Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 335 - The Battle of The Catalaunian Plains

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Check out our merch store! https://llbdmerch.com/ The Huns go to war against Rome in what turns into one of the bigger "Greater Unifying Theory of Fuck That Guy" Moments in history. Sources: Jordanes. The Getica Bury, John Bagnall. History of the Later Roman Empire. Man, John. Attila: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome. Stoddard, Brooke. The Battle of the Catalunian Plains.

Hey everybody! Lion's Head by Donkeys is live in Belfast at the Oye Music Center Saturday, 26th October. Tickets are still available and if you can't make it to Belfast, good news, we are live streaming it and tickets are still available for that as well. You can find both of the links for either of those tickets, or both, in our show notes, So click on those and get your tickets. Our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, and wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDmerch.com.

So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So if you want something something get your order in. Once again that is LLBDMerch.com and the link will also be in the show notes. Thank you. Hey everybody, and welcome to the Lines of My Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Tom and Nate. We've been welcomed into the court of Attila the Hun. The Huns have swept through our homelands, putting them all to the torch and doing unspeakable

things to our ancient indie record collection. The Hunnic horsemen have just about put us all to the sword when an advisor to Attila appears. He says something to our executioner language we don't understand and we're soon bundled up and taken away. Eventually we're brought before the man himself. He has heard of our exploits far and wide and wants to press us into service because you see Attila the Hun would like to start a podcast. You know it's funny because you're going to talk about metalcore bands and the band Attila, but you know also it's relevant because...

I promise I'm not done yet. A significant part of Hungarian culture is a hit song about suicide that kicks off a suicide crisis and everyone starts killing themselves. I'm not joking. He puts us to work building him a studio in a yurt large enough that he and his co-host, his favorite horse, Frank, could comfortably fit inside. Unfortunately, the Attila experience isn't putting up good numbers because for some reason he insists on only talking about robot related media. Rather than listen to his comment

section telling him to shut the fuck up, he blames us and we're taken out back, put into a bag and stomped to death by Frank. And he said after that quote, I'm a bad motherfucker, not a fucking role model. Fuck a church, hit a bong, smash a fucking bottle. Yeah. Like me and Joe, as soon as I asked him, was like, what are we doing today? He said Attila the hon. And my brain just went like a Gaspar Noe movie, just like tunnel vision into we need to talk about 2010's metalcore band Attila. I honestly I know I'm supposed to be the metalcore guy if I have a music title of the three of

us which is a title I do not want but I had never fucking heard of them despite looking at their touring schedule. You've definitely seen them live. I've definitely seen them live or have at very least been to a warp tour that they were at because I was as everybody knows a warp tour kid though I was not a kid I was at least 20 when this happened but yeah I've never fucking heard of this guy this band led by a guy named Joseph Franzac who seems to be a real piece of shit with a name like that you assume he must be like

from Buffalo and just like everyone in his family. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, photo is him on stage wearing the world's smallest plate carrier for some reason. Like even smaller than your local shitty racist cops would wear. I don't understand, like it has crunk core down as a genre, which makes me think I would rather exist around actual Attila the Hun.

It's kind of crazy that like one Chris Franszzach is around our age, he's only 34. The reason why I thought this was when I was in college, when I was like 18, 19, that's when About That Life, the song I was referencing earlier on, came out. And it was like, we would put that song on and laugh and it was the duality of putting on Attila's About That Life and Xibalba's Hasta la Muerta which is, imagine the heaviest band you've ever seen comprise exclusively of 300 pound Mexicans. I don't understand what era this guy is ever popular in because like none of his genres were ever like, but I remember when Kronkor, a word that when I say it I feel like I taste blood, when that became a thing and everybody just fucking mocked it, like there's blood on the dance

floor famously, P-Dos, led by the world's most known emo sex pest. There was a few other ones which I can't remember because they're dog shit. But he was apparently popular enough to get pretty much every band on Warped Tour to constantly troll him for being a piece of shit to include. Buddy Nielsen, the lead singer of Senses Fail, who called him out for being a homophobe and then just left signs on the Attila merch table saying Attila is homophobic. Like this is so like early 2010s like Sumerian records like jent, if that's a word that anyone listening can

remember. And there was also like, cause we were talking about Attila and then I remembered no, we need to talk about Frankie Palmieri from Amur. If you look up the Wikipedia page for Amur, the continued success and controversy section is incredible and this is the first section. Amur's front man, Frankie Palmieri was subject to controversy in 2012 when a line of t-shirts under his name began being produced that depicted the image of assailants Eric Harrison, Dylan Klebold during the Columbine massacre coupled with the phrase, shoot first, ask questions last. God, what a piece of shit. And another line from the scene in American History, X would states, violence as a way of life. Several journalists criticised the designs as poorly designed and terribly offensive while lacking any purpose

or social commentary other than to stir controversy. What's just weird too, because like that I think is indicative of the culture shift in America because like KMFDM got blamed for Columbine just because they were weird. Yeah. Like heavy music. Yeah. Marilyn Mansonon also because the people who wore their band merch wore black t-shirts and stuff. And then now it's like this can... I mean, okay, controversy, but this wasn't a big enough thing because I wasn't really paying attention to music. I got into French Touch right around this time. So I was just like, oh wow, it's on a BBC four mixtape that

Justice did. Okay. I'm going to listen to it. And that's why I was listening to Hall and Oates as well as Et Etienne de Cressy. Yeah. Well, meanwhile, all these guys were dressed like 2010s, like Swagapinos with like the Chicago Bulls hats and the baseball tees posting like extreme. I was going to say to bring it back on to the topic that we're actually discussing today. Can you imagine a similar, not the same 2010s metalcore, but let's go back a decade and some change. Can you imagine if a Magyar warrior saw Wayne Statick's hair? He would be like, I'm going to do battle with the underworld.

I want to put like a till of the hunt. I'm coming to you as your local Armenian diplomat and just slide an iPod across the table. He puts in the earbuds and he has, he's forced to listen to like attack, attack. And he just takes the earbuds out slowly, draws his sword and kills me and then commit suicide. So before we go into the episode, I just want to finish this paragraph on Frankie Palmieri. If you want to know, this is 2012. It's very indicative of the time. Additionally, Palmieri has been quoted in a variety of online rants. These are all on Twitter.

I was on Twitter seeing these at the time in which he uses the words, the homophobic F word, the N word repeatedly moves, which have caused some observers to label him a racist and homophobe. Bold. Oh God. I was just thinking about that iPad joke. Can you imagine if you were like, you know, across the steps and planes of central Europe going to lay waste, but the historical era in question, which if I tried to guess it

off the top of my head, I'd get it really wrong. But you had one iPod headphone in one ear and it was going great pains. I've gone to get excited. I've gone to lay brain looking for gold. I have become someone else. I mean like if, if we were going to show like a honey warrior, so one song on an iPod, I feel like Nate, you'd be showing them like senses working over time. And I just be like, Oh, here's this band that existed for four months. And like everyone has various either. No, I would just, I would tell them listen to Sister Rae by the Velvet Underground as they it's the best song

and then I get on a horse and ride away as fast as I could by the time they realized what had happened that they'd be like I'd be far enough ahead granted they were famously good horsemen so I'd probably get my ass okay boys so till of the hun we all know him we love him real Attila heads on this podcast a sentence I typed out before I learned about Attila the band. He is what we would call the quintessential barbarian in a way, right? People think of the Huns. People aren't entirely sure where they came from, how they organized, but then they just

appeared. He was known in Rome as the Scourge of God, which, as far as nicknames go on this podcast, easily the best. Yeah, that's pretty sick. If you're trawling through history looking for a cool nickname, it could do worse than that. Yeah. If I am a warrior, I want my reputation to be, God has sent me here as punishment. He rose quickly to take over his people after killing his own brother and press-ganging an empire together at the point of his sword. He quickly became the greatest enemy of both Eastern and Western Roman empires during a time where those empires were not exactly looking so great to begin with. Specifically, the Western Empire was losing ground fast.

