Valens

Valens was eastern Roman emperor from AD 364 to 378. His defeat and death at Adrianople against the Goths became one of the most serious military disasters in late Roman history.

Valens shared imperial power with his elder brother Valentinian I and governed the eastern provinces from 364. He defeated the usurper Procopius, campaigned against Goths north of the Danube and confronted the Sasanian Empire over Armenia. The mass entry of displaced Goths into Roman territory in 376 was badly managed, leading to revolt; Valens was killed with much of his army at Adrianople in 378.

Ian Hughes’ Imperial Brothers follows Valens from his appointment by Valentinian I to rule the East through the revolt of Procopius, conflict with the Goths and pressure from Persia, ending with the decision to fight at Adrianople before western reinforcements arrived. Gordon Doherty’s Gods & Emperors places Valens at the centre of the 378 campaign against Fritigern’s Goths, while Land of the Sacred Fire shows how concentrating his forces on that war leaves the eastern provinces vulnerable to Shapur II. Empire of Shades begins in the aftermath of Valens’s death, measuring the catastrophe by the broken Roman army left in Thrace. Ammianus Marcellinus’ The Later Roman Empire supplies the essential contemporary narrative for Valens’s reign and the frontier crises that lead towards Adrianople.