[Elfsea] Who is Attila the Hun

[Lisa Duke]

Found on-line as an educational tool for our upcoming Barbarian Springfaire.

Obviously, when the Huns first appeared on the edges of the Roman Empire,
they made a strong impression, but after their initial threats they settled
down along the Danube, particularly in the Great Hungarian Plain, and for
almost fifty years they served the Romans as allies more often than they
attacked them as enemies. In return, the Eastern Emperor, beginning in the
420's, paid them an annual subsidy. On the whole, this uneasy relationship
worked well although there were times when the Huns threatened to intervene
directly in imperial affairs.


 Attila the Hun (circa 406-53), king of the Huns (circa 433-53)

 The decisive turn of events came with the accession of Attila as King of
the Huns. The new ruler was much more aggressive and ambitious than his
predecessors had been, and arrogance sometimes made him unpredictable.
One of the most feared and notorious barbarians of all time, Attila is
believed to be of distant Mongol stock, he ravaged much of the European
continent during the 5th century AD. Apparently Attila was as great a menace
to the Teutonic tribespeople as he was to the Romans.

There is a story that he claimed to own the actual sword of Mars, and that
other Barbarian chiefs could not look the King of the Huns directly in the
eyes without flinching. Attila was a striking figure, and Edward Gibbon in
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire offered a famous
description of the personality and appearance of the Hun, based on an
ancient account:

His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the
stamp of his national origin . . . a large head, a swarthy complexion,
small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard,
broad shoulders, and a short square body, of a nervous strength, though of a
disproportioned form. The haughty step and demeanor of the king of the Huns
expressed the consciousness of his superiority above the rest of mankind;
and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy
the terror which he inspired....He delighted in war; but, after he had
ascended the throne in a mature age, his head, rather than his hand,
achieved the conquest of the North; and the fame of an adventurous soldier
was usefully exchanged for that of a prudent and successful general.

In his own day he and his Huns were known as the "Scourge of God," and the
devastation they caused in Gaul before the great Battle of Châlons in 451 AD
became a part of medieval folklore and tradition.