they took off, they charged directly into a rain of arrows, stones, and spears, and were forced to retreat before they even made it to the Gothic lines. stones and spears and were forced to retreat before they even made it to the gothic lines other soldiers in the roman line saw the cavalry running off and thought they had missed an order to go and support them so they too were like fuck it i guess it's time to charge then others then others before valence knew it his entire army was acting completely on its own soldiers

met the exact same hail of arrows spears and stones but they were wearing heavier armor than the cavalry was and they had shields so that protected them better they were able to get to the foot of the gothic positions on the hill at which point the goths charged down at the romans as tens of thousands of men crashed into one another wielding swords axes and clubs now at this point the romans are probably quite shocked. They believe these guys to be stupid barbarians, which is dumb on its own, but they've discovered that the Goths are fighting much harder than they ever had been before. They're fighting like madmen. And it turns out they wouldn't find out why until after the battle was over because right behind them in those wagon forts were thousands upon thousands of Gothic civilians,

families, wives, children's, I assume some of their favorite dogs or something. They knew what would happen to their families at the hands of the Romans. If they lost. Yeah. I mean,

nobody is, uh, is surprised at the condo. I mean, the same thing would have happened vice versa war back then was fucking terrible just like it is now but if the Goths lost all of their people would have been forced into slavery

that's how things went and worse in some cases probably the Romans getting a whole lot of revenge for making them look stupid and the Goths knew how to fight Romans. They would smash into their shield wall with massive clubs to open gaps and then hack away at the juicy insides with axes.

Other men would slash at the legs of the enemy, as the shields didn't go down that far to cover it. The Romans would do much of the same thing, hacking and slashing at the legs of the Goths under their shields, though countless Goths would get hacked down, losing a leg or getting it turned into a pez dispenser and then start crawling around like the black knight from monty python and keep fighting or like a chris rocks character in you don't mess with the zohan where he's like act of death the battle for a time was equal as the massive men slaughtered one another from behind a shield wall

though slowly a gap opened between the roman left flank and the rest of their army which is kind of what you would expect as they kind of ran in there on their own unorganized now imagine if you will you're a roman soldier busy slashing and hacking away through the eastern roman empire's hottest mosh pit. Thousands of men are screaming, murdering one another. Wildfire smoke is covering everything and you can't breathe. And then you start to hear

something in the distance. It sounds like rolling thunder. It's getting closer and closer. And then you look and through the smoke you see thousands of horsemen appear on your left because the Gothic cavalry had finally returned from their lunch break. Union mandated lunch break. So they're like,

the cavalry commander looking down at his watch like, alright boys, it's 12 o'clock on the dot, we gotta go back to work. The two sides have been fighting for hours at this point, and remember, the Romans got into the fight already tired from the heat.

The impact of the cavalry on the Roman left flank was pretty much the same as a sledgehammer against a pane of glass. It all happened so quickly that most of the Romans weren't stabbed or slashed by the cavalry, but simply ran over and trampled to death. Other Romans, seeing the situation was now completely and totally lost, tried to run. But a shield wall that functions correctly pretty much acts as a human crush. It traps everyone in place, and now they realize they can't go anywhere. They all just kept slamming into one another with no way out. I assume deploying their finest skank dance to try to clear a hole. It's like when Sideshow Bob keeps walking on the rakes.

But each rake is another Roman soldier. Then more Gothic cavalry appeared on the right side of the Roman line, and what little order and discipline existed completely evaporated. Rather than running or trying to get some kind of control over his men, Valens ordered his reserves into battle, but when he turned and looked over his shoulder where the reserve should be standing, he saw that they were gone.

