The Ancients - The Truth About The Huns

Episode Date: May 2, 2021

The Huns! The name of this ancient people triggers a multiplicity of responses and evokes a number of images (nearly all of them negative). They have been portrayed as a savage people, who contributed little to world history. But is this really the case? In this podcast, Tristan was joined by Professor Hyun Jin Kim to talk about the emergence of the Huns in the west in the late 4th century, and the striking geopolitical changes that their rapid expansion brought about. Hyun Jin dismantles the portrayal that all the Huns did was destroy and plunder and highlights the remarkable structure of this ancient empire. The first unified empire in Europe beyond Rome’s borders.Hyun Jin is a Professor in Classics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Huns, published by Routledge in 2016.

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And in today's podcast, as you could probably guess from the title, we're talking about the Huns. In particular, we're going to be talking about the rise of the Huns, or shall we say the Western Huns, the Huns which arrive in Europe in the late 4th century AD. Now, we're also going to be looking at the structure of the Hunnic Empire, we're going to be looking at their economy, we're going to be looking at administration, we're going to be looking at the political structure and so much more. Now joining me to talk through this topic I was delighted to get on the show Professor Hyunjin

Kim, a lecturer in classics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Hyunjin has also written a book all about the Huns. So without further ado, here's Hyunjin. Hyunjin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. You are very welcome indeed, because this is an incredible topic, the rise of the Huns. Hyun Jin, within the space of 50 years, a century or so, we see this remarkable rise of this power emerging from the East to form, can we say, the first unified empire in Europe beyond Roman borders. first unified empire in Europe beyond Roman borders? Yes, that is what happens. And of course,

that has mystified not just contemporary Romans, but later historians. How could this have happened? And this all goes back to the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who presented this very distorted, mythologized, ethnographic description of the Huns, which actually is based on earlier ethnographic work that was done by Roman ethnographers such as Pomponius Mella and Pompeius Trogus. And of course, they all then hark back to the great Herodotus, the Greek historian ethnographer. And so the Huns were portrayed as the most primitive of all peoples, who did not even have knowledge of making iron. They had no metal tools. They used bones instead of iron to make their arrowheads, etc., etc.

And yet, these primitive peoples managed to conquer people who were supposedly more technologically sophisticated than they were and create this huge entity. And so if you just go by the account that is given by Ammianus, all of this becomes completely unintelligible, right? And I think the problem has been that until the beginning of the 21st century, which is hard to believe, Ammianus Marcellinus was taken very seriously by many historians. And that has really, really prevented us from approaching the real Huns. The real Huns, indeed. I mean, exactly from what you were saying there, Hyunjin, it sounds that almost we've been sipping the Kool-Aid for too long, this idea of when we've been looking at

the ancient historians and we've looked at other civilizations too, where the Romans and the Greco-Roman historians portray them in the light that they want, which isn't the correct light, for instance, the Garamantes in the Sahara. This is all about sorting the fact from the fiction about how we portray the Huns and, for instance, their political makeup, the military, and so much more. Indeed, indeed. So let's start then with the background. We talked about Ammianus Marcellinus, so that's like 4th, 5th century. But let's go back a couple of hundred years or so into the background. So the mid-2nd century AD, whereabouts are the Huns at that time? In the mid-2nd century AD, the Huns are still located in what is now Mongolia. But their empire is in serious decline. It has split permanently into

two halves. The southern half has actually submitted to the rule of the Chinese Han dynasty and have actually migrated into the Chinese empire. And so they've basically left. Now they have a very interesting history of their own later and they end up conquering China in the 4th century. But the northern Hans or the Northern Xiongnu, Xiongnu is not the phonetic transcription that the Han Chinese of the 2nd century AD would have used. That's the modern Mandarin pronunciation of those same glyphs. So in Old Chinese and Early Middle Chinese, those glyphs would have sounded something like Hunnu.

So the name Xiongnu and Han is exactly the same. And we also have other documentary evidence that proves that. So the Northern Hans, they are also in decline. They were defeated by their former vassals, the Xianbei. Again, the original pronunciation of their name is not Xianbei, it's Serbi. And the Serbi are a Mongolic people who inhabited eastern Mongolia, and they drive out the Huns from central Mongolia. And so by the middle of 2nd century AD, the Huns are gradually being pushed further west. And there was a 3rd century AD Chinese text, a very critical text, because it tells us the exact geographical location of a lot of these inter-Asian political entities in the middle of the 3rd century AD.

