When the Goths crossed the Danube in 376, they entered a Roman world that had imposed itself on the landscape for over three-hundred years in the north, and nearer five-hundred in the south, where by 146 BC Macedonia had been conquered and turned into a Roman province. In large measure, the Romans worked with the landscape, rather than against it, but there was one main exception. Aside from the two natural axes of long-distance communication, they forced two additional routes through the Balkans. In the south, and constructed as early as 130 BC, the famous Via Egnatia followed the Aegean coastline from Constantinople to Thessalonica—an easy enough route—but then struck determinedly through the peaks and troughs of the Dinarics to reach the Adriatic at Durres (the Roman Dyrrhachium). Further north, at the end of the first century AD, Roman military engineers carved a road through sheer solid rock at the Iron Gates, where the Danube cuts through the southern extension of the Carpathian Mountains, to connect the Lower and Middle Danube regions. The Balkans was the junction between east and west, and the Empire did not skimp on its highways. Even as late as 376, the Balkans’ prime function, viewed from a central imperial perspective, was to provide a bridge between the two halves of Empire. Many resources were devoted to maintaining the roads, and the towns and way-stations along them. These both protected travelers and provided logistic support that made possible the high-speed connections.

From Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History, London: Pan Books, 2006 (first published in 2005), pp. 169-170.