Confluentes (Coblenz) stood at the junction of the Moselle with the

Rhine, and thence upon the left of the Moselle a great Roman road ran

south-west to Augusta Treverorum (Treves), whence a whole series of

roads set forth to traverse Gaul in every direction. From Confluentes,

too, running north along the left bank of the Rhine, a road pushed on

northward through Bonn to Cologne, whence again a great highway ran

west and south across what is now Belgium and Picardy. This would seem

to have been the main route of Attila’s advance. At the southern entry

at Augst his armies could await, meet and perhaps cut off or defeat any

attack from Italy.

[Illustration: THE ATTACK OF ATTILA UPON GAUL AND THE RETREAT FROM

ORLEANS]

It was January when Attila set out, it was March when he found himself

at last before the gates of Gaul upon the Rhine. The spring and summer

lay all before him in which to ruin and to destroy what after all he

could not understand.

VI

ATTILA’S ADVANCE FROM THE RHINE TO ORLEANS

In the ruin of the secular Roman administration which the last fifty

years had seen, in the terror which the threat of Attila’s armies upon

the Rhine roused everywhere in the great and noble province of Gallia,

it would appear that many, if not all, of the cities still Roman, and

above all Christian, found in some constant and dominating mind a

substitute for, and a successor to, their ruined institutions. We see

this in Tongres, in Metz, in Rheims, in Orleans, above all we see it,

as we might expect, in Paris. The fate of these cities, the way they

met their fate is illuminating; and if it is inexplicable and to our

scepticism almost incredible, it is none the less certainly indicative

of the condition, spiritual and political, of that still Roman society.

It was Christianity which defeated Attila in Gaul as certainly as it

alone was able later to turn him back from the destruction of Italy.

The real victory, in spite of the great strokes of Aetius, was a

spiritual victory; a victory of Christianity over heathenism.

I forbear to draw the parallel with the struggle in which we are at

present engaged. Happily the most striking fact of the present contest

is that the Allies have at once seen through and cast from them the

brutal and hopeless philosophy of blasphemy and bosh, of “necessity”

and “frightfulness” which is the most violent form of atheism that has

yet attacked European society. Germany will perish by her “Kultur” as

certainly as the Huns did by their heathenism. Indeed, in action they

are identical and rest upon the same hopelessness, the denial of the

divinity not of God only but of man.

That the defeat of Attila was a Christian victory is obvious at once,

if we follow his footsteps. He began his attack from the crossing of

the Rhine at Confluentes and fell upon Belgic Gaul. Metz fell. “On the

very vigil of the blessed Easter,” says Gregory of Tours, “the Huns

crossing out of Pannonia, burning as they came, entered Metz. They

gave the city to the flames, massacred the people, putting all to the

sword, killing even the priests before the altar of God. In all the

city nothing remained save the oratory of the blessed Stephen the

Protomartyr and Levite.” He asserts further that this chapel was spared

only because St. Stephen himself invoked the aid of SS. Peter and Paul,

who here already had superseded Romulus and Remus, it might seem, as

the representatives of Rome, as Rome herself was about to become less

the capital of the world than of the Catholic Church.

All Lorraine lay under the torch of the Hun. He passed on into

Champagne. Rheims fell. The inhabitants had fled to the woods. St.

Nicasius the bishop was cut down before the altar as he recited a

part of the 118th Psalm: _Adhaesit pavimento anima mea; vivifica

me secundum verbum tuum._ His sister, named Eutropia, fearing the

brutality of the invaders, struck the murderer in the face and was cut

down with her brother. Suddenly, we read, the church was filled with

a strange thunder, the Huns fled in superstitious fear, deserting the

half-destroyed town. On the following day the inhabitants returned to

their ruins.

From Rheims the Hunnish flood swept on to St. Quentin and even to

Tongres; all northern Gaul from the Marne to the Rhine was laid waste,

everyone was a fugitive,--ruined, helpless. The peoples of the smaller

towns fled first to the greater, and then with the peasants fled into

the hills and the woods. It is in the fate of one of these little towns

later to be so famous, indeed the capital of the West, Lutetia or

Paris, that we have the most characteristic as it is the most amazing

episode of the defence.

