The Ancients - Attila the Hun: Terror of Rome

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Returning to one of the most infamous names in history, what happened to Attila the Hun after the devastation he caused in the Balkans - and where did he turn his attention to next? One of the most powerful, and feared, leaders of history, Attila turned his sights on the West - but what happened after he took his army towards the Western Roman empire, and who was his new arch-enemy?In this episode Tristan welcomes Hyun Jin Kim back to the podcast to take us through the next deadly instalment of Attila and his momentous battle with Aetius. Looking at what happened on the battlefield, Attila's unlikely death, and the issue of succession - what happened to the Huns after Attila, and what legacy did Attila leave behind?A couple of notes from the pod...The Roman general killed by Attila at Utus was Arnegisclus. Aetius probably joined Alaric in his late teens.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.For more Ancient's content, subscribe to our Ancient's newsletter here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode where we promised we'd get part two out quick and we have delivered because this is the second part of our mega episode all about the well-known infamous name of ancient history

Attila the Hun. Our guest once again is Professor Hyunjin Kim from the University of Melbourne and we're going to be kicking off where we left. Attila is just absolutely devastated with the Balkans of the Eastern Roman Empire and is soon going to turn his attention west, where he will have the big confrontation with one of his greatest rivals, the figure of Aetius. Hyunjin Kim can tell the story much better than I can, so without further ado, here he is to continue the story of Attila. Okay, Hyunjin, Attila, he has had this massive victory, destructive victory in the east of the Roman Empire. Why does he now turn his attention west?

Okay, so in order to understand why this happens, we need to understand the person of Aeacius. Aeacius is a mystery because we don't really know anything about his origins. His father supposedly came from the province of Scythia. This is a Roman province, but this was a province full of non-Romans. So it is very unclear as to whether Aeacius was fully Roman or not. Maybe he was, maybe he was not. But very early on in his career, in his early 20s, we find him accompanying King Alaric of the Visigoths in the Vulcans. Was he a hostage or had he actually joined the Visigoths at that point? Who knows? And then after a couple of years under Alaric, Aetius leaves the Visigoths and then enters Hunnic service.

And he stays with the Huns for an unspecified amount of time. The next time that we hear about him is in 424 AD. So that's almost 16 years later. So presumably during almost 16 years later. So presumably, during those 16 years, he has been serving the Huns and had been steadily rising in the Hunnic hierarchy. Now, he seems to have been treated by the Huns as sort of the Roman expert. So there were many Roman defectors who were serving the Hunnic kings as bureaucrats, and Aeacius was presumably one of them. And in 424 AD, in the Western Roman Empire, a usurper by the name of John tries to take the imperial throne in opposition to the nominee of

the Eastern Roman Emperor. So this was somebody who did not belong to the Theodosian dynasty that was ruling the Roman Empire at the time. And because he did not have any military muscle to speak of, John turns to the Huns, and he manages to get the attention of the Hunnic king Ruga via Aeacius. And so the usurper, John, grants Aeacius a court title, a sort of a palace position of some kind. And in return for this, and presumably hefty tribute to the Han king, he is promised Hunnic support. But before that support arrives, he is killed by an army sent by the Eastern Roman emperor. But then Aetius shows up in Italy with an enormous Hunnic army, 60,000 strong, and the Romans are in trouble. So they pay off the Huns, and then they manage to placate the Huns by making Aeacius the governor of Gaul. So Aeacius is made magister

militiam of Gaul, or the commander of all Roman forces in Gaul. Now this was an empty title, because at this time, much of Gaul, other than the southeastern corner, was controlled by all kinds of barbarian armies that were marauding in the region. There were also Roman rebels, or Gallo-Roman rebels called the Bacaudae, who basically controlled much of the north. There were Alans around Oléon, that area. There were Franks. There were Burgundians.

There were Visigoths. The place was complete anarchy. So the Romans didn't really control this area, but told the Aetius that you can have it, basically. And this was a perfect opportunity for Aetius. So he enters Gaul, northern Gaul, with an army, but not the Roman army, of course. He enters Gaul with a Hunnic army.