And in that text, it says very clearly that the Xiongnu or the Hans at that time were situated in the Altai region. So the Altai region basically is the western tip of Mongolia, So the Altai region basically is the western tip of Mongolia, eastern Kazakhstan, southern Siberia, that area. So they're situated there. And to their east, they have, of course, the powerful Serbi, who are at that point disintegrating. And to the west, they have Turkic peoples called the Dingling, probably Uyghur Turks who inhabit what is now the Kazakh steppes. So that's basically the situation. So I think it is possible to assume that by the middle of the 2nd century AD, they are situated in Western Mongolia and in what is now Eastern Kazakhstan. So you mentioned the Turkic Dingling there. Obviously, you mentioned the people who have

pushed them out further east. It does sound that around this time in the Aotai Mountains region, I mean, it doesn't sound like the strongest place to start if you're playing a board game such as Risk Runner. It sounds like they're surrounded by hostile powers at that time. Oh, yes, absolutely. This was the low point, absolute low point of the Huns. So they had ruled a vast empire for four centuries that stretched from what Manchuria to the Aral Sea from Southern Siberia to Northern China, an empire that was larger than the empire of Alexander the Great. And they'd held this together for three centuries. And then of course, it all came crashing down. And they had been confined to this very tiny area. It was not tiny, of course, by any other standards, but by their standards, this was a very small area. And they were basically hemmed in on all sides. So they

had, of course, the Serbi or the Xianbei to the east. They had a very powerful Han Chinese empire to the southeast. And then there was also the very formidable Kushan empire to their southwest. And then to their west, there was another powerful state, which was the Kangzhou empire of Central Asia, which dominated Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. So they had nowhere to go, basically. And this was the geopolitical situation that they were facing towards the beginning of the 3rd century AD. But then, of course, at that point, everything changes, as if by a miracle. So what is this miracle? What allows this change to happen? Who knows? Who knows? But we do know what results, right? The causes of why this

happened. Some people, of course, suggest that there was an outbreak of plague, which weakened these sedentary empires in particular and caused them to dissolve. But that doesn't, of course, explain the breakup of the Xianbei Empire. But in any case, what happens is that by the beginning of the 3rd century AD, all of these empires, except for perhaps for the Kangzhou state to the west, they just dissolve. So the Han Chinese Empire breaks up and become three feuding kingdoms, and the Chinese have no time to meddle in the affairs of Central Asia any longer. The Kushan Empire also suddenly declines, and they're in fact subjugated by the Sasanian Persians, and they lose their independence. And of course, the Xianbei, they start to break up even earlier

at the end of the 2nd century AD. So by the beginning of the 3rd century AD, the Huns are in a much, much better situation. They have no threats to their east or to the south. And of course, there is nothing to the north. They can concentrate on the west and that is exactly what they do. So they conquer the Kangju. And also, they're very militarily powerful, but it looks small, but it was quite militarily formidable, the state of Wusun, which is in eastern Kazakhstan. And so by roughly around about 350 AD, the Huns are in control, complete control of what is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and they're ready and poised to then invade, of course, Iran, Afghanistan, India, to the south.

And they also, of course, expand into the west and subdue the Alans and the Goths, etc., to the West. Yes, let's focus on the Huns heading westwards towards Europe. Just before we go on to that, when we think of the Huns, we think of horse archers, I think of horse lords. Is that really, when we're thinking of this initial conquest, is that what we should be thinking of? Lots of Hunnic armies with lots of horsemen, lots of skilled mounted warriors. Well, that's partially true. But I suppose it is important to remember that all armies in Inner Asia, even the Chinese and the Sasanians had mounted archers. And it'd be a mistake to think that these Inner Asian armies consisted only of mounted archers. They also had cataphract horsemen, heavy armoured, the equivalent of medieval knights.

