Profile of a mid 5th century Roman soldier.

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Adrian,

Zosimus tells us that there were tens of thousands of Goths in the employment of the both of the Western and Eastern Empires, and that from time to time these technically 'Roman' troops, in that they were paid, and armed by the Roman state, broke allegiance with the Romans and attacked the Roman armies they had been formally attached too. Gainas fought initially on the behalf of the Eastern Empire before entertaining ideas above his station, leading to 7000 of his troops being burnt alive in a church in Constantinople (despite this he was still able to continue his 'war' with the Eastern Empire for another year). Alaric fought for both the Western and Eastern Empires before turning his attention to taking Rome itself.

Gainas was indeed leading Gothic troops serving in the Roman army, but Alaric never did. In fact, it was Alaric’s main wish to raise his troops from the status of federate to that of an official army, allowing him to equip his followers from the Roman fabricate. Alaric’s troops were never Roman soldiers, they only fought on behalf of Rome when called upon.

I suggest Gothic style clothing must have become something of a norm for the Roman army if a much later tactical manual advocated its infantry wearing it.

I have given my arguments as to why I don’t believe that was not the case at the time in question, the mid-5th century AD.

And why would Zosimus particulary rail against the Goths, writing as he did at least a century after the events unless there was enough of a Gothic presence when Zosimus wrote to inspire such a tirade?

The Romans recruited Goths as the did any other Germanic tribe. And apart from that, do we even have any evidence that there was a ‘Gothic’ fashion in clothing at that time? Despite what Maurikios had in mind 200 years later, by 400 the Goths were still no single ethnic people, but a mix of groups operating under a number of different leaders.
Why Zosimus wrote about them I can’t tell (he does not tell us so I won’t presume to know his [private thoughts), but a good guess would be that the eastern Empire had been dealing with the ‘Two Theodorics’, Theodoric Strabo (died 481) and Theodoric Amaling, who were competing with each other and Constantinople. The latter Theodoric was later sent to invade Italy (489), so Zosimos may well have had these Goths in mind.

My point remains: even if there was a ‘Gothic fashion’ in which all Goths wore the same style of clothing (which we have no information of), there were never enough Goths in the Roman army to dictate that fashion upon the rest of the army – even 10 to 20.000 Gothic recruits at one given moment – a vast number given the estimated strength of the Goths at Adrianople being given between those numbers – were a minority in an army numbering 645.000.