And with this Hun Roman army, of course. He enters Gaul with the Hunnic army. And with this Hunnic army, he defeats all of these sort of barbarian tribes that are marauding in Gaul. And he also suppresses the rebellion of the Bagaudae. And he effectively makes himself ruler of Gaul. And then after he secured his position, he sends back most of his Hunnic troops back to his patron, the Hun King Ruga, and then he oversteps his authority. So he decides to take over the rest of the Roman Empire for himself. So he tries to march into Italy to take it over, but he is defeated by another Roman warlord called Bonifacius. He was the governor of Roman Africa. He made his way back to Italy, and he is defeated. So Aetius is defeated and he bolts immediately to Pannonia, which is then controlled by the Huns, and begs his, I suppose, suzerain, Ruga, for further support, and he is provided another

army with which to invade the Roman Empire. And so in 432 AD, I believe, he invades the Western Roman Empire with the Sonic army, and the Roman army just surrenders. They're so petrified that they just give up. And so the Western Roman Emperor and Galla Placidia, who is the regent for the young Valentinian III, they basically give up the empire to Aeacius, who becomes not just the magister militum of Gaul, but of what is left of the Western Roman state. So, Italy, much of Gaul, and some parts of Spain. And so, Aetius rules the Roman Empire de facto, right? Not de jure, but de facto. To the Romans,

he is the magister militum who is ruling via the authority of the emperor. But everybody knows that the emperor is a puppet. And basically, Aetius is ruling the place. And he is ruling the Western Roman Empire with not a Roman army, but a Hunnic army that had been supplied by the Hun king. And the Hun kings, of course, if you look at it from the Hun perspective, regards Aetius, of course, as their viceroy. So they think that the Western Romans have submitted to them. Well, they surrendered after all, right?

So Aetius is their vassal who keeps sending tribute that he's obliged to. And as long as that continues, they're happy. But then something terrible happens. Blader, who was on very good terms with Aeacius, is suddenly killed. And Aeacius, for whatever reason, fails to butter up Attila, who is the new Hun king. And so a lot of his Hun troops are withdrawn from him. And the Huns who decide to stay with Aeacius—remember, Aeacius' power base are the Huns, right? His power base is not the Roman army or some other barbarian group. It's the Huns. But he loses a lot of that after Asada

becomes king. And thereafter, he is in trouble. And the Huns who decide to stay with him, it appears, are Asada's enemies, Huns who are loyal to Blader. And so in order to push back against Assela, whom he knows is going to come to punish him, Aecius forms an alliance with his previous enemies, the Visigoths and the Elans, who he had squashed with his Hunnic army. But now they're sort of conscripted into his new Roman army. And so Assela, of course, was also offended by the fact that Aetius dared to propose his own nominee for the sub-king of the Franks. He didn't appreciate that at all. And so, Assela decides that Aetius needs to be taught a lesson. So, he invades with the main Hunnic army, and Aetius finds himself in a bind, because instead of commanding the Hun army as he used to,

he is now commanding a very shaky coalition of forces that are not loyal to him. His power base had always been the Huns, but now the bulk of the Huns are opposed to him. So he is in a very dangerous situation. And so that is the context of Ashura's invasion of Gaul. Of course, salacious gossip suggested that Honoria, who was the sister of Emperor Valentinian III, proposed to Ashura, you know, begged Ashura to just save her from an unwanted marriage or something. And Ashura supposedly demanded half of the Western Roman Empire as her dowry. Now, this is probably Eastern Roman gossip, right?

And has no bearing on reality. Another, you know, sort of probably false story tells us that Ashura was bribed by King Gezeric of the Vandals to invade Gaul because Gezeric had treated his daughter-in-law, who was the daughter of the Visigothic king, in a very barbarous fashion. And so Gezeric was afraid the Visigoths would invade his territory, which is ludicrous.

The Visigoths don't have a navy. So how will they go to invade Vandal Africa? But supposedly he was afraid of the Goths. This is, of course, a story told by Chordanes, of course, who wants to up the Goths. Everything has to do with the Goths. So in order to attack the Visigoths and to do a favor to Gezeric, Asseler invades Gaul, which doesn't make any sense.

Because the person that Asseler is after is not the Visigothic King Theodoric. The guy that he wants to eliminate is Aeacius. Because Aeacius is a rebel, you see. From Asherah's perspective, he is Blader's supporter. So he needs to be done away with. As well as the Huns who are with Aeacius, right? They're traitors. As well as the Huns who are with Aeacius, as you highlighted there.

