Gwanggaeto himself attacks and conquers Biryu, a small nation located in central Manchuria, during a campaign against Baekje in 395. (Its exact location is not known but it was not very far from the Songhua River.)

Later Qin establishes peace with Later Yan around the new year of 395, thus obviating the likelihood of war on the eastern border—although later in 395, when Later Yan's crown prince Murong Bao carries out a disastrous campaign against Northern Wei's prince Tuoba Gui, Later Qin sends a relief force to aid Northern Wei.

However, Later Qin forces do not actually engage Later Yan.

The Hunnish invasions of the fourth century are the first of the major horse nomad incursions into Europe.

As warriors, the Huns inspire almost unparalleled fear throughout Europe.

They are amazingly accurate mounted archers, and their complete command of horsemanship, their ferocious charges and unpredictable retreats, and the speed of their strategical movements brings them overwhelming victories.

The earliest systematic description of the Huns is that given by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who died after 391.

They are apparently primitive pastoralists who know nothing of agriculture, have no settled homes and no kings; primates, as Ammianus calls them, lead each group.

It remains a matter of dispute whether or not the Huns have a single overall leader in the fourth century, by the end of which they have conquered various Slavic groups living in eastern Europe.

The Huns have brought some of these Slavs with them across the Carpathians to settle in the region between the Tisza and Middle Danube Rivers.

Gregory of Nyssa, a prolific writer, dies in 395, leaving his Great Catechesis, a systematic outline of Christian theology, and a defense of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in his treatises On the Holy Spirit and Ad Ablabium (or Not Three Gods).

He designed his The Creation of Man, an interpretation of the Bible, to complete his brother Basil's Hexaemeron (Six Days).

In his Life of Moses, Gregory portrays the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land as an allegory of the soul's progress toward God.

He also wrote such works on asceticism as On Virginity and a biography of his sister, Macrina (who will later be canonized).

Gregory’s mystical commentaries on the Psalms earn him posthumous renown as the father of mysticism.

An estimated three hundred and thirty thousand acres of farmland lie abandoned in Campania (southern Italy) by 395, partly as a consequence of malaria from mosquitoes bred in swampy areas, but mostly because imprudent agriculture has ruined the land.

The peace between the Visigoths and the Roman Empire has held essentially unbroken, but the serious loss of military manpower in the Gothic War has forced the Roman Empire to rely much more on foederati, of whom the Goths are the largest contingent.

They have adopted many elements of Roman culture, some becoming literate in Latin.

The Goths living in Lower Moesia have meanwhile been converted to Arian Christianity, apparently during the past dozen years.

Following the death of Theodosius on January 17, 395, a few days after his forty-eighth birthday, the Visigothic mercenaries, having suffered severe losses in the campaign against Eugenius and considering their treaty of 382 to have ended with the emperor’s' death, renounce their allegiance to the empire and rebel under the leadership of their chieftain Alaric, who had begun his career leading a band of Gothic foederati.

Alaric charges that his tribe has not been given subsidies promised by the Romans; …

…the Visigoths, taking military advantage of the division between the Empire’s two halves, begin to devastate Thrace, marching eastward toward Constantinople until Roman forces divert them.

They now turn westward to ravage Macedonia.

Theodosius had appeared to recover; his sudden death is generally unexpected.

On his deathbed, he had entrusted Stilicho with the care of his son Honorius in the West, and maintaining unity with the East, which had been entrusted to Arcadius, for whom Rufinus is appointed guardian.

The empire is now officially divided into its Greek (east) and Latin (west) component parts; most of the Balkans fall in the eastern portion.

This had happened many times before in the previous two centuries, but this time it is to be final—the Roman Empire will never reunite, and the Western half will soon fall.

However, from Ambrose's funeral oration, filled with praise of the Christian ruler, it is evident that contemporaries have no doubt as to the continuing unity of the empire, for the question of succession seems to have been settled in the best possible way.

The two regents become enemies at once.

Stilicho has the military advantage, for the army Theodosius had assembled to crush the usurper Eugenius is still concentrated in the West under Stilicho's command.

Stilicho, claiming for the Western government the prefecture of Illyricum, which is disputed between the brother-emperors Arcadius and Honorius, goes with his army to Thessaly.

About to engage Alaric there, however, he receives orders from the weak-willed Arcadius, who acts on Rufinus' advice, to send a number of his troops to Constantinople.

In apparent (or pretended) compliance with the order, Stilicho obeys, cutting short the campaign and giving Alaric's marauding Visigoths the run of the peninsula.

The capture of the empire has begun.