They had very sophisticated military equipment. And of course, in the case of the Huns, what really surprised the Romans later was that the Huns also had siege weapons. So they could actually, unlike the Germanic tribes that invaded Roman territory and who did not have such equipment and could not, therefore, besiege and take these fortified cities, the Huns could take fortified strongholds at will. So this is something that defies the image of the primitive Huns. So they had sophisticated weapons and their army consisted not just of cavalry, of course, but they also had infantry. Of course,

the strongest element in their armies was their steppe cavalry, which was virtually invincible during this time. But it is not just their cavalry, of course. And of course, even if the victory over infantry-based armies could be explained by the military prowess of horse archers and so on and so forth, that of course does not explain why the Huns were successful against enemies that had very similar weapons or the same weapons or the same types of armies. So yes, horse archers, weapons or the same types of armies. So yes, horse archers, yes, that's definitely there. But this is a more hybrid army that we're talking about. I'm glad you mentioned the word sophisticated, because we're definitely going to be getting

back onto that as the chat continues. As you say, sorting fact from fiction. But let's go on to the Huns arriving in Europe and Eastern Europe in particular, because when do we first hear of the Huns in our Greco-Roman sources? So the Huns first appear in our sources, unfortunately, in their manes Marcellinus, in the 370s AD. So that is the decade when the Romans first hear about them. And this is via the terrified reports that they hear from the fleeing Gothic and Alanic refugees who flood across the Danube into Roman territory, fleeing the Huns. So by this stage, the Huns have conquered most of what is now southern Russia and the Ukraine. And of course, shortly thereafter, in the 380s, they also conquer all of the territory north of the Danube. So very rapidly, they take over in the period roughlys, they also conquer all of the territory north of the Danube. So very rapidly,

they take over. So in the period roughly of 20 years, they have basically conquered half of Europe. So this is a very rapid conquest, which I would argue could not have been realized by a primitively organized tribal confederacy. I mean, 10 years, within the space of 10 years of them emerging on the scene, they've conquered large swaths of land in Eastern Europe. I mean, it seems to be this combination of rapid conquest, but also stabilisation as well. Yes, that is what we see. So of course, in the late 380s, they are already launching campaigns into the Roman Empire. In the late 380s, they are already launching campaigns into the Roman Empire. And by the middle of the 390s, of course, they're able to execute an invasion, a large-scale invasion of not just the Roman Empire, the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, but also the Sasanian Persian Empire. And they're also capable of launching a simultaneous invasion of Rome's Danubian provinces.

So they're able to strike simultaneously into both Europe and Asia at the same time. So that, I think, is substantive proof of organizational capacity. Anybody who knows anything about warfare, even in modern times, of course, an invasion of that scale and magnitude cannot be pulled off by a rudimentary tribal group. It has to be executed by a well-organized stage apparatus. Well, let's talk about this event in 395 then, Hyunjin, which you mentioned there, because it sounds like this huge, very well-coordinated invasion by the Huns in the West, in the Balkans with the Roman Empire, but also with that other great empire, as you say, in Central Asia,

in the Near East, which is the Sasanians as well. I mean, this must be absolutely well coordinated. And how does it unfold? Is this a massive event in late ancient Near Eastern European history? Yes. Unfortunately, we don't have many sources from Sasanian Iran. So we do know from Greco-Roman sources that the Huns not just swept most of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, but that they also invaded western Iran and pillaged Sasanian territory as well, simultaneously. And neither empire could do much about it, really. And in the case of the Sasanians, they had other problems to deal with at the same time as well. And that was, of course, the eastern cousins of these European Huns, the White Huns, basically snatching from them all of their eastern territories. And of course, Leisha, these White Huns or the Central Asian Huns would actually conquer Sasanian Iran entirely and reduce it to vassal status. So the Sasanians actually had a worse

time than the Romans. And they were subjugated to these white Huns for almost 100 years and had to pay tribute, play second fiddle, basically, until the Turks destroyed the white Huns in the middle of the 6th century. But in the case of the Western Huns, of course, when they invade the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, nobody really explains why the Roman armies did not march out to meet them and defeat them in battle. What happens is that they just wait until the Huns have basically done their thing and they're leaving with enormous Bucci and Luce. And of course, the one brave Roman general decides that he's going to pursue them. And he does manage to fall upon the rearguard of the returning Huns.