I mean, it is so interesting how his fortunes change so rapidly with the Hunnic court. But something which is also so, so interesting is that when you sometimes explore this period, you know, there's the label given to Aeacius that he is the last Roman. And yet, as you've highlighted there, the power base of Aeacius for so long hadn't been the Romans, it had been the Huns. There is so much to Aeacius' story to kind of unpack here. He almost sounds like as if he was this mercenary general who got more and more favour with the Huns as the years went on. It's all important and such an interesting context to Attila's invasion of the West when you explore that character of Aeacius.

Yeah, so Aeacius is kind of a liminal figure. I mean, he was from the border, sort of regions of the Roman Empire anyway. He's from that area where the population was largely non-Roman. And so he's somebody who is very familiar with people across the Danube. And he obviously fitted in perfectly with the Huns. And in fact, Thraustilla, the son-in-law, who was probably the son-in-law of Aeacius, was a Huns. And in fact, Thrasyla, the son-in-law, who was probably the son-in-law of

Aeacus, was a Hun too. He intermarried with Huns and his bodyguard was made up entirely of Huns. The only people that Aeacus would trust with his life were the Huns. And of course, when Aeacus is later assassinated by Emperor Valentinian III, the people who avenge him by killing Valentinian III are his Hunnic bodyguards. Optila and Thrustula are Hunnic officers who had served Aetius, and they avenged their patron by killing the Western Roman emperor. So the Huns were pretty close to Aetius, and he was close to that. The Huns probably regarded him as a Hun.

It's absolutely incredible. Well, let's delve into this story of Attila versus Aetius. as a hut. It's absolutely incredible. Well, let's delve into this story of Attila versus Aetius. So Attila, he's got his eyes on Gaul and Aetius and crossing the Rhine. Where and how does he attack? Attila first invades the territories that are settled by the Franks. I suppose that is the pretext for this invasion, that he wants to settle this succession dispute amongst the Franks. So he conquers the Franks first. And then he attacks the Alans. So after Aetius had lost the support of the Huns, his main power base was then the Alans.

The Alans are a people who are the closest to the Huns in terms of the way that they fight, etc. So they are very effective troops. And so the power base of the Alans in Gaul're very effective troops. And so the power base of the Alans in Gaul was Orléans. And so the Huns besiege Orléans. And Aeacius is nowhere to be found. He refuses to engage the Huns. So the Huns have invaded central Gaul. And Aeacius' army and the few Franks that are allied to Aeacius and also the Visigoths avoid battle and keep on retreating westward. And then the

Alans put up one hell of a fight at Orleans. So the Huns besiege the city for ages and it just refuses to fall. So Ashela notices that the campaigning season is about to end so he decides to withdraw. Aetius is not

coming out to fight so he decides that he's decides to withdraw. Aeacius is not coming out to fight, so he decides that he's going to withdraw. Maybe another suggestion that has been made is that this is a feigned retreat. Aeacius refuses to fight, so a typical strategy adopted by step armies is to feign retreat in order to draw out

an enemy which is taking evasive action into a decisive battle. And so the Huns start to withdraw, and they move eastward. And lo and behold, exactly the thing that Asadar probably wanted to happen happens. Aishah finally shows up with his Huns, Alans, Franks, and Goths. And the Huns in Shalom turn around and and engage Aisha's army in a pitched battle. And this is, of course, the famous Battle of Chalons, which apparently was an extraordinary bloodbath. So every account of the battle tells us that this was a truly hard-fought battle for both sides.

Yes, there's Chalons, isn't it? The Catalonian Plains or something like that, that kind of confusing name, isn't it? But this is almost the great climax in terms of battles between Aetius and Attila. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and on not just the Tudors from History Hit, my guests and I run through the full gamut of human emotion and experience. From the heartbreak of the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth not being able to marry arguably the only man in the world she ever really wanted to marry, may have for that reason not married anyone else. To a prenatal battle of the sexes. A male and a female seed meet in the womb at conception, and whichever one is stronger determines the sex of the unborn child.

