The majority of the Tervingi decided to abandon dieir homelands, and under the leadership of Alavivus and Fritigern petitioned to cross die Danube and enter the Roman empire. With this crossing, and die officially approved settlement of die Tervingian Goths in the Balkans in 376, the narrative of the barbarian invasions and settlements can be said to have begun. This period of invasion can usefully be distinguished within die larger history of barbarian migration and assimilation into the Roman world. An edict appended to the Liber Constitutionum reveals a subsequent set of allocations, probably made in the 520s, in which land was divided equally between Romans and barbarians. Early information on the first settlements, therefore, is very slight. Since the empire of Valentinian III was shored up by die barbarians, it was possible to drink that little had changed since the days of Theodosius I.

This chapter examines the consequences for emperors and their supporters of the increasing centralization of power and the continued growth of a sophisticated and well-organized bureaucracy. The emperor in the later Roman world was undoubtedly a powerful figure. Later Roman emperors could not rule alone. As fourth-century commentators clearly saw, the effective governance of empire inevitably involved a close reliance on sometimes untrustworthy courtiers, relatives, officials and friends. The payment of money was integral to the workings of later Roman bureaucracy. In an uncertain world, only emperors, as they repeatedly insisted, stood a chance of resolving what for the majority caught up in later Roman government remained a shifting set of tactical possibilities to be played to best advantage. From that point of view it was clearly in the interests of all jockeying for power, position or preferment to cheer loudly as the glittering procession of a godlike emperor passed them by.

The Roman empire of the fourth and early fifth centuries remained, as it had always been, city-based, with political, religious and aristocratic life revolving around the civitates and around major capitals. Although their importance remained unchanged, the cities of the late empire differed in several obvious ways from the cities of the earlier Roman world. The three changes, in the political, military and religious role of the cities had a marked effect on the politics of city life and on the way that the aristocracy played out its role within the cities. The fourth to sixth centuries saw the decline of the centuries-old ideal of the classical city governing the patterns of local political life and spending. These centuries also saw the gradual emergence of a 'new' city, playing an important part within the overall administrative, financial and military structures of church and state, and increasingly focused on a Christian ideology of saints and their churches.

The legacy of Theodosius I to the Roman world contained three elements of capital importance. First, his insistence that the Nicene version of Christian orthodoxy prevail routed Arianism from its strongholds in the Balkans and in Constantinople itself and laid down the lines of development for Roman Christianity, both east and west. Second, his settling as autonomous federates the barbarian peoples who had crossed into the Roman empire both before and after Adrianople, his gready increased use of federate troops in the Roman armies, and his cultivation of the chieftains of the barbarians, especially the Visigoths. Finally, Theodosius' determination that his dynasty should rule the whole Roman world led to a costly civil war against Eugenius and, at his own death shordy thereafter, the division of the empire between his two young and incapable sons, controlled by ministers whose rivalries split the resources of the state at a time when they needed to be united.

Cicero was murdered by the soldiers of Antony and Octavian in December of 43 BC. In the following year, according to the ancient tradition, Virgil began to write the Eclogues. In the work of Virgil and Horace it seems that the process of assimilation has achieved a happy equilibrium: the most characteristic monuments of Augustan poetry display a formally and aesthetically satisfying fusion of new and old, native and alien elements. For the first time since the classical age of Greece the competing claims of technique and inspiration were again harmonized. After the elimination of Octavian's last rival at Actium in 31 BC the Roman world entered on an unexampled period of peace and prosperity. Naturally the official author of these blessings expected his achievements to be reflected in contemporary literature. A tradition of court poetry going back through Theocritus and Callimachus to Pindar and beyond offered obvious models.