And he does manage to recover some of the booty that they were carrying away. But of course, all of our sources do not tell us anything about battlefield victories, triumphs, nothing like that. It was, in other words, a fiasco or a catastrophe. And the more private sources from the period describe this in apocalyptic terms, as if this was the beginning of the end of days, right? And that nothing could be done about this and the world is coming to an end. So it's not that the Romans are weak. That's not what is happening. It is just that they were faced with a situation which was unprecedented. So before this, they had to deal with just one superpower on their doorstep, which was the Sasanians to the east. They had some problems with the Sasanians in the third century. But by the

fourth century, they had basically stabilized their eastern borders with Sasanian to the east. They had some problems with the Sasanians in the 3rd century, but by the 4th century, they had basically stabilized their eastern borders with Sasanian Persia. But now, of course, they had another problem, another similarly powerful empire on its northern doorstep. So, the geopolitical calculus was completely altered. And that is why the Romans had such a difficult time in the late 4th century, and of course, in the 5th century, which gives us the erroneous impression that, oh, the Romans had become decadent, and they had become weak, and that's why they're losing every battle. And they didn't lose all their battles, of course. And of course, that led Edward Gibbon to famously

declare that this was the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It was neither. Only half of the Roman Empire fell apart. The other half lasted another thousand years. And yes, the Romans were far from decadent. That's what recent research has conclusively shown. It's incredible to think how the arrival of the Huns completely shifts the geopolitical situation in modern Europe with the Romans. I mean, when the Huns arrive on the scene, they're beginning this incredible expansion. How do they decide to try and portray the Huns, this northern threat? Well, we've got the image that we find in Ammianus. When the Huns were not in direct contact with the Romans, the Romans tried to portray them as a bit like the Cimbri and the Teutones

of the first century BC. And you see the same kind of trope, that they were incredibly primitive at the beginning. The Cimbri, of course, and the Teutones, they also don't have iron weapons, but they snatched advanced metal weapons from the people that they conquer. How on earth that could possibly happen is beyond me. And then, of course, by the time that they reach the Roman frontiers, they've suddenly become quite technologically sophisticated. And that is the image that Ammianus gives us. And so this is not realistic history, of course. Any classicist or philologist who looks at Ammianus can instantly point this out. But in any case, there is that very distorted representation at the beginning. But once the

Romans actually meet the Huns and find out who they are, then we get quite valuable and accurate information about who the Huns are. In fact, the accounts become so accurate that the Romans start to not overestimate Hunic capacities, but because they are aware of how powerful the Huns are, they start to think that the objective of the Huns is to conquer the Roman Empire and destroy it. So they become an existential threat. Whereas if you look at the behavior of the Hunnic kings, they had no intention of actually conquering the Roman Empire. The inter-Asian states all throughout this period, it changes later, of course, during the Middle Ages and the Huns and the Turks, et cetera, they do actually end up conquering large sedentary states and ruling them

directly. But during this time, the integration states had a policy of hegemonic overlordship. So what they were after was to subject the Roman state to tributary status. So, for example, when the White Huns conquered the Sassanian Empire, you would have thought that they would just do away with the Sassanian kings and govern Persia themselves. That's not what they do. So what they do is they keep the Sassanian kings in place and they make them their vassal kings. And probably because the empire that they were governing was too large already and they did not have the bureaucratic and administrative apparatus to govern another empire that they were governing was too large already. And they did not have the bureaucratic and administrative apparatus

to govern another empire that they had just conquered. And that's also the situation that the Xiongnu in Mongolia faced. They actually managed to surround the Han emperor, the Gaozong. And they were this close to basically destroying the Han dynasty. And yet in that moment of triumph, they decided to let him go in return for a promise of annual tribute. And so the Han empire survived to wreak vengeance later. But the same thing was happening in the case of Romans and the Hans. The Hans saw themselves as hegemonic rulers of all the earth. And their aim was to subject the Roman kings, as they saw them,

to a tributary status. And that is why, for example, and we won't get to it today, but the ambassador that Attila sent to the Western Roman court tells the Western Roman emperor that Attila, your master and mine, commands you to prepare a palace for his arrival. That is the kind of language, flagrantly arrogant language, that the Huns threw around. And of course, that gave the Romans the impression that what the Huns were after was conquest, complete annihilation of the Roman state, which in fact was not what they were after. So it turns out. Well, that's absolutely fascinating. And you mentioned Attila there, but there is another thing I'd like to focus on, and that's Aldine.