The once barbarian tribes that everybody has heard so much about had rapidly turned into organized kingdoms. Britain was lost, Spain was lost, North Africa was certainly going that way. Rome had been sacked and the Empire's capital had been moved to Ravenna. Times were in short, bad. The Roman hold on, well, anything was tenacious at best, but they had just barely managed to secure Gaul, thanks largely to the work of one man named Flavius Aetius. Council and such a close advisor to Emperor Valentinian III, he was known as the man behind the throne. It probably didn't hurt his, you know, behind the scenes hustle factor because he was fucking the Emperor's mom, who also happened to be the regent.

That's what we call job security. It gotta respect the game, you know? Yeah. Like Flavius Aedius is like the name of a rapper from like the slick Rick era, you know? Yeah, I mean, I was just gonna say, Joe, like this definitely sounds like Armenian job security right there.

You talk about hustling at every opportunity. It's like, you didn't have to fuck his mom, but you did. You always have to make sure the foundation is secure. Yes, the child listens to you. Yes, his mom listens to you. But if you get your dick in that mess, nobody can pull you out. It's like army combatives saying, get your hooks in.

Flavius 80 is just like blaring like suavemente while he's like riding a horse through the town to go fuck this dude's wife or mother. Hey, it's back in the day where it could almost be both. Yeah. I mean, Jesus Christ. I'm also just laughing because it's just like, I feel as though at every juncture you start risking having a mental image that start that resembles a night's tale, but it is always very, very funny to imagine any one of these like historical, you know, conflicts, battles, confrontations,

and putting like the stupidest soundtrack you possibly can to it. And like for me, for example, I was like, because we got on this thing about this sort of genre of music and it's sort of precursors, now I'm imagining everything involving the Huns sacking the Eastern Roman Empire and playing Rob Zombie's Dragula. To be fair, it is a better choice than any other band that we've that we're

making fun of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not actual Vlad Tape ish stuff, fucking Romanians, whatever. But it's just like, I don't know, Hungarians are just vaguely vampire. There's just something like about it. There's millions of Romanians who are so angry at you right now. Why? Because was Vlad Tape is not Romanian. I know he was Romanian. You said Hungary. Well, yeah, because the Magyars, the Huns. True. I'm saying the Hungarians. What I'm saying is Attila the Hun, while not a vampire and not Romanian, I pursue. We cannot disprove or confirm that Attila the Hun was a vampire or that until the hunt wasn't Romania and the hunt actually from Cluj-Napoca. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Until the hunt. We found his

sarcophagus in his burial chambers and he's surrounded by catalytic converters. He wrote into battle in a lot of head to toe and Adidas. This is just, this is just the like honey equivalent of whenever like the BBC calls an Irish actor British. Yeah, I don't want to offend our Romanian and Hungarian fans if we have any. And honestly, all of my jabs at Romanians and Hungarians are meant in good taste and good faith. And also, they're like Z-greggs. I don't know that much about them. But I will tell you a quick story before we continue on that one of Milo's friends is Lithuanian and a guy that this guy went to school with got arrested for being part of a stealing catalytic converters gang. And he's like,

I wonder how they found out. And they pulled up this guy's Facebook photo and his profile picture was him standing in a room just surrounded by a huge pile of catalytic converters. Fuck yes, dudes rock. The urge to collect up your spoils in one big pile that happened in the era of Attila the Hun and it happened I often am conflicted as I cycle into the office of like man look at all these unguarded cars in such a nice place I could be sweet like you know Scrooge McDuck but diving into a pool of catalytic converters I mean I'll also say this the Swiss likes because we're so close to the border and it's

just a problem with people coming to the country to steal shit, people lock their bikes up, but they just put like very simple locks like between the wheels and the, you know, and the frame. Yeah, that's all I use. Yeah, yeah. As opposed to, I mean, some of these bikes are nice too. I'm just thinking about like, if you were in London, it would basically be like, like a MySpace crowd swarm fucking flash mob

of people with angle grinders. They'd be renting the world's largest U-Haul, the one that has to be flown in by that plane that got destroyed in the Ukraine war to steal all the bikes. Now at this point, Flavius had spent the better part of 30 years waging war in Rome's northern borders against a growing collection of Germanic tribes like the Franks, the Goths, as a growing Germanic migration into Roman lands caused by a lot of things, natural disasters, the emergence of the Huns. All this fundamentally changed what Rome looked like and Aedius knew and understood that. We actually talked a lot more about this during our Battle of Adrianople series. So rather than going into all of that and the incredibly bad right-wing

theories on what that meant, go listen to that episode instead so we don't have to rehash it. Which is why as the Western Empire continued its slow death, he was integral in slapping tapes over the cracks that were beginning to widen, but not really fixing any of the fundamental problems because there was just too many at this point. For example, the empire was pretty much broke and its ability to project its power through its army was slipping bad. Once upon a time, enlistment in the Roman army was a net positive for the Roman poor.

It was effectively a jobs program with a sick benefits package at the end of a soldier's term of service. I know nothing about this. Roman soldiers putting a down payment on an absolutely sick chariot. I mean, Gaius Marius is effectively the patriot state of the Department of Veterans Affairs of the United States. At this point of the empire's lifespan, all of that was gone because without constant expansion and war, the benefit system of land grants and money and all that could not be propped up.

Another thing that took a hit was the quality of the once renowned Roman military logistics system. Everything a soldier would get from weapons to armor to food was worse than previous generation of soldiers would get. So soon, no Romans saw any point of risking their lives for nothing while the government itself hardly functioned. I'm just imagining Roman zoomers, me like, fuck no, I'm not enlisting. I can make more working at Starbucks, Roman Starbucks. I'm also imagining Roman for-profit colleges to take the SBQRGI bill money. We'll totally train you how to become a professional loot player. The Ravenna branch of the University of Phoenix.

Oh God, you start talking about Ravenna and then you're just going to get me on the tie of the- Banished to the lagoon. Banished to the lagoon, formed Venice to make a more equitable society. Banished from Venice to go make a less equitable society. banish from Venice to go make a less equitable society. Sorry, it's just, it's a whole different thing. The ties that bound everyone together were slowly coming apart. Patrick Wyman actually does a very good job at explaining this over on his show and also on various other guests

that he's done over the years. I am not a Roman historian. He is. Go listen to him. Patrick Wyman, come on the pod. And people felt less and less of a connection to the state, hence the lack of willing service. Aedius and others saw an easy way out of this in the form of immigrants. They had moved in in a large number and many of them served in the Roman military because to them, from where they were coming from and their reality, this shittier version of the Roman military was still a net positive. It still had solid benefits to them and Rome benefited massively from their influx of these Germanic people. These men were effectively conscripts because a lot of these people had to have

agreements with the Roman government, we'll give you X amount of men every year for you giving us land to live on. Right? They paid rent in human flesh. But the arrangement was still largely agreeable. Much like the old Romans before them, these new Romans saw service as a way to improve their standing in society, as well as, you know, pockets and paychecks. However, the number of men they brought in would never be close to actually reaching the peak of Roman military power. And that had to be augmented by mercenaries.

