Hunnic conquest of the Goths

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Hunnic conquest of the Goths was the war of the 370s in which the Huns came out of the steppe east of the Don, subdued the Alans and broke the Gothic realm of Hermanaric north of the Black Sea. The Greuthungi, the eastern Goths, fell under Hun rule. The Tervingi and part of the Greuthungi fled to the Danube and crossed into the Roman empire in 376.^[1]^[2] From about 376 on the Huns ruled a large area of the Pontic steppe and stood on the lower Danube.^[3]

The sources

Two accounts survive. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote the last book of his history about 395, within twenty years of the events.^[4] Jordanes wrote his Gothic history in 551, after the lost work of Cassiodorus.^[5] He took his description of the Huns themselves almost word for word from Ammianus.^[6] Where the two differ on this war, some scholars prefer Ammianus without the slightest doubt.^[7]

Ammianus calls the Huns a people “but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea near the ice-bound ocean”, who “exceed every degree of savagery”.^[8] In Jordanes they are the offspring of witches whom the Gothic king Filimer had driven into the wilderness, and of the unclean spirits who found them there. A hind led their hunters across the Maeotic marshes into Scythia. They sacrificed their first captives to victory.^[9] Some scholars see the story of the witches as a Gothic tale, told by the Goths in horror at the ferocity of their masters. Others trace it to the Christian legend of the fallen angels.^[10]^[11]

The Alans

The Huns first fell on the Alans, who bordered the Greuthungi. Usage called these Alans the Tanaites, the people of the Don. The Huns killed and plundered many of them and joined the rest to themselves by a pact.^[12] Jordanes adds that, as soon as they had crossed the marshes, the Huns swept like a whirlwind over the Alpidzuri, Alcildzuri, Itimari, Tuncarsi and Boisci, who lived on that shore. They wore down the Alans, their equals in battle, by incessant attacks.^[13] The Hun and Alan alliance lasted three decades.^[14] Bishop Ambrose, writing at the end of 378, put the sequence in one sentence. The Huns threw themselves on the Alans, the Alans on the Goths, and the Goths on the Taifali and the Sarmatians.^[15]

The fall of Hermanaric

With the help of the Alans the Huns broke into the wide and fertile lands of Ermenrichus with a sudden attack. Ermenrichus was a most warlike king, feared by his neighbours for his many brave deeds. He held out for a long time. Then rumour magnified the danger, and he ended his fear by a voluntary death.^[16] Jordanes tells it otherwise. Hermanaric had a woman of the Rosomoni, Sunilda, torn apart by horses. Her brothers wounded him in the side. While he lay sick, Balamber, king of the Huns, invaded the land of the Ostrogoths. Hermanaric died of his wound and of grief at the Hun attacks, in the hundred and tenth year of his life. “The fact of his death enabled the Huns to prevail over those Goths who … were called Ostrogoths.”^[17]

Vithimiris and the regents

After Hermanaric’s death Vithimiris was made king. He resisted the Alans for a time, relying on other Huns whom he had paid to take his side. He was overcome after many defeats and fell in battle. The commanders Alatheus and Saphrax, experienced and brave, took charge for his little son Viderichus. They gave up hope of resistance and withdrew to the river Danastius, the Dniester, between the Danube and the Dnieper.^[18] Huns therefore stood on both sides.

Jordanes has a different story. The Amal Vinitharius kept the royal insignia under Hun rule, broke away and made war on the Antes. Balamber, with the Goth Gesimund who kept his oath to the Huns, defeated him at the third attempt and killed him with an arrow at the river Erac. Balamber married his granddaughter Vadamerca. He ruled the Goths in peace through a Gothic king of their own, “though subject to the Huns”.^[19] Some scholars hold that Vithimiris fell after about a year on the river Erac, between the Dnieper and the Dniester. They dismiss Jordanes’s account of the Goths’ voluntary submission as a Gothic fable.^[20] Whether Balamber existed is argued. Some scholars call him shadowy but hold that he must have been some kind of king. Others hold that the Goths invented him.^[21]^[22]

Athanaric on the Dniester

Athanaric, the judge of the Tervingi, the western Goths, camped near the Dniester. He sent Munderichus with other nobles twenty miles ahead to watch for the enemy. The Huns guessed that a larger force lay farther off. They passed by the men they had seen, crossed the river by moonlight at a ford and fell swiftly on Athanaric himself. He fled to the steep mountains and began to build high walls from the river Gerasus to the Danube, past the lands of the Taifali. The Huns would have overwhelmed him had they not been weighed down by their booty.^[23]

The rumour ran among the other Goths that a race of men never seen before had risen from a hidden corner of the earth, like a storm of snow from the high mountains, tearing up and destroying everything in its way. Most of Athanaric’s people deserted him and looked for a home far from the barbarians. After long debate they chose Thrace, for its rich soil and because the broad Danube separated it from the fields already exposed to a foreign war.^[24]

The flight to the Danube

Under Alavivus the Tervingi occupied the bank of the Danube and asked the emperor Valens to receive them. Rumours spoke of a barbarian multitude of unknown peoples, driven from their homes by sudden force, roaming along the river from the Marcomanni and Quadi to the Black Sea.^[25] The Greuthungi came to the river too, under their young king, for whom Alatheus and Saphrax ruled.^[26] Jordanes says that the Visigoths were terrified, as their kinsmen had been. They asked Valens for part of Thrace or Moesia and were settled there.^[27] When up to 50,000 Goths reached the Balkans, the great Gothic war against the Romans began. The power of the Huns in eastern Europe grew further.^[28]

In 377 the Goths were hard pressed in the Balkans. They won some of the Huns and Alans as allies with the hope of great booty.^[29] Some scholars consider it possible that Huns led the cavalry charge that decided the battle of Adrianople in 378.^[30] Others hold that the Huns stayed away from the fight.^[31]

Date

Neither Ammianus nor Jordanes gives a year. The war is usually dated to 375. According to some scholars, however, it cannot be dated at all.^[15] Others place the attack on Hermanaric soon after 370.^[32] A third view has the Huns enter eastern Europe about 375 and subdue the Ostrogoths after a decisive victory.^[28]

References

^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.1–8, p. 395–401
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 18–26
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 26
^ Thompson 1948, p. 6
^ Mierow 1915, p. 12–13
^ Mierow 1915, p. 163
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 17
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.1, p. 381
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 121–125, p. 85–86
^ Thompson 1948, p. 19–20
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 5
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.1, p. 395
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 126, p. 86
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 22
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 20
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.1–2, p. 395–397
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 129–130, p. 87–88
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.3, p. 397
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 246–249, p. 120–121
^ Thompson 1948, p. 23
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 12, 59
^ Thompson 1948, p. 57
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.4–8, p. 397–401
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.8, p. 399–401
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.4.1–2, p. 401–403
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.4.12, p. 407–409
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 131–133, p. 88
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 90
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.8.4, p. 437
^ Thompson 1948, p. 24–25
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 29
^ Thompson 1948, p. 22

Sources

Ammianus Marcellinus
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)

Literature

John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English Translation, vol. III: Books XXVII–XXXI (1939)
Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)