Macdowall S. Adrianople AD 378. The Goths crush Rome's Legions

Series Campaign # 84, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2001. - p. 94At dawn on 9 August AD 378, the East Roman Emperor Valens marched out of the city of Adrianople
at the head of an elite army of veteran Roman soldiers. He was determined to crush the marauding bands of Goths who had crossed the Danube as refugees two years earlier. By nightfall the Emperor, along with two thirds of his men, lay dead on the field. According to the contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus, himself a Roman officer: ‘No battle in our history except Cannae was such a massacre.’