Is Aldine a good example of this mindset of the Huns that it's not always conquest against the Romans? It's also cooperation, this idea of tribute, this idea, shall we say, of vassalage. I mean, who was Aldine and how does he fit into all of this? Yes, Aldine is presented as a regular. The Romans knew who he was, right? So he's a sub-king. He's not the high king, the praecipulus rex, as the Romans would call Atida and the other sort of high kings of the Hunnic stage. So the Hunnic stage is a kind of a quasi-feudal entity. I hate to use the word feudal because it gives the wrong impression, but it's a state in which there

is the supreme ruler or the emperor called the Darugha, who rules the imperial center. And he is assisted in his duties, imperial duties, by sub-kings. So there is the great king, the wise king of the left, the wise king of the right, rulers of the eastern and western halves of the empire, respectively. And then there are the kings of the north and the south below the kings of the east and the west so there are four preeminent kings and then below those four preeminent kings there are six more kings who constitute a kind of an aristocratic council that kind of functions like sort of a house of lords sort of for want of a better description and there are also state officials who manage the communications between the imperial center and the provinces called the Guru Marquis.

And then regional governors, the 24 imperial l regional rulers, and tributary states that all have varying degrees of autonomy vis-a-vis the imperial center. So that's the kind of the structure that we're dealing with. And exactly the same structure is found amongst the Huns in Europe as well. And this is borne out by the evidence that we get from Aprescus in particular. And Uldin, the name is quite interesting because the Romans tended to mistransliterate the Hunnic or the old Turkic word for six, which is Alti. So in some cases they get it right. So for example, Altsiyagiri, which is a corruption of the Turkic term Altikur, which means the six lords, right? So six kings that I've just mentioned.

means the six lords, right? So six kings that I've just mentioned. Sometimes that is mistransliterated as Ultsinkur, right? So Alt was sometimes mistakenly written as Wult or Wuld. And that actually becomes a relatively frequent name found amongst, of course, the Leserhans and also even amongst people of Germanic origin who started taking on Hunnic names. And so Uldin, the I-N is a Greek suffix. So basically he's a sixer, right? He's one of the six kings. And he's probably a sub-king who is in charge of the Danubian region, so the western extremity of the Hunnic Empire at the time. As we can see from that vast military enterprise of 395 AD,

the Hunnic imperial center was still very much in the east, so in the Caspian steppes. And so Uldin was in charge of the western extremity of the Hunnic empire. He uses the same imperial language that we'll see later. He tells the Roman ambassador that everything under the sun is the property of the Huns. So he claims that the Romans should submit to Hunnic Germany. But despite his bravado, Alden's position in the western extremity of the Hunnic Empire is actually quite vulnerable. He doesn't have many Huns there. Most of the Huns are to the east. And so we know this because later when Alden invades the Eastern Roman Empire. And that invasion ended up in a fiasco because the Romans managed to bribe Alden's subordinates and they rebel. So the invasion just fizzles out.

But some of Alden's troops end up being captured. And it turns out that a lot of these troops are not Huns. In fact, none of them are Huns. They're actually Germanic peoples who had been recently conquered by the Huns. And so Alden has a core group of Huns, obviously, who protect him and who are the senior officers and what have you. But most of his troops are of Germanic origin. And so, yes, he might use tough talk and grandiose language, but his position in the West is not what it looks to be, right? Of course, when the main Huns arrive, it's a different story. But Wilden, of course, threw around his weight a little bit too much and later, of course, ends up humiliating himself. But yes, he's not a major king. He's just a sub-king. And the Romans knew that.

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Join us on the front line of military history. that's so interesting once again because sometimes i said you think of the huns you think of hordes you think of these big figures such as aldin and of course it is much bigger later but actually you're putting it into the bigger perspective like he was just a small part of this large organized hunnic empire this large organized system of government and he was on just on a western extremity who didn't actually have many huns himself he was actually people within the hunnic empire from what you've been saying there does it really emphasize how once again we're going back to this idea of the Hunnic Empire, extraordinarily sophisticated system with all these different political levels, this political hierarchy that seems to have originated from the times when the Huns were the Xiongnu, all that way further east? Yes, yes, indeed. And so Priscus, as usual, gives us the most graphic description of this political order. So he's invited to a banquet by a tiller, of course. And he notices, and he's very

perceptive, he's the Roman ambassador, and he notes down everything. And he notices that the seating arrangements at that banquet is determined by the rank of the various nobles who are in attendance. So he notices that the nobles who are seated to the right of the king, towards the east, outrank the nobles who are seated to the left of the king, who are the western nobles. So Beric, for example, whose fief is located in what is now Hungary, is outranked by Onegesius, whose fief is located in the east, in what is now the Ukraine. And so Onegesius is seated in the position of honor to the right of the king. And then he notices also that there were two very, very conspicuous kings