They had seen the scene unfolding in front of them and fucked off so quickly that nobody had noticed them. They'd be the majority of people that would survive this battle. Then Valens drew his sword had noticed them. They'd be the majority of people that would survive this battle. Then, Valens drew his sword and charged into battle with his palace guards at his side, just in time for the Gothic pincer attack to close in and

completely encircle the Roman army, which wasn't much of an army anymore, but rather a gathering of confused, terrified people who happened to be in armor. And at that exact point, Gene Pitney crested the hill and took out his notebook about to write the man who shot Liberty

Valance. At this point, the commander of, like, Fritigern stands on top of the hill and starts trying to get the pit to separate. Oh, do a wall of death. Yeah, he's like, come on, guys, do it. Now, to be fair, Goths, they're less moshing they're more so

like dancing like swaying depressed back and forth on top of everything else the footsteps of thousands upon thousands of men and horses began throwing up a dust cloud that combined with the brush fire smoke because getting stabbed to death by angry germans wasn't bad enough

the swirling miasma of shit was so thick that few roman commanders who tried to control their men could even see them anymore from this point on it was every man for himself this is probably like trying to take a shit at like woodstock 99 oh god with all the mud everywhere yeah like those news videos of like people playing like jumping around in the mud while they didn't know it's just complete portalo effluent the amount of people that left woodstock 98 or 99 whichever one it was had to have a level of dysentery that rivals only an 1800s army yeah no only rivals a roman army dying of shitting ass disease because you went to see

corn i cannot think of a more disgraceful way to catch like an old-timey disease like i wanted to go mosh with limp biscuit and instead all i got was exploding colon disorder you just your stomach rumbles and all you hear is the opening riff of Blind by Korn. It turned out the song Break Stuff was just about my insides. Now, this somehow went on for five goddamn hours, if only because manually stabbing 20,000

men to death takes a lot of time and energy. So, you know, the gots taking water breaks, doing line changes like it's the NHL to keep energy. So, you know, the Goths taking water breaks, doing line changes like it's the NHL to keep your men fresh, you know, like a coach sitting by like, alright, send in the third line. You're not doing good enough. Hit the benches.

You better show more initiative when you slaughter that terrified Roman. Now, somewhere in the middle of this and nobody is sure when or where Emperor Valens is killed via arrow to the face. It's literally the man who shot Liberty Valens. It was a goth from the grassy knoll. No, I just believe his head did that.

His head just gets an arrow in it sometimes. Trajan and Sebastian also die. The entire battle is finally over as the sun goes down. Nearly the entire Roman army is destroyed and only a few hundred men manage to escape the slaughter that turned the countryside into what I assume is what Henry Kissinger's

basement looks like. I hope the lathe of heaven works on that one. Here's the praying, buddy. Now, if that wasn't bad enough, the few Roman survivors that managed to make it back to adrian opal were barred from entering because the panicked citizens thinking if they opened the gates the goth would be the gospel storm in afterwards because they were using these men as a as like bait for a trap and that thus ends the battle of adrian opal and

like people were worried about a siege but but still the Goths knew better. They're like, yeah, we can't do that. Yeah. So why is this catastrophic battle for the history and future of Rome considered the small domino to big domino effect? And it's really not. It's also simplistic,

but it does play an important role in history. Well, for starters, virtually the entire military and political structure of the eastern roman empire had just ended in a storm of angry german swear words and swords to the face and gratian hearing about all this didn't even bother to plot revenge or anything he just went home exactly you know i'm done going home clocking out it's like when you're really drunk at a party and you're supposed to be there to like watch a friend but they're clearly like not listening like bro it's time to go home so you're falling asleep on the table bro it's time to go home and

they're like no man i'm still good you're like i guess you're sleeping on the fucking table you get in the car and you go home yeah gothic and allied tribes lay waste to the east for years but they still lacked the ability to take large cities. A new emperor was crowned, Theodosius, who eventually rebuilt the army, and he and the Goths came to a settlement. The exact goddamn agreement that started this whole thing in the first place. However, the defeat in the east marked what would become the continuous Germanic encroachment into Roman lands, and I don't mean by assimilation or immigration, I mean by conquest,

they would never be fully pushed back, especially in the West, which combined with generations of Imperial mismanagement, corruption, economic collapse, political instability, dumb fucking emperors, and countless other things contribute to the general failure of a state

eventually led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire and Rome itself not even a hundred years after this battle. All because some customs guys wanted to be a fucking dick. See, and this is why I don't get stopped in the airport. They know what's good for them. Now, I'm not saying

if none of this took place that these things still would happen. All those other problems that we talked about still existed in Rome. However, when you include upon all of those things, general instability, insecurity, and enemy invasion,

eventually things are going to collapse. But it certainly helped speed things along. And that is the Battle of Adrianople. Learned a lot, Joe. I learned that you don't mess around with Goths. Goths are, you know,

people underestimate Goths. You know, they're peaceful people. They like to wear black and sit in their room and listen to, you know, candle mass and stuff like that. These are the worst kind of Gothss germans oh god yeah yeah no now german goths are just into techno yeah yeah because when i when i want to have a good time i want to pack into a small smoke filled room full of people who think they can dance but can't and listen to music that sounds like two fax machines fucking. I mean, that sounds like a good time to me,

but like, each to their own. Now, Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. Today's Question from the Legion comes from the Patreon. What is your favorite bit from either of your podcasts?

