In fact, one of the Roman demands permitting their emigration was that they surrender the children of the wealthy and powerful to be raised as Romans; this hostage-taking as typical of the times and an effective means of assimilation and integration, as the children generally returned home with Roman ideas in their head.

The immediate cause of the first Gothic revolt was that the Romans simply could not logistically supply the massive number of Goths, the Goths bribed their way out of surrendering their arms as they were required to do, and when the (hungry) Goths encountered a town market they were not allowed to go to (so as to not drive up food prices for local citizens to exorbitant prices), they decided to take what they wanted by force, killing anyone in the way. Then when the Romans attempted to punish them, they decided all agreements were off.