who were seated to the left and right of Attila himself on the same couch. So these are, of course, the equivalent of the Xiongnu, wise kings of the left and right, the nominal or the titular rulers of the eastern and western halves of the empire. And of course, he notices that to the right of Atara is seated Elak, the eldest son and heir of Atara the Han. He is the ruler of the eastern half of the empire. And this conforms exactly to Xiongnu practices in the east, whereby the heir to the throne is the wise king of the east, right? He rules over the east. And then to the west of the king is seated the paternal uncle of Attila, Oerbasius, who is the nominal ruler of the west. So Priscus gives us an exact portrayal of the Hunnic political system via

his observation of the seating arrangements at that banquet. And of course, there are also many other details that come from other authors and Priscus himself that tells us a lot about the existence of the same types of offices of state that originally existed in the Xiongnu Empire, also existing in the same fashion in the Hanic Empire. And it's not just the Huns who have this system. It's every other major iteration state after the Xiongnu have very similar systems of governance. And so it's not surprising at all, of course, that the Huns have exactly the same kind of government structure. Well, as we're talking about the Huns as an imperial state,

Xunzhen, you mentioned earlier the conquered peoples, and we know that the Huns conquered a lot of different peoples on their expansion westwards. What do we know about the treatment of conquered peoples within the Hunnic system of government? For instance, let's start on the military side. What do we know about conquered peoples in Hunnic armies? Yes, the Huns were an imperial people. So the very name Hun implies the imperial tradition of Eurasia. So it's a bit like the name Roman, right? And of course, as the name Roman implies, not just somebody who's from Italy, but anybody who lives within the Roman Empire, the name Hun also applies to anybody who belongs to the Hanic Empire. And so this is not an ethnic state, it is not a racial state. And therein lies the problem

with a lot of traditional historiography on the Hans, because they try to identify the Hans as an ethnic entity, as a race. And this goes back, of course, to the preoccupation with race in 19th century and early 20th century scholarship. But of course, that makes no sense in Central Asia. It does not make sense in the Hunnic context either. And so as for conquered peoples, they were integrated into Hunnic armies. The Huns also, just like the Romans, promoted peoples who were useful to them. And so anybody could rise in the hierarchy if they were loyal to the Hunnic establishment. So the top sort of positions, the position of kings and what have you, were usually reserved

for close relatives of the emperor or the high king. But even those positions at times were given to foreigners or conquered subject peoples who the Huns regarded to be useful. And this happened in the case of the Xiongnu, exactly the same in the case of the Huns as well. And so it's a polyglot, multi-ethnic empire. Priscus actually meets a Roman defector who has gone Hunnic and has become a Hun, and he's married a Hunnic wife, who knows who she was, but anyway, who was living in the Hunnic empire. And he's very happy there. He actually argues with the Romans as to why it's better to live under the Huns than under the Romans. Now, this is all rhetorical, of course, and we're not exactly sure as to whether

such a conversation happened in exactly the same way. But it is quite telling that if the Huns found you useful, then you could be very successful, as in any conquering state, especially if you had military potential or had bureaucratic potential, then you were recruited. Which is not to say that the experience of any conquest would have been a pleasant one, of course, as with any conquest, it was brutal. And later, in 468 AD, when Dengizik, who is the son of Atillac, launches his campaign into the Roman Empire, the Romans managed to sow dissension within the ranks of Dengizic, who is the son of Attilog, launches his campaign into the Roman Empire, the Romans managed to sow dissension within the ranks of Dengizic's Gothic troops by sending one of their Hunnic officers. So there was a Hun who was working for the Romans. And so he goes to the