During Aedeas' war in Gaul, he also was assisted by someone else, the fucking Huns. The Romans knew that they would have to deal with the Huns and just chose to give them what they wanted because they knew they didn't have the power to defeat them if they decided to turn their full attention to the front door. You know what's funny because so much of this stuff seems like direct parallels to a lot of things that are happening in the United States with regard to the military, military benefits. I mean, not exactly one-to-one, but you see some themes that are similar.

But then you also have to factor in the concept of the Huns. There's this marauding horde that exists that's just going to come and sack your cities. And the best way I can compare it is, what if everything in America being described is happening, but then also the Juggalos just show up randomly and just burn a city down? The Hunnic Juggalos? Yeah. The gathering of the Juggalos is basically Attila's grand council. Just do whatever you want, man. You're tilling the fields outside of like whatever shitty village you have to live in. You got as your veteran benefits for like 20 years of service, you know, being a literal dirt farmer.

Then you hear hoofbeats. You pick up your head and you look off into the distance here. Whoop whoop. Whoop whoop. Whoop whoop. Like, oh no! Oh God! Yeah, exactly.

You know, you've been spending all this time trying to develop armor that can know that can keep a cleaver at bay They shake up fago bottles and uncork them really fast instead of having yeah Yeah, that that that's that's a honey. Greek fire is just shaking up fago get rock and rye directly to the face Oh my god, dude. Yeah, I This is it is very interesting hearing this. I don't know if you did this, you framed this deliberately, but hearing these details, it's just... Like I said, not saying it's one-to-one direct equivalent, but there are some familiar themes about how the system works and how the system folds in new members and the United States

does this a lot. Of course. The recruiting station that has the, I think the busiest recruiting station in America, but certainly the percentage of a zip code or a population served by a recruiting station for the US military that has the largest participation rate in terms of the largest numbers of recruits per capita is... Do you know it? Isn't it like American Samoa? Well done. Yeah. American Samoa. Yes. Yes. Like it's, yeah, that is a hundred percent

how the American system works too. You know? And I mean, how many times do like right-wingers frame like the quote, barbarization of Rome as the reason it's downfall. And the same guy will post like a picture of like us army basic training. And it's just like people who aren't white and like this is why we're gonna lose to Russia in a War the same kind of guy believes in both of these things Yeah, yeah name for that is just a racist. They also believe that the Roman Empire fell apart because people were too gay Yeah, yeah, but that was the only thing holding it together Yeah, it's gonna say hands across the Roman Empire. Both just dicks and asses all the way down. Well, I mean it was. It's hands across the Roman Empire, but it was just dicks and asses all the way down.

Well, I mean, it was, oh, so it's an HR guy. Forming an Ouroboros of Roman soldiers, bombing each other. But I mean, that's the thing too. It's like when the Queen Mother got someone like, Queen Elizabeth's mom basically was told by one of her advisors that she should like fire all the homosexuals in the court. And she was like, we literally wouldn't have any staff. Like, it's the same kind of thing, you know, the Romans, they just needed, they needed everyone to be gay. They needed a significant percentage, just like they needed a significant

percentage of people to enlist. They needed a significant percentage of people to be gay. Otherwise the system just won't work. Yeah. They won't have enough people to staff the power bottom brigade. Now the Romans gave fat tributes, land, all that stuff, to the Huns in order to keep Roman Gaul in hand, at least for the time being. But it was during this time that Attila killed his own brother, Boletta, because at the time they were kind of ruling the Huns. They had united the many, many different tribes as well as pressed smaller non-Hunnic people

into their army at the point of a sword, and they of ruled jointly. Bleda was the moderate. He believed in rather than taking Roman land that the Huns could leave like fucking kings by just the implicit threat of their existence and constantly get tributes. Whereas Attila was like fuck that I want that for me. Betta was the guy like, no, let's just show up. Be like, you can't stop us. Make with the fucking sack of money, right? Make with the comical, like Roman sacks of gold so we can live like kings.

Where Attila's like, no, I want their cities. I want Rome. Yeah. So now Bletta's dead. When Attila came storming through, driving more migrants into Roman land, you can't blame him a lot, like the Huns would force people to join them, but not all of them.

Some people just got wiped out. Being on the wrong side of Attila was a very, very bad fucking day. He first hit the Eastern Empire, getting as far as the walls of the capital and into Greece, before the empire paid him, like a king's fucking ransom to leave him alone. Like, it was not only a massive upfront payment, but a yearly tribute. It was huge. So then he turned his attention towards the West. Everyone knew the Romans were weak and were looking to exploit it. Gasseric, the king of the Vandals, goaded Attila into attacking Roman Gaul, because the Visigoths had driven him from his lands in Spain and Gaul, causing him to develop an undying hatred for the Visigoth king, Theodoric I.

Now Theodoric also hated the Romans, but he had more of a tendency to work with the Romans when things got tough, and for example, he was looking over and saw the Huns kind of getting close to him with growing nervousness. Gasseric told Attila, if you conquer my previous lands, my people and I will return and willingly bend the knee to him. Funny side note here though, Gasseric encourages Attila to invade Roman Gaul, but never takes part in it. Like you guys just go ahead and do it without us. I think this is a really good smart move.

Personally I will not be involved, but I think you should do it. Yeah. I want, I don't want this for myself. I think you deserve the honor of doing this. You're the only one who can do this. He's a hype man that benefits when you know, the person he's hyping up wins because he gets a cut of that fucking purse or whatever, you know? Yeah, he's standing behind Attila the Hun, shouting, guerrilla warfare.

I'm still mad nobody's done this at a live show. I'm so. I mean, the thought crossed my mind, too, of just like the guy who hypes up his friends to get in a fight in the bar or something and then just doesn't join in. Yeah, happens to be taking a cigarette break while it's happening. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? Go get, go sack the Roman empire.

Yeah, you can do it buddy. There is another cause for war that Attila found that this one is kind of unconfirmed, but it's entered into the greater historical narrative as something that could have happened. This is one of those parts in history that a lot of what we know about it is from one or two people, and a lot of it is just unconfirmed. A lot of it is very clearly untrue,

but this one is kind of funny. And that was in the form of the emperor's sister, Honoria. Now, the emperor sold her off into a marriage to a Roman senator that she fucking hated, and she wanted to get out of the marriage. So she sent a letter along with a ring to Attila promising her hand in marriage if he came and saved her. Attila sent an emissary to Ravenna saying he's come to claim what is his, that being Honoria, and in marriage, which of course would make him related to

the Emperor of Rome. Of course they were like, fuck no we're not doing that, and that gave him a cause for war. Though it is very funny to think about Attila the Hun being a guy looking for like, you know, a legitimate reason to go to war. I would also say that based on our previous comparison that's sort of implying that like in order to get out of an arranged marriage someone in like the royal family of someplace in Europe sends off the thing saying violent Jay. I will marry you if you just save me Send your jugalow hoards to the gates of Vienna or whatever or Ravenna come to Ravenna and we'll have a gathering of the jugalows It would be like if the jugalows invaded the Netherlands because the the king offers the princess's hand to some like I don't know weird British monarch

Princess of no, I won't marry him. I'm gonna marry Shaggy to do I will go to his homeland of Detroit I will say that violent Jay sounds like name that a hun could have quite frankly like if you translated it You know like it to me. That's why I had to pick him Yeah, this is this is a till of the hun his chief of staff Violent J and his aid to camp shaggy to tope Yeah, a couple of you know C and D tier Detroit rappers surrounding him in his inner circle You know, they're like the Swiss Guard. I'm mixing metaphors here the Swiss Guard of the jugaloo

Honest long as the jugaloo get to dress up as the Swiss Guard while wearing Juggalo face paint, I'm all in. Honestly, I think this is like a really funny idea for a kind of Bill and Ted style movie, just like transport ICP to different periods of like military history. It all end up the same way. They become the world's best diplomats because they're just the most accepting people in the world's best diplomats because they're just the most accepting people in the world. Yeah. Just sending, uh, ICP to like honey era and it'd be like magnets. How do they work?