Of St. Geneviève’s life we know little apart from the legend which has

transformed the wonderful reality into a delightful tale. St. Germanus

of Auxerre found her under the hill of Valerian, a little girl of

seven years, and his delight in her was but the first example of the

influence her character was to have upon men and events. She was the

spirit of Christian France incarnate. Joan of Arc is, as it were, but

a repetition of her, and over that later and more famous maid she has

this advantage; she was of Paris when Paris only had meaning, as it

were, in her and her act.

Of her legend one can never have enough; but here I will only give

that part of it which concerns this moment. “Tidings came to Paris,”

says Voragine, who has summed up in his marvellous narrative all the

earlier hagiographers: “Tidings came to Paris that Attila the felon

king of the Huns had enterprised to destroy and waste parts of France

and to subdue them to his domination. The burgesses of Paris, for great

dread that they had, sent their goods into other cities more sure. St.

Geneviève warned and admonished the good women of the town that they

should wake in fastings and in orisons by which they might assuage the

ire of Our Lord and eschew the tyranny of their enemies, like as did

sometime the holy women Judith and Esther. They obeyed her and were

long and many days in the church in wakings, fastings and in orisons.

She said to the burgesses that they should not remove their goods, nor

send them out of the town of Paris, for the other cities that they

supposed should be more sure, should be destroyed and wasted, but by

the Grace of God Paris should have no harm. And some had indignation at

her and said that a false prophet had arisen and appeared in their time

and began among them to ask and treat whether they should not drown her

or stone her. Whilst they were thus treating, as God would, came to

Paris after the decease of St. Germain, the archdeacon of Auxerre, and

when he understood that they treated together of her death he came to

them and said: ‘Fair sirs, for God’s sake do not this mischief, for

she of whom ye treat, St. Germain witnesseth that she was chosen of

God in her mother’s belly and lo, here be letters that he hath sent to

her in which he recommendeth him to her prayers.’ When the burgesses

heard these words recited by him of St. Germain and saw the letters,

they marvelled and feared God and left their evil counsel and did no

more thereto. Thus Our Lord kept her from harm, which keepeth always

them that be his, and defendeth after that the apostle saith, and for

her love did so much that the Tyrants approached not Paris, Thanks and

glory to God and honour to the Virgin.”

That is, as I say, the most characteristic and the most significant

episode, as it is the most amazing, of the defence. Paris was not

to fall, was not even to be attacked. Attila was surfeited with

destruction and loot, he was forced now to concentrate his attention

upon the attack on the Visigoths of the south lest Rome and Aetius

should stand in his way and imperil his whole campaign. His plan must

be to defeat the Visigoths before he was forced to face Aetius coming

up out of Italy, and with this on his mind he set out from Metz with

his main army, passed through Toul and Rheims, which were gutted,

through Troyes and Sens, which he was in too great haste to destroy,

and over the Sologne, held then by his ally the King of the Alans,

Sangibanus, and marched directly upon Orleans. That march represented

the work of a whole month. He left Metz in the early days of April, he

arrived before Orleans in the early days of May.

Orleans stands upon the most northern point of the Loire, the great

river which divides Gaul east and west into a northern and a southern

country. It has been the point around which the destinies of the Gauls

have so often been decided--one has only to recall the most famous

instance of all, the deliverance under Joan of Arc--that it is without

surprise we see it fulfilling its rôle in the time of Attila also.

From time immemorial, before the beginning of history, it had been an

important commercial city, for it stood not only on one of the greatest

and most fruitful rivers of western Europe, but, as I have said, upon

the marches of the north and south, whose gate it was. No one could

pass without its leave, at least in safety. Anciently it was known

as Genabum and there had been planned and conceived the great revolt

which so nearly engulfed Julius Cæsar, who burnt it to the ground. It

stood then, as later when it rose again, upon the northern bank of the

river and was joined with the south by a great bridge. The resurrection

after that burning was not long delayed, but it seems to have been less

magnificent than might have been expected and it certainly suffered

much from war, so that in 272, in the time of Aurelian, it was rebuilt

with a wall about it, and for this cause took the name of the Emperor.

