Talk:Battle of Adrianople
From Academic Kids
An event mentioned in this article is an August 9 selected anniversary
your information on this page is incorrect. fritigern did not lead an attack on Valens and Valens did not battle the Visigoths. from several sources it is said that Fritigern and Valens were attacked during peace negotiations. it is in question who exactly it was that attacked them... Gibbons hinted that it might have been by Roman forces who were not happy at the thought of peace. He said that they could have even been Roman troops sent by the brother of valens. both Valens and Fritigern died because of the attack.
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Gibbons isn't exactly reknowned for being a great historian anymore, really, and a lot of his stuff shouldn't be considered too reliable unless it's backed up by other sources. As for the Adrinople article itself - the first set battle the Romans lost? That's spectacularly incorrect, as the Romans had a long, proud history of military defeats going back more than eight hundred years by that point.
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"It was the first set battle that the Romans had ever lost."
The Romans had indeed lost set battles before -- does the Battle of Cannae ring any bells? This line has to go: it's absolutely incorrect. I have deleted it.
Since this was a puny little article, I translated the much more detailed one from the French wikipedia, hopefully accurately, although someone more fluent than me might want to check (and someone who knows more about the specifics may want to fix some things...like "shield-archers," I'm not sure about that). I want to add the pictures from the French one as well, but it's a little more difficult figuring out how to put them into English. Adam Bishop 21:15, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