Hmm. Do you know what? It's one, it's from a recent episode or maybe an episode that's coming out and it is a annoying bisexual phoebe bridgers fan muhammad gaddafi yeah that one is cursed um don't give gaddafi the aux that one is cursed uh i if i had to pick because we have had a few over the years and so many of them came from one series. Like most of our, like most timeless bits on earth came from the Soviet Afghan war series,

which like makes sense. Cause that was like our foundational series that really set us up going forward. And I still think the best bit because for people are unaware we don't script jokes we don't talk about bits or anything beforehand the only thing i have script is the historical narrative so any joke or bit is completely ad-libbed for better or worse take it for what it's worth um and i think the best one that we ever did because this is back when nick was a co-host um and he was unaware of what like a labor union was i mean when you're young never had a job before you joined the

military why would you you know yeah so i explained it to him via the concept of the jalala bad dick sucking factory unionizing together to get better dick sucking environments to work in and I didn't for what I didn't know that they would actually leave that in because it was so ridiculous and it has spawned

into like our fans calling themselves the GDSU you know we've had GDSU merch and we will in the future um and like when i went and spoke i was invited to speak at um unc chapel hill university of north carolina chapel hill and an assistant professor had assigned that series to his undergraduate students to listen to and the first thing that dawned on me like that is the dick that is the dick sucking union series there is an entire cadre of undergraduate students taking notes about the unionization of people who work in a hypothetical

dick sucking factory in the city of jalalabad um i'll i do i do also think just like shitting ass disease and just like dying of dysentery or no one took a solid shit before 1950 um and there's also like the bit where we once had an episode that we couldn't release because we had we had a we had a guest on and you know back a long time ago we used to drink while we recorded we would pre-game and then continue drinking while we recorded they drank a bit too much um and vomited while we were recording and we could not directly on the floor of the recording studio um back when we recorded in the same room uh and i was like oh we can't release that there is that's just too much um

and we actually ended up having to record it and I won't say which episode it was. Um, I know, uh, but, um, we've had,

we've had a lot. Um, I mean, it's been over five years. I'm sure I'm forgetting some that up fucking Nate recently with the sir. Christopher of Benoit bit during the, uh,

the, uh, the, uh the combat of the 30 episode that made me have to take a break I had to turn off my mic and walk away yeah yeah there's just like so many because obviously like I listened to this show

before I worked on it and like it's just so many like incredible bits Tom thank you so much for joining me here today you can use this slice of of pod to cast your uh plugs and listen to beneath the skin you show about the history of everything told through the history of tattoos and someone actually asked me the other day i was like oh i don't have tattoos i don't really care about tattoos like would I find this interesting and like 100% it's kind of like how this show is vaguely about military history but

is really talking about types of guys um we like we yeah we talk about like how different like like places and time and events and people intersect with tattooing and it affects history going forward um yeah check it out if you my go-to is always if you're on the fence and you're not really into tattoos but you want to uh let's check out the show check out our history of japan series that's a really good like if you want to get up into it and get a feel for it our history of japan series is the one for you and thank you so much for listening to us here on Lines of By Donkeys podcast. I have no other podcast to plug, but if you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like this early, sometimes entire series.

You get five plus years of bonus content, Discord access, early pre-orders on future merchandise all of the plus we're doing an audiobook for hooligans of kandahar we have premium series like the history of armenia and sharp show you can get all of that for five bucks a month uh you support the show you let us keep doing what we're doing expand whatever it is we think about doing next or and depending you can leave us a review and wherever it is we listen to podcasts it also helps us a lot um and uh until next time uh light wildfire smoke into the face of your enemies if you're in the pacific northwest don't do that it's a huge hazard