From Lady Jane Grey facing her executioner. You can't help but feel just the utmost sympathy for this young girl. To why the laughing cavalier is, well, laughing. He strikes me as someone who goes off on a sort of swaggering booze-up. Subscribe now to Not Just The Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm guessing there might be more than one narrative of the battle, but what is the overarching story of how this battle, this great climax, unfolds? Yes, we are very unfortunate here because Priscus, who was the best historian from the middle of the 5th century, who was an eyewitness, did write a record of this battle, but it doesn't survive. Historians have assumed that the version of the battle that we find in Jordanes, who is

a much later source, is kind of a summary of Priscus' account of the Battle of Shalom, but it isn't. We know that because Jordanes claims that the group that won the battle were not the Romans, were not the Huns, it was the Goths. What a surprise. He gives us a complete, you know, gothified version of the story, which is totally unreliable. But unfortunately, that sort of part of Priscus' history is missing. But we do have Priscus' account of Assela's subsequent invasion

of Italy. And then his death after the campaign. And Priscus tells us that when Assela died, the Huns declare, his Hunic subjects declare at his funeral that Assela was the most fortunate of all men because he never faced defeat.

He had subjugated both harps of the Roman Empire to tribute. So he went up, he died when he was at his peak. That's basically what the Huns say. And the climax of Priscus' story is not actually the war in Gaul, it is actually the invasion of Italy by Assyria. The war between the Romans and Asherah ends with that Hunnic campaign into Italy. And then, of course, after subjugation of the Western Romans, Asherah decides to invade the Eastern Roman Empire yet again, because the new emperor of the East, Marcian, had refused to pay tribute. So Marcian, in his bravado, says that I'm never going to pay this humiliating tribute again to the Huns.

And then Assela, of course, threshes an invasion. And Marcian is incredibly worried. He feels that this is going to be the end or something. And then, of course, God, according to Priscus, gives this pious emperor a vision in his dream, which sort of kind of prophesizes the death of Ashela, right? And immediately afterwards, Marcion is told that Ashela has been struck down by the Almighty. He's died in his sleep after a wedding feast. So Marcion experiences divine salvation from the Huns. And so Ashela is struck down, according to Priscus, not by Roman arms or by anybody.

He is struck down by according to Priscus, not by Roman arms or by anybody. He is struck down by the Almighty himself, right? So this is divine deliverance for the Roman Empire. So we know that in Priscus, Ashela won the Battle of Shalom. Well, at least he wasn't defeated in Priscus' narrative. We know that from what he says afterwards, right? But Jordanus, of course, says that the Goths won the day, even though their king, Theodoric, died in the opening phases of the battle. And what's interesting is that every army that participated in the battle suffered horrendous losses, but the only army that survives intact after the battle is the Visigothic army.

So if the Visigoths were heavily engaged, then why on earth do they have most of their troops intact after the battle? Presumably because they ran away. But of course, Giordanes changes the narrative to glorify his gods. So we have to disregard Giordanes, but we have to look at contemporary sources. And lo and behold, we do have contemporary sources that talk about the battle in a very cursory fashion, but they still do. And so the most important source is Prosper of Aquitaine. Prosper is a native Gaul.

He was a contemporary of Aetius and Asada, so he is our best source. And in his account of the Battle of Shalom, he says something very interesting. He says there was enormous slaughter, and in his account of the Battle of Shalom, he says something very interesting. He says there was enormous slaughter, and it appears, he says, that the Huns were not victorious. He doesn't say that the Romans won. He says it appears that the Huns were not victorious because those of them that survived the slaughter lost any taste for further battle and went back.

Now, that's a very, very ambiguous thing to say. When the Romans win battles, they let you know that they won battles. Theodosius was defeated by Ruga, but he still boasted of an enormous military victory. Regardless, they outright lie in many cases about victories in the 5th century. But here, Prosper says something incredibly odd and says that he's not really sure who won. So that's very interesting. And then there is another contemporary source, the Gallic Chronicle of 452. And this chronicle tells us that, again, there was huge slaughter and the Huns were defeated. So there is one source which actually says that the Huns lost. And then there is one source which actually says that the Huns lost. And then there is another source, the Gallic Chronicle of 511.

Now, this is a slightly later source, but it actually harks back to very reliable contemporary sources. And it provides more specific information about the battle itself. So the Gallic Chronicle of 452, though more contemporary, says virtually nothing about the battle. Chronicle of 452, though more contemporary, says virtually nothing about the battle. But 511 gives us some interesting details, like the fact that Lauderick, who was a blood relative of Asila, died in this battle. But interestingly, that chronicle says nothing about who won, right? It says nothing about who was victorious. And then, of course, we have Priscus. His, you know, version of events is lost, but then we can surmise from what he says thereafter that he actually thought that the Huns won, or at least were not deficient in Gaul. So we've got

five contemporary sources. Am I counting them right? Yes. Of which three are, sorry, four so far, of which three think are unsure as to what happened, or the Huns probably won, or the Romans, you know, didn't lose, or the Huns didn't win. Possibly nobody really knows. One source which says that the Huns won, necessarily the Romans won. And then there is another source called Hydasius, who is a Roman bishop in Spain. Now, Hydasius is hopeless because whenever he talks about anything that happens outside of Spain, he is so wrong.