Goths and starts talking to the Goths about the humiliation they have suffered under the Huns, right? The heavy taxes and all of these indignities that they had been forced to endure. And this really, really makes them angry. They decide to rebel against the Huns. So certainly no walk in the park. I don't think anybody would have liked Roman conquest either. You know, Julius sees murdering a million Gauls. These things, unfortunately, of course, are a part of imperial conquests and

imperial expansion, and the Huns were prolific at it. And so one of the reviewers to my book wrote this hilarious description and said that this guy wants to sort of go on about how wonderful his Huns were. No, no, no, no, they weren't wonderful people. They were just as crazy and brutal as anybody else who lived at the time. But where we do make a mistake is to create this dichotomy and say the Huns were the evil ones and the Romans were the good guys. No good guys. As you say, sorting the fact from fiction and lifting a lid on that, which is absolutely crucial, what your work has done. Let's keep on the strand for a bit longer then, because we see this sort of imperial power throughout history, and particularly in ancient history, where we see, whether it's the Macedonians or the Romans or the Achaemenid Persians,

where they displace groups of people from one part of the empire to a far part of the empire, particularly if they're a troublesome group of people. Do we see the Huns doing this too at all? Yes, they do exactly the same thing. So the best instance of that is the removal of a large portion of the Ostrogoths, the East Goths, from their original territory in what is central Ukraine and western Ukraine to Hungary and Croatia. And so they're resettled there. And the Huns actually move people about all the time, and they create the imperial core, which in Attila's time moves to Hungary from the Pontic steppes. And then around this imperial core, the Huns positioned various subject peoples

to guard the periphery of the core imperial territory. And so the larger confederations are usually controlled by imperial princes. But the further out you go, of course, then you get more loosely affiliated groups that are presumably ruled by local princes who pay tribute to the Huns. And so in order to stabilize their conquests, a very common tactic that was used by the Huns was to move people about in order to weaken them and to weaken the cohesion of these groups so that they would be unable to unite and rebel against them. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. As you say, we see this in so many different empires and this transferring of people from place to place. But you mentioned also there something which I found really interesting was how you mentioned Attila moves his court. Now, in a previous podcast, Brian Miller has talked about how the Xiongnu Empire was the first nomadic empire.

Hyunjin, what are your thoughts on that? Does the Hunnic Empire in Europe, if we're thinking of how closely linked it was to the Xiongnu, was the Hunnic Empire also a nomadic empire too? Brian is a great scholar, and I have a lot of respect for his work, obviously. But I would beg to disagree with him there. The Xiongnu, I think the description nomad is misleading, because it implies that these people are wandering about aimlessly, and they have no fixed boundaries or territories that they want to control. That's far from the case. The Xiongnu and the Huns were territorial states.

And in fact, all inter-Asian states were territorial states. If you dared to trespass on the territory of someone else, then it leads to war immediately. Now, I suppose what he's trying to refer to there is that the ruling elites of the Xiongnu were itinerant rulers, right? So in other words, they moved about. They didn't stay in one location, one capital, as the Roman elite did. What the Hanukkah elite or the Xiongnu elite did was they moved about their territories. And this allowed them to govern their empire without having to maintain a huge administrative apparatus, because the king was there at some point, right? So the imperial apparatus and the court moved with these kings. And this is also the system that was adopted by

the Achaemenid Persians. So the Achaemenid Persians, of course, were itinerant kings, and they had multiple capitals. And inter-Asian states later, of course, or states that are based on inter-Asian core ruling castes or ruling group, usually have as many as five or six capitals that they strategically position in areas that are critical to imperial governance. And they move about, of course, in order to maintain control. And that's exactly what is happening in the case of the Xiongnu and the Huns. But this is not mindless migration, of course. And so nomad, I think, in the minds of many people imply somebody who can just move about and just run away, and where there is no organization whatsoever. That is far from the case. And as I mentioned earlier, and Brian knows this too, right? I think it's just a question of

semantics here. I think we're saying the same things in a different way. I would prefer to call them agro-pastoralists. And this is also the opinion of another very great scholar of Inner Asia and Central Asia, Ursula Brosseter. She is, in fact, one of the people who have coined this term, that these people had an economic system which combined a pastoralist elite core with an agricultural subject population. And so all of these inner Asian states, with rare exceptions, follow the same model. So yes, the most powerful elite group are usually pastoralists, but I suppose we could call them nomad in brackets. But there is a significant

portion of the population of the empire that is agricultural, and they're an important element of the imperial economy. Otherwise, it'd be difficult for the pastoralists to maintain themselves. It's a symbiotic relationship, in other words. Well, absolutely. To keep you on the economy then, what was the tribute given to the Hanukkah empire from, let's say, the Romans or the Sasanians, or even, let's say, the Han dynasty with the Xiongnu? Was the tribute more like a bonus for the high officials, for those key political figures in the empire, rather than being the staple of the economy? in the empire rather than being the staple of the economy.