And you know what? Not getting scared until the hones like scratching his chest. Like how do magnets work? Yeah. I mean, that was just saying like with all the things that they're talking about in, in miracles, like most of those hadn't been discovered at the time. And so like they would actually seem like wizards and sages. Yeah. The song just called miracles. It just actually becomes about miracles because everyone's as confused as they are. They're just sitting around like a small pit fire inside a yard and Attila huns leading it to like, so tell me more about this dark carnival.

It replaces Christianity is the world's major. That's the real schism that Martin Luther was protesting against was the ICPification of Christianity. The holy sea would just be on like Lafayette street in Detroit. Yeah, we can basically say that in that then all the racists would be talking about our shared Juggalo Christian heritage. Yeah, like all of those weird converts on Twitter are just posting themselves in clown face paint. Oh god.

Now, Attila rode into Gaul in the spring of 451, facing virtually no opposition. Aedius was a smart man and knew sending his army out to oppose Attila would have accomplished nothing rather than having a bunch of dead soldiers. Rather than rallying his forces to meet Attila in battle, he began conducting a northern Roman diplomatic spree. As I point out before, the Visigoth kingdom was caught right in the middle of Attila's crosshairs thanks to the Vandals, something that Aedius knew. He also knew that Theodoric I, the Visigoth King, not only hated Rome, but hated Aedius personally. They had a fucking personal beef going by, like going past through the last several years.

They had fought each other on the battlefield multiple times. They had attempted to assassinate one another. They fucking hate one another. They also happened to be the two most powerful forces standing against Attila in the west. So while Attila and his army were ravaging the countryside, Aedius and Theodoric sat down agreeing that yeah we still fucking hate one another, but we can deal with that later because if we don't bury the beef, neither of them are going to have much of a country to rule over once Attila was done with them.

But that wasn't all. As Attila sacked and plundered, Aetius' diplomatic mission continued, making a tour of all the various different people who hated the Romans, but was also directly in the path of the Huns. As this old saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Or as we say on this show, the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy. Yeah, you get basically you you become so powerful and so annoying that you cause all of your haters to form up like Voltron. The homies hater squad. In the case of Aedius, all of the haters formed together to a Voltron who also fucks the Emperor's mom. Yeah. I mean, look, at this period of history and the sort of like, you know, I don't want to say like venal, but just like the level of the stuff that would become the progenitor

of, you know, Byzantine scheming, like it's just a given that these sorts of things are going to be happening. Yeah. There's a fucking someone's mom for love and then fucking them for political advantage. You know what I mean? Like there's probably in Byzantine Greek, there's probably specific words for this. I mean, because I'm friends with Milo, I know that there's a verb in ancient Greek that specifically means to stick a radish in a man's ass. So you know what I mean? I'm sure that they've got particular words for these things.

It's just another day at the office for ADS. I have to file tax paperwork. The Emperor's mom's thirsty as hell today. Can you file expenses for your travel to and from fucking the Emperor's mom? Because it's technically a business expense. Get HMRC tax relief from the Roman Empire. Hahahaha! Horny from the Roman Empire. Horny Moms Revenue Company. Fucking Aedius just sitting in the palace flipping through his phone, hot moms in your

area wanna fuck? Oh shit, I turned my VPN off. I don't want to go to Ravenna. Soon he slapped together an alliance full of previous enemies like the Franks, the Burgundians, the Alans, and the Visigoths. Though there's a good reason why Aedius was wholly dependent on these people as allies. According to Sidonius, the army Aedius was able to form, like in Rome's case, was quote, a few sparse auxiliaries without one regular soldier. Rome's army kinda sucked.

Now the Alliance just needed a place to force Attila to fight them, and they found it, because Attila had continued his march, making it to a city called Aurelium, which was a strategic target for a lot of reasons. For one, it guarded the crossing of the Lior River, and second, it was the main way that an invading army could cross into Aquitaine Gaul. The Huns quickly put the city to siege, surrounding it by land, as well as for what were normal Hunnic warfare tactics sent other columns out into the countryside to raid smaller towns and villages.

The Huns were not exactly the best at siege warfare due to their lack in knowledge of siege weapons, so they would depend on starving the city to its knees. This is where the Allies decided to target them, as the main Hun forces split up and pinned into a siege. In some accounts of the story, Attila quickly broke the siege off, ordering his forces to withdraw nearly 100 miles northeast, while the full force of his men stopped what they were doing and rallied around his flag miles northeast while the full force of his men stopped what they were doing and rallied around his flag, all while the allied force was at his heels. While in other accounts, the Huns had already sacked their way through the city's outskirts,

made their way to its main walls, and were lying waste to its interior before the allies showed up, at which point Attila ordered the siege broken off because fighting in the confines of a city when you're mostly mounted on horseback puts you at a disadvantage. It's also framed as like a just in the nick of time type thing where the Alon King who was in the city and ally to the Romans was just about to surrender to Attila and switch sides only for Attila to be chased off the last second before he made his decision. Then of course he stays with the Romans. Whatever fucking happened, Attila was prepared for his withdrawal, leaving a string of forces along the road behind him to act as a kind

of tactical delaying force to engage the enemy while he looked for a battlefield that would be best suited for his forces, namely a clear flat ground that made it advantageous for him to use his almost entirely horse-based army. Imagine how shit that fucking deployment would be, or like that assignment of, yeah just stand on the road, you're probably gonna die, but you are the goo that's gonna clog up this machine. That's right. You're the stick and the spokes.

I was actually thinking in a different direction. You were talking about the Roman army being pretty cobbled together and poorly trained and not very cohesive. And I'm now wondering, is there going to be like a saving private Lynch story about this battle? Like the shitty maintenance company gets off track, none of their weapons work. They don't know how to use them. They can't land nav.

Like, is the Roman army going to create a sort of like training course so that they make sure everyone knows how to use a compass? They hadn't invented it yet. So I don't know what divining one they're pulling out a sex test. Yeah. I don't think they had sextants man. Like I don't know how they navigated because I'll not pretend to know this era particularly well, but they navigated through the celestial benefit of their worship of the dark carnival. Right. So what you're basically saying is that they, uh, they could identify the location

of the great Malenko and that was like their North star. They dump Fago onto the ground, kind of like, you know, uh, reading animal guts. And that is how they decide how to do. Yeah. Like, listen, they, they don't know how magnets work, but they can understand land navigation, you know, the jugalos are inherently connected to the stars and like the celestial bodies that surround us. You know, I mean, like imagine it's 2006 and you're too stoned to read printed out map quest directions. You're basically recreating this entire experience while going to the gathering of the jugalos. I have had that experience, you know, so yeah, it's universal.

Now eventually they did find their prepared battlefield on the Cataloonian plains. If you guys hadn't noticed, like I said, this is one of those subjects where much of the fine details are not known. One of the things we kind of have no idea about is exactly how many men took to the field under Attila's command. The older the sources are, the higher the number tends to be, with some saying he had 300,000 men under his command. However, modern research says that would have been impossible for two main reasons. One is my favorite thing, simple logistics.