So, for example, later he says that the Eastern Roman emperor Martian sent a general called Aeacius to invade the Huns in their own territory in the Danube. Now, Priscus and everybody else in the Eastern Roman Empire has just told us that the Eastern Romans had lost territory south of the Danube to the Huns, and they never make it beyond the Danube. So how on earth would an Eastern Roman army invade the Hun heartland under the Emperor

Martian? Priscus flatly denies that, well, doesn't even say anything of this what happened, and yet Hydatius says that there is this fictitious invasion of the Hunnic and Burnic core territories by Aeacius, the Eastern Roman general. Aeacius is the Western Roman general, so this guy is completely all over the place. And he gives us a very sort of fictitious account of the Battle of Shillong and says that hundreds of thousands of men fought and the Huns were vanquished. So two sources say that the Huns were beaten.

Three sources say that either it was some kind of a draw or the Huns won. What are we to make of this? We have to know who was in possession of the battlefield after the Huns won. What are we to make of this? We have to note who was in possession of the battlefield after the battle was over. That's the best way to figure out who won the battle. Now, Jordanes, despite all the problems in his text, does preserve information about what happened after the battle, right? So he says, Aetius was now afraid that if he completely destroyed the Huns, the Visigoths would become too powerful and he wouldn't be able to control them. So, he wanted the Huns to survive in order to use them as a counterweight against the

Visigoths. So, he persuades the Visigothic king, the young prince Thoreswood, to return home to Toulouse. And he also persuades the Franks to bolt as well. And then he withdraws himself. So every part of Aisha's army withdraws from the battlefield and the Huns are left in possession of it. And we know that that is the case because, of course, the only archaeological remain that we can associate with the battle is a honey cauldron that was discovered in its vicinity. And that probably was a funeral investment which was used in the the funeral of Lauderick

who was Asselin's cousin, blood relative, who died during the battle. So the Huns were in no hurry to leave. They held an elaborate funeral on the site of battle before they left so they had possession of the battlefield which then implies that they probably won the battle. Then later, the following year, Assyria invades Italy, and Aeacius is unable to do anything about it. He in fact tells the Western Roman emperor, Valentinian III, that he should abandon Italy altogether, because we can't defend Italy at all. He has no troops. So if he had been victorious the previous year, then, well,

this obviously should not happen. And then there is another clue, and that is Jordanes, of all people, tells us that the very next year, the Huns invaded Gaul again. So there is another army of Huns that are invading Gaul at the same time that was slightly after the Hunnic invasion of Italy. And so what is this Hunnic army doing in Gaul? And this army manages to penetrate all the way to the Loire, that's further to the west of Shalong, right? So if the Huns had lost the battle, what on earth is the Hunnic army doing west of Shalong on the Loire, right?

And so Jordanes then again tells us a ridiculous story about how the Visigothic king defeated the Huns, but then he says something completely bizarre. He says, oh, by the way, the Gothic king used the Alans to beat the Huns. He didn't use any Goths. So again, I mean, he's all over the place. But if we discount all of the nonsense and just accept the tidbits of information that he provides about where the Huns were and what they were doing, then I think it is pretty clear that Aetius lost the battle. And thereafter, he was no longer able to protect Roman territories from Hunnic invasions. And following this massive campaign, and so well described by you there, Hyunjin, is such a fascinating part of late antiquity. Aeacius has nevertheless escaped with his life, despite being, you know, almost a personal enemy, defier of Attila. Now, will he ever face Attila again? Or is that really the last time that they personally come to blows on a battlefield? Yes, what's interesting is that later tradition

accuses Aetius of treachery. So this is presumably from Roman sources that are either contemporary or slightly later, that are hostile to Aetius, obviously. But they accuse Aecius of treachery and of conspiring with the Huns. Now, we must understand that Aecius, his power base had always been the Huns. So without the Huns, he has no place anymore in Gaul or anywhere else. So now there's no way to prove this,