Yes, absolutely. So this is a huge mistake that needs to be corrected in scholarship. People have argued that the Hans or the Xiongnu were parasitic, that the survival of their state depended on foodstuffs and the tribute that came from the Han Empire or the Roman Empire and so on and so forth. That's simply not true. The tribute that was collected were prestige goods, right? So yes, they were expensive, you know, gold coins, and that's usually what the Huns demanded of the Romans. This was gold.

And in fact, what is strange is that the gold that the Huns demand is not even exorbitant, right, by contemporary standards. It's more nominal. It is a display of power. And the Hunnic kings and inter-Asian rulers in general were expected to have, I suppose, the inter-Asian equivalent of the mandate of heaven. So they had this divine charisma, which gave them legitimacy to rule. So the heavenly god Tengri had granted this dynasty

the divine right to rule. And in order to validate that divine authority to rule over the world, they needed to receive tribute from defeated peoples. So military prowess was extraordinarily important, as it was also for the Romans as well, of course. It's a similar kind of dynamic. Conquest solidified imperial control and also the authority of the king who was in charge. And so that explains the, I suppose,

the belligerence of the Hunnic kings. They had to periodically display their strength in order to keep their subject peoples in line. And the best way to do that, of course, was to invade, in the case of the Huns, the Roman Empire, and then force the Romans to pay tribute. And so the periodic war was not a bad thing for them anyway. It's something that was necessary. Not the actual tribute itself. The Huns did not live off that tribute. It's just that that tribute allowed the king to display his largesse and his majesty to his nobles and powerful vassals, who would then be made aware of the fact that even the Roman emperors are vassals of the Hunnic king. You better not rebel yourself.

Absolutely. The superpower for four centuries or so brought to become, giving tribute to this new rising empire in the block. And Hyunjin, just before we completely wrap this up, if, let's say, the Huns emerge into the scene in our Greco-Roman sources in the 370s around that time, just under a century later, I mean, how large is the Hunnic empire by that time? By that stage, by the middle of the 5th century,

the empire of the Huns stretches from the Rhine, which is, of course, the western border. And it's almost impossible to figure out what the exact eastern border was. But we do know for certain that they did exercise control over the Kuban steppe. And so, in other words, their empire probably stretched as far east as the Caspian Sea. And to the south, of course, they had occupied the Danubian region, and in the middle of the 5th century, they were invading Italy and Gaul and the Balkans, etc. To the north, again, very difficult to determine to what extent they controlled the Baltic coasts.

But Priscus tells us that when he visited Attila's court, he was informed by the Western Roman ambassador that the Huns had just conquered the islands of the ocean. So this was, I think, most scholars agree, this is a reference to Scandinavia. And there is scholarship that is emerging in Scandinavia, which has argued that the Huns did conquer Denmark and Sweden, and that they imposed rulers in these regions and that impacted on the later development of Norse civilization. Now, that has to be investigated further, right? So I cannot say definitively as to whether that actually happened, but Priscus does say, and there is another historian who argues that the island in the ocean does not refer to Scandinavia,

it actually refers to Britain. Because, of course, the venerable bead later says that amongst the people who conquered Britain from the Romans and the British peoples were the Huns. So that is, again, something that needs more research, right? And I doubt it myself. But Scandinavia, I think, is the place that is being referred to. But roughly there, right? So this is an enormous place that we're talking about an empire that's actually larger than the Roman Empire, and with a smaller population, obviously, because these places were less heavily populated, but still a vast area, nonetheless. Well, we started off our chat talking about the Xiongnu and how that empire was larger than that of Alexander the Great. We've ended this podcast talking about the Hanukkah Empire and how at its height, its size was larger than that of the the Great. We've ended this podcast talking about the Hunnic Empire and how at its height,

its size was larger than that of the Roman Empire. Hyunjin, just before we finish off, you mentioned your book earlier. So your fantastic book on the Huns is called? It's called The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe. It's already seven years old now.

There are many, many historians who are much, much more intelligent than I am who are working on this and producing brilliant work. So I'd like to encourage your listeners to check them out and to find out for themselves where this exciting research is heading. Absolutely, indeed. It sounds very exciting research surrounding the Huns in the years to come. Hyunjin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Well, thank you very much for inviting on the podcast well thank you very much for inviting me it was a pleasure Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова