Battle of Naissus

The Battle of Naissus took place near the present-day Niš in Serbia in the summer of 269.

Prehistory

Since the year 238, the Roman Empire was repeatedly ravaged by invasions of the Goths. In the - apart from brief interruptions - for decades ongoing disputes large parts of the Balkans were devastated. In June of the year 251 Emperor Decius fell, father and son, in the battle of Abrittus, after the Gothic king Kniva lured into an ambush. While it succeeded the followers of Decius, to stabilize the situation somewhat, but it should soon come to an invasion of unprecedented scale.

The Goteninvasion of the year 267

In the year 267 broke Gothic armies, accompanied by the tribe of the Heruli, from the northern shore of the Sea of ​​Azov with allegedly 2,000 ships and 320,000 men in the direction of the Aegean Sea on. Once there, they searched the numerous objectives of the Aegean area home, including Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus. During the siege of Athens, the historian Dexippos distinguished, who managed to put together a citizen militia to drive out the invaders. Emperor Gallienus succeeded to confront in the spring of 268 the warrior hordes of the Goths and Heruli on their way to Macedonia on the river Nestos and teach them a crushing defeat. But before he could proceed against the invaders, he was called back due to the rebellion of his commander Aureolus, whom he had entrusted with the security of northern Italy, to Italy, where he was still in the same year a conspiracy of his Illyrian officers fell victim.

Claudius Gothicus, the Battle of Naissus and its consequences

The new emperor, Marcus Aurelius Claudius ( the surname Gothicus he was posthumously awarded ), broke immediately into a campaign against the still the Balkan Peninsula devastating warrior droves and it became a part reportedly 50,000 men near Naissus, today's Niš in Serbia, to battle. Even before it came to a battle, the Heruli ran over to Claudius. He managed to win a complete victory. Between 30,000 and 50,000 Goths should be left on the battlefield. This victory enabled the Romans to attack the rest of roving on the Balkan Peninsula Goths and destroy them.

Swell

• Ammianus Marcellinus
• Historia Augusta
• Zosimus