but all those stories about political machinations, you know, Jordan is saying that, oh, Aecius was trying to negotiate with the Huns during the battle, after the battle. Maybe that's indeed what was happening. Maybe that's what he tried to do. And he tries to say to Asselin that, look, I'm sorry about all of this, you know, what happened. It was not my intention to rebel. Let's have peace and bygones be bygones

was that what was happening maybe maybe not who knows but there were all hunnic troops who are sort of loitering about in gaul after the battle what on earth were they were they doing there and if you look at the area that this Hunnic army is moving around in, this is the original power base of Aeacius. So it's that part of Gaul that formed the core territory of Aeacius. And that's where this residual Hunnic army is operating in. Which makes you wonder what on earth is going on here. And that Aeacius does absolutely nothing to defend Italy from another Hunnic invasion the following

year. That's also telling. One possibility might be that his army was so weakened that he could do nothing. That's probably true. But then secondly, why didn't he even send a token force to the emperor to do something about this? He doesn't do anything to protect Italy. Was it because he had actually submitted to Asseler again and somehow managed to win back some kind of recognition? Who knows, right? So this is a very murky sort of period.

And the fact that Aetius is accused of treachery by virtually every source thereafter is kind of telling. But anyway, who does? That is not something that I think we could ever figure out with any accuracy. Well, as we start to near the end of Attila's story, Hyunjin, you've mentioned already

and you've hinted at that invasion of Italy and also Marcian. So what do we know about these last few years of Attila's reign? Attila invades Italy. He is able to capture most of the major cities in northern Italy, but he doesn't march on Rome or Ravenna, which is where the emperor is. He is visited by the pope, obviously, brings a hefty tribute. And then he just leaves, right, after receiving the submission of the Romans.

He leaves a sort of mosaic painting, which supposedly depicted the Roman emperor's, you know, sort of pouring cold tributes, you know, before his feet or something like this, as a memento of his sort of conquest, and then goes back to his home territory. Now, why did he leave without sacking Ravenna? Well, probably because his army had been struck by a plague. So his army was struck by plague, and that part of northern Italy is notorious for these sorts of things. So his army was in bad shape, so he returns to winter quarters in Hungary.

And then, of course, he's about to launch another invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire. And then he, well, according to the sources that we have, married another woman called Ildiko. He overexerted himself after drinking too much. So he suffered from an erupted vein. And that blood sort of clogged his system and he suffocated to death.

This is another story that is told, right? So whether that's true or not. That's the story, isn't it? Yeah. It's the story of him dying from a nosebleed, isn't it? When people simplify it. Yes, basically. Yes, yes.

So he was a bit too sort of uppity while he was having sex, I suppose. He was already a fairly old man by this stage in his early 50s or something. And he just overdid it, right? And so he died. And that was the end of the career of the the scourge of god apparently quite an inglorious way to sort of end one's career i suppose but that's what the romans tell us an interesting end to say to the story of the scourge of god and you know it's i guess you have to think about how true it really is or if it is a later

edition however what is really fascinating is and you see it time and time again whether it's alexander or whoever these titanic monarchs when they die and when they die unexpectedly that complete chaos that erupts as that vacuum emerges? I mean, Hyunjin, Attila is dead. What is this chaos that immediately grips this massive empire? So Attila came to the throne by illegal means, right? So he assassinated his own brother and usurped the throne. So when he dies, and to make things worse, he said nothing about the succession. He suddenly died. That is clear. The path to the throne is open to basically all of his sons and probably his other relatives as well.

And so initially there are two candidates. Of course, the Khran Prince, the King of the East, Ilak, of course, is the most favored person to take the throne. He's supported by the Akkad Siri, who are his fief, and a host of other princes, including the Hunnic appointed sub-king of the Goths, a guy called Thorismud, who is another Hun prince, but he's governing the Goths. So they support Eilat, the crown prince. But then the Gepids, who had been Ashela's power base before he rose to the throne, they support another son of Ashela called Gizmos.

And Gizmos is the son-in-law of the sub-king of the Gepids, Ardorik. So Ardorik wants to push his son-in-law and try to make him the king. And so armies start to assemble on either side. And at the Battle of Nedo, one year after the death of Ashura, there was a colossal battle between these Western and Eastern factions. And Enoch, the crown prince, is killed during this battle.

