The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle That Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire

by Alessandro Barbero

Book Overview

On August 9, 378 AD, at Adrianople in the Roman province of Thrace (now western Turkey), the Roman Empire began to fall. Two years earlier, an unforeseen flood of refugees from the East Germanic tribe... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802715710
• ISBN13: 9780802715715
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Walker & Company
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

should be called "Days of the Barbarians"

An excellent true narrative on the history of the Goths and the Eastern Roman Empire.The climax of the book revolves around the battle of Adrianople where the "Roman" army was soundly defeated, about 100 miles from Constantinople.By this time the Goths were so deeply established in both the "Roman" army and the opposing army that it truly was a Gothic day.Gothic mercenaries,"early arrivals" to the Roman Empire fighting,"johnny come lately" Goths fresh across the Danube with their wagons,ironically ferried across by a Roman Gothic Army.It seems the Romans couldn't resist the temptation for some new potential conscripts and slaves.To show their "grattitude" for helping them cross, the Fresh Off the boat Goths later destroy the Roman army.It's just great,there's no "good guy or bad guy",just lots of Goths with a mixture of Huns,Alans,etc.squabbling over the remains of the Roman Empire.A complete Gothic feast from real Goths,not stringy, long hair dyed black, rock stars.

A Good Read

The Day of the Barbarians is a very readable history of the battle of Adrianople, where a Roman army was annihilated and the emperor Valens was killed. The Fourth century has not been one of my favorite periods of Roman history but Alessandro Barbero makes the period interesting indeed. He tells an interesting story of how the Goths became indispensable to the empire as soldiers, slaves and farmers and informs us that many of the Goths became Romanized and a good number became Christians. He makes a good case for seeing the century up to the battle as a time of relative prosperity and had the Romans treated the Goths and other barbarians better the fall of the western empire a century later might have been prevented...for a while. Mr. Barbero tells the story in short, to-the-point chapters laying the groundwork describing who the Goths were, what their culture was like and how under Constantine and his successors they were well-treated. When the Goths fled from the advancing Huns, however, and sought help from the Romans they were welcomed across the Danube but badly treated but the profit-minded Romans leading to their revolt. I found one factual error that I thought rather glaring. Mr. Barbero relates that Constantine I built the only stone bridge across the Danube leaving out any mention of the famous bridge built by the emperor Trajan, which had been destroyed by Aurelian when Dacia was abandoned. It was interesting to me that the author mentions Procopius, who was declared emperor in 366 in opposition to Valens, but does not describe him as a relative of Julian, just as related to the family of Constantine. One wonders if Mr. Barbero has no liking for Julian. This is an excellent volume and will appeal to the specialist and general readers. The book does not have a very extensive bibliography and although the author discusses the writings of some ancient authors (particualrly Ammianus Marcellinus) he does not cite the text location except in the modest number of footnotes. There is a single map of the Roman empire at the front of the book; it would have been helpful to include additional maps, such as one devoted to Thrace so one could get a better itde of the loaction of places and disposition of the Goths and Romans. I am not sure if the battle of Adrianople signals the beginning of the end but the battle and the aftermath, with the new emperor Theodosius, marks a turning point in the fortunes of the empire that was increasingly dominated by weak ineffective rulers.

Amazing little book

If you are at all curious about how the Roman Empire fell and how the Medieval period began, this book is a great place to start. Although nominally about the battle of Adrianople, this book does an excellent job of establishing the context. We learn that the dividing line between Roman and barbarian was actually quite blurry. The Romans had absorbed many barbarian peoples into "civilized peoples." In fact, they relied on barbarians to do the hard work (shades of the US and Mexico or Europe and the Middle East). This created a few problems. With the barbarians doing all the real work, Rome/Byzantium ran the risk that one day the barbarians would realize they were the ones running things and take charge themselves. And if the Romans abused the barbarians, as they had abused so many, the barbarians who had associated with Rome could turn on them, violently. We alse realize that the Romans achieved much, but were somewhat barbaric themselves. They were neither technological nor economic innovators. They had little anthropological curiosity. Then it all comes together: Rome did not fall so much as melt into the Middle Ages. A book that can crystallize that in fewer than 150 pages is nothing less than a treasure.

