How does ammianus accont for Rome's defeat at adrianople?

Answer 1

Ammianus Marcellinus' gave a detailed account of the events which led to the Battle of Adrianople, but the account of the actual battle is vague and far from clear. There is more of an emphasis on the heat of the battle rather than clear details of how the battle unfolded. The main thing in the account was that it seemed that dust and fire were significant. Much of what is written about the battle is the product of deductions and attempts at reconstruction by modern historians. Ammianus' account did not even give the size and composition of the Roman army engaged in the battle. He mentions that when the Romans were being routed the emperor Valens sought the protection of legions of lanciarii (legions armed with lances) and mattiarii. The latter is an obscure type of legion and it is not clear whether they were armed short-shaft weighted darts or maces or whether they were imperial or auxiliary (allied) forces. He also mentioned a reserve battalion of Batavians (aa allied Germanic people for the lower Rhine area) and the names of some of the military commanders. He saw a contemporary estimate of 10,000 Gothic troops as an underestimate.

It is now generally agreed that the lack of clarity in Ammianus' account of the battle, the fact that it came at the end of his Histories and that there are no detailed accounts of the history of the next century led earlier modern historians to exaggerate the impact of this Roman defeat and its long term implications for the Roman Empire.

Ammianus noted that the Gothic cavalry played an important role in the battle. This led to Charles Oman, an early 20th century historian, arguing that the cavalry were the majority of the Gothic force, that the Gothic cavalry defeated the Roman infantry and this battle marked the beginning of the dominance of cavalry over infantry for the next thousand years, ushering in the age of the Medieval knight. This has now been disputed. Some historians argue that the infantry was the larger part of the Gothic force and that the battle did not change the role of the cavalry in battle. They also point out that the Romans developed a cavalry rapid deployment force a century earlier and that the cavalry had been becoming more important in the regular units as well.