English practice 45

Who Are You Calling a Barbarian?

(1)

His enemies “The Scourge of God.” His name is synonymous cruelty, mercilessness, and barbarism of all kinds. But has history really been fair to the fifth-century king and military leader known to us as Attila the Hun? that it has not. Traditional views of this period in Europe have been based on Roman sources, which even at their best are still biased against Attila, and at worst contain outright lies.

(2)

The Huns were not the nomadic tribe of brutes that popular culture has often portrayed them as being. At the time of Attila’s birth in Huns were a vast and efficiently run nation stretching all the way from to the west of what is now Germany, far larger and less fragmented than the Western Roman Empire then was. And unlike aristocratic Roman society, the Hun world was a meritocracy with little to no . At least a few sources who had lived in both societies said that they preferred the Hun civilization to the Roman. Yes, the Huns had beards and wore furs, but this was only common sense: it was much colder where they lived than it was in Rome.

(3)

Attila became king upon the death of his uncle in 434 and with Western Rome for the first part of his reign. Roman armies in what is now France recruited soldiers from Hun lands with Attila’s permission, and the two empires traded freely and even extradited criminals to each other. The trouble started in 450, when Honoria, the sister of the emperor, offered herself in marriage to Attila in an attempt to escape an arranged union with a much older senator. Valentinian, her brother, tried to deny that the offer was genuine, but Attila was understandably unwilling to pass up a chance to unite his royal line and create the greatest empire in history. Rome was so frightened by this prospect that they aligned themselves with the Visigoths—formerly the common enemy of both the . Hun forces entered Italy in 452, and sacked several cities, but were forced to turn back before reaching the capital, as a famine prevented the army from obtaining sufficient food. Attila died in his native lands a year later, supposedly after partying too hard at a feast.

(4)

Contrary to popular belief, neither Attila nor any Hun commander ever sacked Rome (the Visigoths took the city in 410, and the Vandals in 454, but neither nation was aligned or even friendly with the Huns). Although his tactics were brutal by modern standards, no more so than those of any military leader from that time, the “civilized” Romans included. Attila may be known as a monster in the West, but is revered as a national hero in much of Eastern Europe to this day.