The day that may have begun the fall of the Roman Empire

Pity that most people have no interest in or knowledge of history. We are, after all, the products of history. But for most, history simply has little allure unless they can see it in the form of a pyramid or some Disneyfied exhibit. But somewhere on the planet - no one knows for sure the exact location - a battle took place on August 9, 378 AD near Adrianople in present-day Turkey. According to author Alessandro Barbero, professor of medieval studies at the University of Piemonte Orientale in Vercelli, Italy, this was the battle that began the collapse of the Roman Empire. This English translation is done by John Cullen and is noteworthy for the clarity of his work. If there were any clumsy expressions that didn't translate well from the Italian, Cullen has smoothed them over. The result shows Barbero to be a very competent writer. This is not an academic history. It is, in fact, intended to be a popular history, designed to help the curious non-expert reader to gain understanding of how the world around him or her came to be. For truly few people have an idea of who the Goths were - and they are not be confused with the very confused teenagers who wear heavy makeup and black clothes and ring their necks with nail studded collars. The simplicity of some aspects of life in the 4th Century are beautifully explained by Barbero: the tribes around you decided they wanted your land, your animals, your spouses and children, your few personal possessions or just wanted to kill you for fun. On they came, slaughtering everyone except those they took for slaves. The news traveled and the next victims tried to get out, in this case into the Eastern Roman Empire. At first the Eastern Emporer let them in - and then changed his mind. That decision and the pressure of the Huns turned the Goths into marauding bands who quickly formed a temporary alliance to resist the over-confident Romans who came to teach them a lesson by force. The Romans lost and the Roman world changed forever, beginning its final plunge into oblivion. The story is more complex, of course, but Barbero recounts the meaningful points eloquently in this short (146 pages) book. He tells much of the Roman Empire at that time, earlier and later - and he tells the story remarkably well. This is a wonderful introduction to the history of the later Roman Empire, a century or so prior to its final collapse. In an era where the United States is frequently compared (wildly inaccurately) to the Roman Empire and where the few who think of Rome at all envisage orgies and decadence leading to its collapse, this little book is a welcome breath of fresh air. It not only makes an interesting read for anyone with the slightest interest in history, but an excellent gift to pass on to those who would benefit from knowing just a little about a history. Jerry

Fires the imagination

The story of the Gothic War and the famous Battle of Adrianople has often been re-constructed, for example by Gibbon (1776) and more recently by Peter Heather The Fall of the Roman Empire (2005) and Michael Kulikowski Rome's Gothic Wars (2006) - what makes this account special is not any new over-arching theory, but simply a well researched, reliable and very well told story - if writing history is a type of literature, this is literature at its best. Barbero has the ability to fire the imagination and make it all real - he can take a single sentence from Ammianus Marcellinus (the primary source for the events) and draw in other related material to fill in the details to make a book-length retelling where others have a chapter or two. As Steven Coats said, reviewing in the New York Times (April 29, 2007), this is an "elegant and pleasurable little account - what a joy it is to read about the ancient world in digestible portions." This is clearly a book for the general reader, but Barbero is a medieval scholar, it contains supporting footnotes (which are worthwhile) and references to further reading. I never tire of reading about this story, it brings together so many elements of the ancient and medieval worlds, it was one of the pivotal moments in world history and also one of the most dramatic. With all the praise above and 5-stars, a couple things about what the book is not: 1) this is a short book, 147 pages of actual text, the rest is footnotes 2) it is not for specialists or experts - Barbero does not go into too much chronological or geographic detail - it is not a definitive scientific study 3) the question if Adrianople was the dividing line between the Ancient and Medieval world is thankfully relegated to the Preface and last two pages, a "hook" I suppose. The books real value is in the skillful narration of events, and understanding the process of the 'barbarization' of the Roman Empire.