The Hun armies lived off the land through forage and plunder. It's not like they had a quartermaster giving out MREs to people. To make a very long and boring story short, there is no way the surrounding land could have supported an army of that size. Ironically, the same correction to the Romans is made. They often said they had like a hundred thousand men, but that's also probably incorrect for the same reasons. The best anyone could come up with is Attila probably had 70,000 or so while the Romans and their allies fielded about 45,000 in

total. Apparently the largest number of attendees for a gathering of the jugalos has been over 20,000. So while it's not quite the same here we're still kind of in the same, you know, the same tens column is basically... It's a solid auxiliary force, like it's a solid reserve core of jugulose. I mean, you could utilize the jugulose corporeality of doing Angus Khan and firing them into cities as a bio weapon, but they're still alive. I was just thinking, because the gathering of the jugulose can't exactly forge off the land either, but they didn't have late Roman Empire village pantry. So like, I don't know how they would have conducted

resupply either, you know, put into this environment, they might be equally helpless. If you, if you put 20,000 jugulose in a field, they will pick the Fago crop clean in a matter of hours. Yeah, I was going to say like, yeah, yeah, don't you've been, you've been pillaged, but nothing don't worry. All of the food that has nutritional value has been left untouched. All the Doritos and Fagoh are gone. Yeah. All of your cigarettes, all of your alcohol, everything is gone. Anything smokeable or any kind of mushroom that makes you trip.

There's no frogs left because people are just licking the hell out of them. But like your actual grain stores untouched. I mean, you could deploy 20,000 jugulose and like take over any city, defeat any army because who's more resourceful than 20,000 methods donate to the patron. And we will fund the caravan that right wingers are so terrified about, but it's just, it's only going to be jugulose. There's just literally like 20,000 jugulose facing off against the huns.

And they're desperately trying to figure out do horses contain copper? Yeah, 20,000 jugalos are going to be put up on blocks. Yeah, 20,000 jugalos take the field and then there's 40,000 posts on Facebook being like I can't believe he's at the gathering of the jugalos slash battle when he should be paying child support. Just tell them there's an unattended meth lab on the other side of the whole army. Weirdly we do know one thing for sure.

The exact day of the battle. June 20th, 451. The reason for this, you guys want to take a guess? I don't know. Haley's Comet. Ah. Ah. Aedius witnessed it in the sky and wrote about it before the battle was set to begin, and

he took it as an omen that Attila would be doomed. Attila himself though was getting his own omens, not from a comet, but from his seers. The tradition was to have the seers read the entrails of an animal before battle while also burning the bones and reading the cracks that spread across them. And his omens were fucked. The seers told him that the Huns would lose, but a great leader on the other side would die in the process.

The omens made Attila's subordinate leaders want to back out and reassess their plans because obviously the gods were pissed. But Attila instead said, I don't need any fucking omens, I'll win the battle anyway. And he did have a few tricks up his sleeve to help him with that. Attila watches the Roman allied army formed up for the battle in the field that morning. So he decided to just make them wait, keeping his army in camp for hours, forcing the Romans and their allies to just stand out there in the morning sun in full kit.

This was more than just a troll job or just making them sit in the sun. Maybe he was taking those omens into account or maybe he was just a good military commander. I know which one I believe. But if he arrayed his forces and went into battle in the morning, that meant if anything went badly, he would be withdrawing in broad daylight, making it much easier for the Romans and their allies to find and catch him. If he waited until the afternoon, it meant he would most certainly be able to withdraw in the darkness if things went badly, which would protect him and make his withdrawal from the field easier. Attila sent his men to line up, taking personal command of his almost entirely horse-mounted army. Aedius and his allies knew exactly what the Huns were going to do. After all, Hunnic

tactics were simple but highly effective. It was a massive cavalry charge directly at the enemy's center, which would break right through it, at which point they could turn back around, surround the flanks and mop them up after any kind of enemy cohesion was broken. Yeah, it's hard to fight against, you know, an entire legions worth of people from Essex and Fiat 500s like charging at you. I mean, I do find it very funny that like whatever the doctrinal manual was for training Hunnic infantry and or cavalry threat tactics, it a book, very, very thin, and you open

it up and it's just one page just says, horse. It's just a picture of the horse, not even a word. A horse with jugulo paint. Yeah. If anyone is listening, please, please draw a Hunnic soldier in jugulo paint. In one episode we have said the Huns were jugalos. We have replaced the Catholic church with the holy sea of Detroit. And yeah, we've done a lot here today that I'm not proud of. Whole lot of work in less than 50 minutes. Yeah. I'm just now I'm just laughing. Hunnic FM seven dash eight. Big picture of a horse. A horse with an arrow pointed forward.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then like a sort of Ikea direction of don't do this with you saber slashing someone's head. And it's just the guy in the Ikea catalogs, the little line drawing guy. Exactly. Instead of looking confused, he's just running away as a, yeah, as, as exultant Hunnic Ikea guys also. Maybe the spirit of Ikea is like a direct continuation of the

Hunnic infantry manual. Like that's where the ubiquitous picture. Once again, Romania back at the picture. Yeah. I was going to say the ubiquitous picture, the picture that supersedes all language of the Ikea drawings, it actually draws from Hanuk training where you had like a tanned leather hide field manual and it's just a picture of horse and then guy running away. The reason why I said Romania back in the picture is because one of the reasons that IKEA was able to make very, very cheap furniture for a very, very long time was a deal they

made with Nicolae Ceaușescu to get very, very cheap timber from Romania in exchange of personally funding his secret police. This is very funny because number one, you're correct. Romania at the time had some of the only remaining old growth forests in Europe. Number two, in my apartment, there is some strange, this rental apartment, some strange furniture. It's kind of like what you might call like weirdly sort of approximated, counterfeit, Venetian art deco style stuff of like,

and it's like what we call sideboards, but one like regular size and one huge one, and a dining table, all the same size. Well, I was playing with my daughter the other day and I happened to notice a stamp on the bottom of the table and I looked at it and it said, basically the acronym for office, for the conservation of natural resources,

Bucharest, Romania. It's all back to Romania, baby. I've got, yeah, counterfeit Italian art deco furniture in this apartment that was probably in Nicolae Czesieski's, you know, biggest building on earth palace. We're like, we're eating Sarmale. We're eating Kurtis Kulaks and arguing with Hungarians over who invented it. We're funding or sending timber to Ikea. It's all coming together.

Exactly. You know what? We need this many rooms in our palace because everyone's mandated to have at least five children. This will not have any downstream effects. Maybe it was like a circular economy thing that like Ikea funded Nicola Tshuchescu. He got free furniture to fill out his palace. Worst furniture ever. He was sitting there struggling, trying to put it together. It's like, this is fucking ridiculous. They didn't even send me the right tools. Don't break my heart anymore because I have to buy IKEA furniture for our place when we get it.

Does it surprise you that a country where the median income is over a hundred thousand dollars and the median adult wealth is over four hundred thousand dollars? Furniture that's not IKEA is fucking insanely expensive. I believe it as someone who had to furnish an apartment in the Netherlands. Do I want to buy the ugliest couch you've ever seen from IKEA and it's five hundred francs or the ugliest couch you've ever seen from Ikea and it's 500 francs or the ugliest couch you've ever seen from a nice company that's 7,000 francs. That's why most of my apartment is Ikea for that exact reason. Both of them are called Couch with a J in it or something.

