"'The Battle of Adrianople...is well laid out in this clever little book... The battle proved that a raggle-taggle bunch of refugees in animal skins could outfight the best-organized army the world had ever seen, and kill its emperor in the process.' Sunday Telegraph 'One of Italy's finest historians... A brilliantly vivid recreation of events leading to the defeat of the Roman army of the east by the Goths at the battle of Adrianople in 378.' Marc Lambert, Scotland on Sunday * 'Barbero has mastered the vast scholarly output on his subject. He possesses the historian's gift of summarizing a complex situation in a single sentence.' - Raymond Carr, Spectator * 'On the lines of Peter Heather's brilliant The Fall of the Roman Empire... A cracking tale, well researched and beautifully paced.' - Peter Jones, Literary Review * '[Barbero's] lucid, flowing narrative not only brings alive the military leaders and the problems they had to overcome, but also re-creates the lot of the ordinary footsoldiers. Rarely is history recounted in such a stimulating fashion.' - Yorkshire Evening Post * 'Elegant and pleasurable - what a joy it is to read about the ancient world in digestible portions.' - Steve Coates, New York Times"

Alessandro Barbero teaches Medieval Studies at the Universita del Piemonte Orientale. A previous winner of the Strega Prize, Italy's most prestigious literary award, he is the author of The Battle: A New History of The Battle of Waterloo (Atlantic Books, 2005).