The Whole North Into Gaul

[Epictetus]

Great job. I got a chance to read it and really enjoyed it and learned a lot. Unfortunately I know next to nothing of this era and so can’t say anything about your content. I do have a few thoughts about the writing, though. Remember these are mostly just my personal opinions. Feel free to disregard anything you want to disregard. :wink:

Both fear and determination are staunch smells…

Is ‘staunch’ the word you want here? It doesn’t seem to work for me.

The Battle of Catalaunian Plans is one of the only battles of the 5th century that was given a decent account of, but most historians have done little to determine what happened, or where it was.

This seems a bit awkward. You might try to rewrite this in four or five different ways, then read them aloud and see which version you like best. Contrary to popular belief, you can end a clause with a word such as ‘of,’ but you need to make sure it is clear. It wasn’t clear to me.

“De origine actibusque getarum” … “the Origins and deeds of the Goths”

Sometimes style guides differ on how to capitalise in titles, but I would put this as “De origine actibusque Getarum” and “The Origins and Deeds of the Goths.” Capitalise first word, last word, nouns, verbs and modifiers in most cases in English titles. This can differ in other languages, but I glanced through JSTOR and saw they tended to capitalise Jordanes in the way I suggested.

In it, he provided the only detailed account of the Battle of Catalaunian Fields there is, although with bias towards the role…

The word ‘although’ makes me think the second clause will have a relation to the first, but this isn’t what you are doing. This is a new thought, so you could use ‘and’ or start a new sentence to explain his bias.

Jordanes wrote with bias because of for whom he was writing, his brother…

This is a convoluted sentence. You could simplify, such as starting with: “Jordanes was biased because of his Gothic ancestry. He wrote for his brother…” and so on.

The intention is to look at these sources, and offer new interpretations, and theories, that have not been suggested before.

I love commas in unexpected places and the repetitive use of ‘and’ to ratchet up the tension in a sentence. David Foster Wallace and Cormac McCarthy are masters at this. Here, though, it disrupts the otherwise beautiful flow of this sentence. Read it aloud and you’ll see what I mean. You might consider dropping the second and third commas. There are several ways you could do this.

These include the presence of the Frisii at the battle…

I think this should be broken up into several shorter sentences. At the moment the commas are separating different nouns in each clause, as well as separating each clause. There are several sentences like this I noticed.

…wales…

Don’t forget to capitalise!

…left the majority of their Army in reserve…that puts Aetius army at a…

Sometimes you capitalise this as a proper name, such as ‘Illyrian Army’ and sometimes you don’t. You also do this with parts of the army, such as ‘Left.’ I don’t think it matters much if you consider them as proper names and so capitalise, but be careful to be consistent. Also, I think it should be ‘…Aetius’ army...’

…could have fielded around 20,000 men. The other kingdoms on the Roman side probably couldn’t have fielded much…

You are perfectly correct here, but you might consider using some synonyms for ‘fielded.’ This simply makes the text more interesting to read. Change it up a bit. Get creative and have fun with it. Have as much fun writing as you do researching a topic.

…the Armoricans/Romano-British who heralded the call…

I don’t think I would use ‘heralded’ here.

…warbands of militia troops; barbarians called to arms…

It might be better to use a colon here instead of a semicolon.

…one of the legendary conflicts that whose tale would be remembered…

This is a bit jarring, at least to me. Maybe something like ‘one of the legendary conflicts the tale of which would be remembered…’

…Theodoric is slain…

I absolutely love the switch to present tense. This makes the narrative present and immediate, and reaches out and grabs the reader. Good job here.

…Ian Hughes Suggests…

‘…Ian Hughes suggests…’

A lot of this stuff I mention is nit-picking, but I just wanted to mention a variety of things for you to think about so you can make it as good as possible. I think it is a great first draft, and I can’t wait to see your next version. Good job!