Yeah. I mean, it's really funny. I know we got to get back to it, but like it's very, very funny because some of the other companies around here, you know, French companies, Swiss German companies, et cetera, they do the same Ikea style of having names for the models of things in all caps. But like some of the really wilder ones, like they really obviously don't speak English because one of them was a dining table called Spicy and I'm not joking was a couch called Spliff J.

Shit's Violet J's couch. Exactly. He's actually Swedish. You know, I left the great Milenko and got really into making tables. Why in the fuck is a Swiss guy Dutch Tom? I don't know. They all sound the same. No, Swiss people sound like Germans with head trauma.

Now, from my experience. Swiss Germans definitely, yeah. Aedius and his allies prepared for this Hunnic tactic. Most armies of the day put their strongest units at the center because it is the most important thing to hold. But the Huns depended on that. You break the strongest part of any army, the flanks are easy to mop up. So instead, Aedeas would hit him with the uno reverse card. He put his weakest at the center, the Alans, which I'm going to bet they were not told that this is why they are at the center. Listen up bro, we're putting you here cause you fucking suck.

Yeah, little known fact WB Yates actually wrote the second coming about this battle. The center cannot hold. Maybe he did. I love the searching look in your eyes Nate. Just like, trying to remember, trying to remember, trying to remember. Oh yeah. Isn't it the one like this is the way the world ends not with a bang with a whimper. That's the poem in question right? Yeah. Okay. That's what I was thinking.

Yeah. I mean, who knows? You know what? Like he was busy, you know, smelling Maud Gantz farts. He was writing poems about the Hons. He got some of the good absinthe that did make you trip, you know, they still had some left. Yeah. I mean, what gets me about this is it is very funny to be like the kind of attaboy, like you're the mo you're the decisive element of the battle. No one tell them they saw yeah yeah once again i will reference kung pao enter the fist like we trained him incorrectly on purpose as a joke

the idea was to stick the alans there to hold as long as they could assuming they would break pretty rapidly then as it began to collapse as everyone knew that they would break pretty rapidly. Then, as it began to collapse, as everyone knew that they would, the right and left flanks of the allied forces made up of the Romans and the Visigoths would fold in on the Huns, effectively letting Attila murder his way into a classic double-envelopment and cut off his line of retreat. As the battle was set to begin, Attila turned towards his men and said, quote, You know how slight a matter the Roman attack is. While they are still gathering in order and forming in one line with locked shields, they are checked, I will not say by the first wound, but even by Alliance is proof of cowardice Attack the Alans smite the Visigoths seek swift victory in the spot where the battle rages Let your courage rise and your own fury burst forth

There's just some shit that Douglas Murray would write now about Muslims. Oh Fuck that guy. I Was thinking that was something more along the lines of like, effectively creating is like a Hungarian spanakopia. Like they're going to get the meaty center and they're going to fold layer upon layer on top of it of flaky pastry crust, you know what I mean? And so this is what a delicious way to die. Exactly.

They're gonna make a delicious meal out of a till of the hun. I hate to be the flaky crust around the gooey center of a military formation. I don't know what you call any of my military service, but I feel like gooey center is more in line with most of it than flaky crust. I felt quite gooey, I'll say. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. I would also say that I'm sure the Hungarians have an equivalent of spanicopia, but like

it's written in the Hungarian language. And so when you encounter it, it's like you've read the secret curse tablet from a fucking, I don't know, like HP Lovecraft story that this combination of letters makes a man go insane. Are you either going to make a nice flaky dessert or meal, or are you summoning demons from 40K? We'll never know. We'll never know. But I will say that the Cthulhu language and the Hungarian language,

they're not the same, they're not similar, but similar levels of consonants with no vowels, let's just be honest here. And like, whatever respect is due to Hungarians, and I don't necessarily know how much is. Sorry. Sorry guys, you know what? We just lost the one listener to this show who's really into Opus Dei. Beautiful neoclassical architecture. I don't know why I find that as being one of the funniest things ever uttered on this

show. Beautiful romantic and Baroque architecture. The only culture in Central Europe that loves hot peppers. I do respect some things about the Hungarians, but I will say the Hungarian language, why? Just just just, just why? For once you've said that about a different language other than Dutch. Now no matter how much Attila was in his own alliance, as well as like cursing alliances, cowardices, that whole speech is kind of funny to me.

Then the Huns and their allies, of course, charged forward, targeted directly at the Roman center. What happens next is best described by Jordaens in targeted directly at the Roman center. What happens next is best described by Jordaine's in his history of the Goths. Quote, hand to hand they clashed in battle and the fight grew fierce, confused, monstrous, and unrelenting. A fight whose like no ancient time has ever recorded. There are such deeds done that a brave man who missed this marvelous spectacle could not hope to see anything so wonderful in all his long life. For, if we may believe our elders, a brook flowing between two low banks through the plains was greatly increased by blood from the wounds of the slain.

Those whose wounds drove them to slake their parching thirst, drank water mingled with gore. In their wretched plight, they were forced to drink what was the blood that they poured out of their own wounds. Metal. Metal as fuck. Yeah, I would say two things. Number one, this sounds like it would be narrated and then sampled for use in like a Ghostface Killah or Jizza album. This is 100% the lyrics from God. What's the band that makes all the fucking songs of like ancient battles, every bad prog rock band in the seventies queen. I don't know. Tom,

maybe you know better. Like sabaton. There we go. I don't know them. I was going to say, but point number two I was going to make was Attila's speech. You could basically rephrase that a little bit and becomes like oh You're gonna form a lot an alliance with a bunch of different groups of people because you want to hang out with dudes You just want to have surround yourself with a bunch of guys. All right, no homo Like it's very very much like oh, oh, oh you're making an alliance with other people. What are you gay? Everybody knows diplomacy is part of the gay agenda.

All things military holding true forever is just a guy like shaving a dick into the side of his horse. Yeah, exactly. The Hungarians like they have their tanned leather hide field manual with drawing of horse, but then they also have the ones they leave behind. That's just a huge cock and balls. Trying to jerk it behind the shitting bush while that one's looking. See the Romans and them should have been able to fucking bond over that. They're carving dicks at everywhere. Yeah. I'm just laughing. It's like the Hungarians, you know, the huns constantly on the move. So they probably don't have Porter shitters that you can then draw gigantic dicks on. So they had to, they have to adapt to carve it to their horse. Just

getting a blade and just shaving it along the length of the horse. Can you imagine like you basically shave the drawing of a cock and balls into the side of a horse and then like the joke that never ends is everyone, every single opportunity you point to someone and be like, Hey man, your horse is ready. Oh, I see it's your horse over there. Yeah. What is your job in the, in the Hun camp? Oh, I'm, I, I shave dicks into the sides of horses. I'm not much, I'm not much of a warrior. Would be terrifying though, if you're on the opposing force and you see loads of horses stampeding towards you with dick shaved into them.