But the problem is, is that the bloodshed was so catastrophic that the winners, Gizmos and Alderic, they failed to impose any kind of order on what is left of the Hunnic empire thereafter. The eastern territories of the Huns is rapidly taken over by two brothers, two remaining sons of Asadah, Ernak and Dengizik. And in the west, another Hunnic prince called Valomer. Now, Jordanes claims that he is a pure Gothic king and deliberately separates Valamur

from another guy called Balambar, the same name. But Jordanes knows that he's the king of the Huns. It's the same person, but he wants to separate the Goths from the Huns, you see, because he wants to suppress the history of the the Huns, you see, because he wants to suppress the history of the Goths being ruled by the Huns. He doesn't want to make it sound as if the ruling dynasty of the Goths is actually Hunnic. So he changes the genealogy. He separates one Kudo Gothic king called Valimer into two individuals, and he places the Hunnic

Valimer in the fourth century and does away with him, basically. But Peter Heather, of course, who is one of the most renowned historians of this period, has conclusively proven that these two individuals are actually one person. And, of course, Volomer is the king of the Huns, but he's also king of the Goths. So what's happening here? Volimer is the king of the Huns, but he's also king of the Goths. So what's happening here? Well, after this colossal battle at Nedo, Gizmos apparently was a failure. So he does have a son called Mundo, who later becomes a co-king of the Gepids, but he himself just disappears from the picture entirely. And so does Arturic. They both disappear. And the guy who is in charge appears to be Volomer.

So during the Battle of Nero, Eloc dies, and also the Han king of the Goths, Thorismud, also dies during that battle. And so Volomer sort of slips into, effortlessly slips into this pearl vacuum and declares himself king of the Hans. So he takes control of much of this western territory in Hungary and claims that he is now the ruler of the Huns. But of course,

Dengizik and Ernak is having none of it. So Dengizik is equipped with an army by his brother Ernak and sent westward to fight Volomer. And Volimer is ambushed and surprised by Dengizik and dies. But Jordanes tells us that Valimer was surprised and he wasn't even in the company of his other brothers. But even after Valimer is killed, his Goths, you know, they just thrash everybody and repel the Huns. And it ends in a great Gothic victory.

But right after that battle, all the Goths are fighting under the Huns now. So Denkijik, right after he's done away with Valimer, invades the Eastern Roman Empire. But he doesn't have many Hun troops with him. Basically, the entirety of his army are made up of Goths. Who are these Goths? They're, of course, Valimer's Goths that he's just absorbed into his army again. So this is how Giordano lies, you know, repeatedly. If you look at Priscus, there is this very entertaining passage where

Dengizic decides to invade the Eastern Roman Empire. Ernak tells him no, but he does it anyway. And then he invades. Ernak tells him no, but he does it anyway. And then he invades. And then the Eastern Romans send a Hunnic officer by the name of Chokar into the Hunnic camp. And this Hunnic officer, who is working for the Romans, goes to the Goths and tells them, hey, look, you've suffered so many humiliations under the Huns.

Remember this that the Huns did to you? Remember that thing that the Huns did to you? And the Goths are enraged after remembering all the humiliation that they'd been suffering, and all the taxes that they had to pay. And the taxes really is what breaks the cameras back, right? So they're really, really offended by the taxes. So they rebel. So the entire invasion ends in a fiasco. And later, Deng Jizhik is murdered. Nobody knows how, but he ends up dying. And then somebody brings a severed head to Constantinople. So the head of the Telegrahan is displayed in the streets of Constantinople. And the guy who actually ends up securing his head, as if this is poetic justice, is the guy whose father was killed by Ashela in the war of 447. So I believe the father is

Ario Bendis, a Roman general who fought to the bitter end at Utus and was killed by Attila. His son manages to secure the severed head of Attila's son. So he avenged his father, right? Nobody really knows how, but it's an interesting sort of tidbit, I suppose, of history. Wow. Well, there you go. You said that poetic justice right there, or quite horrible poetic justice, if we're being honest. Hyunjin, this has been absolutely fascinating. I'm guessing, therefore, Attila's legacy, as those years progress, you've now seen that fragmentation of the Hanukkah empire occurring following his death. Is this when Attila's legacy, you know, his reputation really starts going to that next level and it will evolve more and more

and more over the following centuries, where he not only is this figure who seems to oversee the Hunnic Empire in the West, the European Huns, their empire at Zenith, but also as this formidable, their empire at Zenith, but also as this formidable, unbeaten, to an extent, conqueror? Is it in these immediate years and then centuries following his death that his legacy as the scourge of God really develops? Yeah, so after the death of Achela, we don't really hear much about him. And of course, he is a major figure who is remembered in Roman historical sources, but he is not mythologized until much, much later, and surprisingly in the high Middle Ages. So it is after the 11th century that we finally encounter the mythologized Attila. And we also encounter him, surprisingly, not in the context of the Greco-Roman sort of literary tradition, but in the Germanic tradition.