The stampede of dicks. And as savage and brutal as all this was, somehow despite everyone assuming that they wouldn't, the Alans held. But they were being slowly pushed back after fighting for hours. Not making headway, the Huns swung around and crashed into the left flank, where the Visigoths were. King Theodoric ran forward to encourage his men, but in the middle of all of it, his horse bucked him off and he was trampled to death by his own men. In some tellings, he's gotten paled by a flying javelin, and then he was trampled to death. Either way, once again flip open page horse. Theodoric is dead. The idea guy just has the fucking Lance of St. Longinus through his chest. Theodoric is making third impact. Wasn't it Theodore

Roosevelt's son or grandson who was like really old, but was actually like fighting on the beaches at Normandy. And it's like, imagine that guy, but he somehow manages to not just get his trousers, but his actual dick caught in the door of the Higgins boat. And that's basically what happened to Theodore. You're supposed to be good with a horse. It's kind of the thing. I know that the Visigoths aren't the Huns, but like in this era and you are, you know,

you're Germanic European fucking barbarians. Like this is kind of your thing Yeah, your pages horse the Huns were the original high school horse girls Like they were just like putting stickers on their binders of horses You know they were like pretending to trot around the schoolyard much like Ken from Barbie the Huns only have one job It is horse Ken from Barbie, the Huns only have one job and it is horse. Now finally the Alans began to break. This chucked a giant wrench into Aedeas' plans though.

The Alans were supposed to break a long time ago, and now with Theodoric dead, his best and strongest allies, the Visigoths, were leaderless and were about to retreat without their warrior king to shore them up. But just as everything was about to go rapidly, horse tits up, Prince Thorismund, Theodoric's son, came charging into battle, bringing his heavy cavalry with him. This was enough to crash into the Hunnic left flank and break it. The Alans now accidentally doing their part of the battle that they were unaware of and collapsing meant

Aedius could order his men into battle on Attila's right. Attila seeing he was about to be cut off, surrounded and fucked Ordered his men to retreat back to their camp rather than fleeing from the battlefield altogether His camp had been reinforced in the traditional Hanic way of drawing up a massive circle of wagons, and he hid behind it. It was fortified and reinforced with dirt and stuff like that, but it was enough to be something of an ad hoc fort in a way. And then he decided to figure out just what the hell happened, how many men had he lost, all of that. But more than likely, Attila was also doing something else. He was reinforcing his own political power amongst his allies, as he was a man, again, known as the Scourge of God, who had never lost a battle. Who had, in fact, just lost a battle. So this was not good for him politically. Most of his forces were kept in line through terror, fear of Attila. So now that he had lost, well, then he's not so terrifying anymore, is he?

So by keeping everyone in place in the camp, he solidified his hold over them, rather than letting them scatter to the wind and retreat, which could very easily turn into an outright rout if the Romans and their allies pressed him, which is exactly what he would have done. But that didn't happen. When the fighting stopped on the field, the area had been turned into a fucking charnel house. Bodies were stacked up waist high in some places, and everyone had been thrashed.

The Huns may have left the battlefield, but the result was, at best, a complete stalemate. And when Prince Thorisman demanded that his forces be allowed to go and attack the Hunnic camp in revenge for his father's death by horse, he was refused by Aetius, telling him they needed to conserve their strength for a possible future battle. This may or may not have been true. Aetius was the Emperor of Rome in all but name, and was no stranger in politicking his way to the top of any given scenario, which is why he had been leading this battle as a politician more than a military commander. The Alans were his weakest ally, so he threw them to the wolves, and hid his forces back

in reserve the entire time. Even while Theodoric and his Visigoths were being hammered, the king being killed, he never committed his Romans. He knew the Visigoths would have their swords pointed right back at him as soon as and if the Huns were taken care of. So he left them to get butchered without so much as lifting a finger, probably hoping that Theodoric would be killed in the process, which of course he was.

Aedius also had the only sizeable Roman army in the entire empire with him, so it was in his best interest to allow the temporary allies to get butchered while slaughtering his enemies. So in the end, no matter the outcome of the battle, the Roman army would be the strongest force left standing. His plan was to stop the Hunnic invasion at the expense of everyone but himself, putting the Romans in the best possible position to go forward. And it worked. Aedius' losses aren't known, but they're thought to be fucking minimal. A few hundred people at most. The Alans suffered 70% or more casualties, and the Visigoths lost almost half. Tens of thousands were dead. The Huns lost 40-ish percent. Nobody's really sure, but thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people were dead. Even with

that, neither side retreated from the battlefield, nor pushed for a decisive conclusion. So there they sat, in a field of corpses, piled up all around them for two days. Thorismund was immediately named the new king of the Visigoths, and together he and Aedius agreed to surround and besiege the Hanic camp, at least for a little while. Aedius was only temporarily in the stronger position, and he knew as this went on, Thorismund would become the center point for glory in the field of battle, which of course would solidify his rule over his people, and possibly he could get reinforcements. This is effectively what his dad had done years before. Not to mention, despite their losses, the Visigoths were still stronger than the Romans

on the field at the time. Once again, Aedius became a politician rather than a military commander. The two of them could have easily ended Attila the Hun right then and there. Attila had no supplies to speak of, as his army depended almost entirely on foraging. They were cut off, they couldn't leave the camp, there was no hope for reinforcements, they had him dead to rights. Aedius took one look at Thorsman's force and realized, we fucking kill Attila now, this kid is gonna kick my goddamn ass down the boot of Italy within a week. So Aedius told Thorismen that, look, we have spies in southern Gaul, and they're telling me that your brothers are gonna challenge your claim to the throne, and the only way

to secure that is immediately take your men and go home. This opened a hole in the Roman siege lines, which allowed Attila and his men to ride right through escaping certain destruction, which Aedius let him do. Aedius prolonged the war to weaken his allies and strengthen Rome, and you know what? It kinda worked, at least for a little while. However, eventually, Aedius would politic too close to the son. By 453, he was still working behind the scenes of the imperial court, marrying his son to Emperor Valentinian's daughter, and was working on putting their eventual son on the throne.

This wouldn't even be the first time he was plotting the downfall of the man he'd been controlling for 30 years, but the emperor was finally led in on this whole plot by a Senator named Patronus Maximus. All the politicking of the time just comes down to fucking someone's mother. Sometimes it's your wife, sometimes it's someone else's mother. That's right. And it's finally after hearing about this plan, Valentinian decided to act. While Aedius was in Ravenna delivering a boring-ass financial report to the Emperor, Valentinian decided to act. While Aedius was in Ravenna delivering a boring ass financial report to the Emperor, Valentinian suddenly jumped up from the throne,

pulled out a knife and stabbed him to death. Yeah, it's just like, listen, sometimes those KPMG consultants are really super boring and you want to stab them and he followed through on it. This is just what happens to like like McKinsey specialists in Rome. Yeah. You know, in Q4 look, um, grain prices, they're really stable, but I feel like we could be generating more revenue. So I think maybe we should increase the price of bread. You know, the peasants can really bear that, you know, extra couple of pieces of gold. I think it'd be good for the economy. I didn't just fucking knife through the neck. So you're basically envisioning the fate of Gothic slash Roman in the fifth century, Pete

Buttigieg, his ancestors who traveled up from Malta to the Eastern Roman Empire. That's right. In order to get people to charge more denarii for bread and winds up getting stabbed. If only. I mean, South Bend would probably be a better city for it. I'm not going to say anything that has to be bleeped out. Roman capital, South Bend. Maximus, the man who told the emperor about this plot leading to Aeteus' death, congratulated the emperor because he expected to be made patrician and take Aedius's place, but he wasn't. Maximus got pissed off and plotted with two of Aedius's friends to kill the Emperor and the man

he had promoted in his stead. So on 16th of March 455, about six months later, they enacted their plan, all while surrounded by soldiers who did nothing because they had all still been loyal to hideous. Apparently unaware that the man that they are now working for had killed their boss. I guess another little after thought to this episode. Attila got really drunk at his wedding and died of a nosebleed as one does. It's like theorize that he was poisoned, which is possible. Once again, the Huns are spiritually Essex. He hit the bag

too hard at his wedding and got a fatal nosebleed. Yep. Yep. Happens to the best of us. The end. That is the story of the Battle of the Catalunian Plains. Where does the great Milenko figure into the end of this? I mean, obviously the we all still follow the one true church the Holy See of Detroit Yeah, and the light of the carnival Yeah for the offer tree procession at mass and everything instead of putting money in the basket You put a piece of copper in you know, yeah You drink your tiny little cup of Faygo. Yeah fellas. We do a thing on the show called question from the Legion I feel like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show on Patreon. You can ask

us through Patreon messages or in our Discord, which you'll also have access to once you become a supporter and you can add your question to the running thread that we have there and we will answer on the show. Failing that, you could carve it into the side of a horse and send your horse directly into our center. And then we will break and then read the message before we're trampled and die. I was just thinking about Catholic Juggalo Church when you say, may the hatchet man be with you and with you. And also with you.

And also with you. Sorry. I haven't really gone to mass very often. Yeah. Today's question from the Legion is what mythologize real historical figure? Would you like to see a movie made about the most like? Dracula from Vlad dracul and like Dracula untold I don't think I've ever seen Dracula and told I feel like I did see that but I've seen Bram Stoker's Dracula the 90s movie Which is goofy. That's like Keanu Reeves doing an accent, right? I think Johnny Depp If I were I don't think it's Keanu Reeves, but I can't remember. I think it is Keanu Reeves. It's been a long time

Yeah, I saw it like right after it came out on I got my grandma Keanu Reeves brand He's an awful accent. I remember that vividly. I remember that more than anything else from that movie You got something because I remember that vividly. I remember that more than anything else from that movie. That's so funny because I remember watching Hackers and like age 11 and Johnny Lee Miller's American accent is atrocious. And then at 11, just being like, that man's not American. Something's wrong here. I feel like my favorite mythologize, but also historical figure that I'd like to see that get that treatment. In Armenian mythology, there's Haik the Great, who possibly founded the first real known Armenian state as far as states existed back

then, but he's also written as oftentimes illiterate giant. We're finding the origins of the Kandahar giant. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be funny to see like, you know see a 10 meter tall guy who is this mythologist here, but he's just stuck doing bullshit bureaucratic state work. I think it'd be kind of funny. I was going to say, I don't really think that there's ever been, as I'm aware in TV or film, I don't know if I'm misremembering it. Is it King Canute where they said that he... Who was the king that whipped the sea to punish it? I know with King Canute was something about trying to chain the tide or something like that. But this is like a... Canute would

have been, if I remember correctly, he was a Norse or Viking king of England. He was a king of Norway and Denmark, I think also. And I may be misremembering it, but I seem to recall there being kind of an apocryphal story about sort of like a king of this era in this region of the world. So Viking, North Sea, whatever, conquering England and abducting monks and putting them in slavery and stuff, who basically was like, because the seas had not been favorable during a battle, basically, we're going to punish the sea by whipping it and like I just simply want I may be mixing it all up I may be misremembering but like that to me something

dramatizing that in a film would be very very funny what if the sea was like really into it though the bossy subsea basically it's just like yeah like please punish me more yeah whip me more dry land daddy King Neptune wearing a ball gag This is the worst Worst spin-off porn of the Little Mermaid I've ever seen King Triton wasn't it? Yeah, I can never remember I don't remember this from Disney's Hercules but I do remember the priest getting a hard-on in the original version of the Little Mermaid because that was

Castle on the original castle on the cover of VHS cover of Aladdin. Yeah, that was not was it was that no that was a little Mermaid that wasn't no no no no it was Aladdin You know they're on the magic carpet with Aladdin and Jasmine on the carpet flying. It's a little mermaid I just looked it up. That is a penis. You know what you're right. I can't believe I know I know my Disney dick I'm gonna go with the Way, no spells sex sex. Yeah, that was the dust wasn't it the dust from Rafiki the monkey in the Lion King He like plops down and then like the dust flies Getting my Disney my weird 90s Disney lore sex Easter eggs and Disney movies from the 90s Yeah, my mom still has that VHS of the Little Mermaid with the day castle. Yeah Yeah, she's like what she doesn't have a VHS anymore VHS VHS player anymore. I'm like, you cannot throw this away.

This is a fucking timeless piece of antiquity. We must hold. Mail it to me if you need my, if you must, I'll frame it. I mean, in a way, the Dick Shaver fucking camp follower guy for the Hunnic legions was on to something important. I'm glad my ancestors made their impact in military history. You know, my grandpa, I guess. Yes. So, I mean, I don't want to get into mine because I'm going to have to issue apologies to a lot of countries in Southeast Asia. But Hey, same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, basically something like that, some kind of of ridiculous apocryphal excess of a despotic King, those things are always that. And then whenever there's like some story about some sort of like, I guess maybe like take like the Lepreys, Doran's or like the Sean Sunderland or any of those like medieval epic poems about like the valiant night who can like cleave a hundred men in twain with a buster sword doing that, but not trying to make it gritty and realistic, but just making it fucking stupid. Like I would love to see that. I would pick Brian Brew who's like ended the high kingship of Ireland by of the O'neils and like possibly ended the Viking invasions of Ireland. Like it's kind of far enough in the past that it hasn't really been like pillaged

for like books or whatever by Irish authors, but is like so fucking cool because like, Oh, what if you had like warring States, Japan, just in Ireland? That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about it cause I was like, Tom's going to do some Irish cause he's grounded into the culture of where he's from. Whereas I'm fucking whatever. But then I was reminded that there's some weird, like kind of not well covered history stuff about the French and Indian war and the American colonization of North America, specifically where I'm from, the Wabash River. And there was a battle in and around the French and Indian war where one of the local Native

American tribes was led by a chief named Tobacco's son, which I mean, tobacco's son is second only to son of race Mike. Cool, funny name. So yeah, my, my other choice, much easier one would be like, I would love to see like a fucking HBO, like mini series about Charlemagne. I think that'd be so cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love like distant history, Byzantine scheming, lots of elaborate costumes, you know, like probably edited for dramatic effects, but still decently close to the source material. That's why I told you guys I love that terrible fucking Borgia series. Yeah. So yeah, you know, and Joe, Joe is going to have the giant of Kandahar, except it's Armenian.

Hell yeah. Well, fellas, that is a podcast episode. You have other podcasts. Plug your other podcasts. I am the producer of Trashfuture, podcast about why the tech industry is very, very dumb, but it's also about British politics. And it's funny. I'm also the producer of What a Hell of a Way to Dad, a podcast about being a dad and why you shouldn't join the military. And then also a podcast called Kill James Bond, which is a film podcast that is extremely funny and you should listen to it. And this is the only podcast that I host. If you like what we do here, consider supporting

us on Patreon. Just $5 gets you years and years and years of bonus content. Gets you every episode a week early. It gets you first dibs on live show tickets when we have them as well as merch. It also gives you access to our discord community, which is a lovely little community, which you can also ask us questions like questions from the Legion on. And also Tom produces some shows too. Yeah. Thanks Joe. My dad.

A neat skin show about the history of everything told to the history of tattooing. And if you want to hear an interview that my cohost Matt did with a guy called Ryōchi Umeda, who's a Japanese guy who's like, who has been tracking like body mod history for the past like 25 years. And they talked about a video Ryōchi showed at the recent body mod conference where a guy trapaned himself with a power drill or glue factory, a show about absolutely nothing but rifts, which I am going upstairs to continue to edit as soon as we're done recording. And everybody, thank you so much for listening to the show. We will talk to you next time.

Bye. Bye.