In the Nibelungenlies, and of course, in the Norse sagas. In the Norse sagas, he is depicted unfavorably as this very sort of cruel figure, who is then punished by his wife, Gudrun. And the story of Ashler is then mixed up with other sort of folk tales. And so it becomes very, very mythologized. And then, of course, in the Germanic tradition, he is this very noble but rather indecisive king, Edsel, who is sort of pushed around by his wife, Creamhilt. So there's that kind of an image of him as a noble but kind of an indecisive monarch. And then in Hungary, he is mythologized yet again as sort of the founder of their nation. So the Hungarian kings, the Arpad kings of Hungary,

claim that they are the patrilineal descendants of Attila the Hun. Whether that's true or not, who knows? But that's what they claim. And so Attila becomes the founding father of Hungary in the Hungarian sort of national myth. That's why in Hungary, of course, you find a lot of people named Ashela. Even an airport is named Ashela something, right? It's not named after the Atilla, but another Ashela who was named after Ashela, the famous poet. But so he becomes mythologized there. And then it's only really in early modern times that he takes on this additional image of the Asiatic savage. When racial theories start to become very popular in the 19th century, Ashtar becomes the symbol of the Asiatic sort of barbarian horde that threatens European civilization. And the Battle of Shalom then takes on an additional significance,

not as some great ancient battle that was fought between the Romans and the Huns, but as the battle that saved civilization itself. As if if Attila had won, then the course of history would have changed. But as we have just discussed, he probably did win. And regardless of whether he won or lost, the trajectory of the future history of Europe would not have changed. Because if you look at the battlefield, if you look at the composition of the armies that face each other

on the battlefield of Shalom, they were almost identical. On Aisha's side, you've got Huns, Alans, Goths, and Franks. On the Hanukkah side, on the Ratchadah, you've got Huns, Alans, Goths, Gepards, and Franks. It's identical. They look the same. So regardless of who's winning. And it's not pagan versus Christian either, because on the Hanukkah side there were plenty of Christians on the Roman side there were also plenty of pagans

so nothing really changed because of the Battle of Shalom but it takes on this mythical significance as the battle that saved Western civilization and I guess also that point to highlight there Hyunjin that in Aetius's army

there were almost if any there were next to no Romans at all. Well, I mean, there were actually, sorry, I missed out the Romans. Sorry about that. There were actually some Romans in his army, but this was a very insignificant portion of the army. Most of the sources agree that they didn't do much. Well, Giordanes massively downplays the role of the Romans. Maybe they played a little bit more of a significant role, who knows, but they're barely mentioned. And in Attila's army, believe it or not, there were also Romans as well. The Bagaudae, you know, those Gallo-Roman rebels who had been suppressed by Aetius, their leaders and the surviving

remnants of those rebels fled to Attila and joined Attila's army. So in other words, the composition of both armies were exactly the same, which is mind-boggling. This is what late antiquity is, I suppose. Europe was already changing and was entering, I suppose, the Middle Ages already. Mind-boggling and a great way for us to completely wrap up today's episode then, Hyunjin. This has been absolutely brilliant last but certainly not least you have written a book which focuses in on Attila but also so much more than Attila it is called The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe this was published in 2013 and I wrote another book on the Huns in 2016 I believe that's more of a general history of the Huns,

not just the European Huns, but the White Huns and other Huns that we mentioned at the beginning of this talk. Absolutely. Well, Hyunjin, always a pleasure having you on the podcast. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on today. It was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Well, there you go. There was Professor Hyunjin Kim wrapping up our special mega episode all about Attila the Hun. I hope you've enjoyed both parts. Now, last things from me, you know what I'm going to say. If you have enjoyed this special mega episode, or indeed any other ancients episodes, well, you know what you can do to help us out. You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your

podcasts from. It really helps us as we continue to grow this podcast to even greater heights, and to give incredible academics like Hyunjin the spotlight that they deserve for the years of research they've committed to these particular areas of antiquity. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.