Times, however, were sadly changed with the great city when Attila came

into Gaul. Much certainly was in ruin, the municipal government in full

decadence or transition and it was therefore with a dreadful fear in

her heart that Orleans watched the oncoming of the Huns. Nevertheless

the city put herself into a state of defence. The first direct assault

upon her was made by that Sangibanus, King of the Alans, and Attila’s

ally, who requested to be allowed to garrison it. Orleans refused and

closed her gates. At the same time she sent forth her bishop (and this

is as significant of the true state of affairs of government in Gaul as

the facts about Tongres, Rheims and Paris) into the south, still Roman,

to Arles to learn when Aetius might be expected in relief and how far

the Visigoths would move, not for their own defence only, but against

the common enemy.

Anianus, for such was the bishop’s name, thus appears as the

representative, the ambassador and the governor of the city. In Arles,

to his delight, he found not only a secure and even splendid Roman

government, but the great general himself, Aetius, who received him

with impress. Anianus urged the necessity of an immediate assistance.

He reckoned that it would be possible to hold out till the middle of

June, but no longer. Aetius heard him patiently and promised that by

then he would relieve the city. Anianus was not too soon, he had scarce

returned to Orleans when Attila began the siege.

It will be asked, and with reason, why it was that Rome had waited so

long before interfering to defend her great western province against

this “wild beast”? Why had Aetius not marched out of Italy at the head

of his armies months before? why had he waited till all the North

was a ruin before he carried the eagles over the Alps and confronted

this savage and his hordes with the ordered ranks of the army of

civilisation? The answer may be found in the war we are fighting

to-day against a similar foe. The French failed to defend the North

against the modern Attila because they were too long uncertain which

way he would come and where he would strike hardest. They could not

be sure which was the decisive point of the German attack. This it

was that kept so great a proportion of their armies in Alsace and

upon that frontier. They credited the German with more subtlety

than he possessed. They failed to grasp the gigantic simplicity of

the Barbarian plan; the mighty hammer-stroke that shattered Belgium

and plunged in to destroy all the North of France. They looked for

something less blindly brutal and more wise. They could not believe

that the German would destroy his whole case and outrage the moral

consciousness of the world by violating the neutrality of Belgium. They

failed to comprehend the essential stupidity of the Barbarian. They

were wrong.

Aetius was wrong also, but with perhaps more excuse. He could not make

up his mind where the real attack of Attila upon the Empire was to be

delivered. What if the descent upon Gaul were but a feint and Italy

were the real objective, Lombardy the true battlefield? There was this

also; in Africa, Genseric, Attila’s ally, waited and threatened to

descend upon the coast. Aetius overrated the intelligence of his enemy

as much as did Joffre. Neither understood the force which opposed him,

which it was to be their business and their glory to meet and to break.

Like Joffre, too, when Aetius at last found himself face to face with

the reality of the situation he must have dared only not to despair.

The successes of the Huns had decided the Visigoths to remain on the

defence within their own confines; they refused to attack. Everywhere

the Roman delay had discovered treason among the tribes who should have

been their allies against a common foe. Aetius could only not despair.

He addressed the Visigoths, though perhaps with more right, much as we

might address to-day the Americans. “If we are beaten you will be the

next to be destroyed; while if you help us to win yours will be the

glory.” The Visigoths replied as America is doing to-day: “It is not

our business; see you to it.”

They were wrong, the victory of Rome was as necessary for the future as

our victory is to-day.

Much indeed was already achieved to that end by the mere presence of

Aetius in Gaul. Suddenly the whole country was changed, everywhere the

peoples sprang to arms, the noble and the peasant, the bourgeois of the

cities, the bond and the free. From Armorica came an heroic company,

the Ripuarian Franks and the Salian Franks having seen the ruin of the

Roman cities of the country they had been permitted to occupy, the

Burgundians also returned to, if they had indeed ever left, their old

allegiance. So successful at last was the diplomacy of Rome that when

even Sangibanus appeared Aetius feigned to be ignorant of his treason.

The great general prepared with a good heart for the attack, but was

determined to do everything possible to mobilise the Visigoths with his

other forces. It was with this object that at last he sought the aid

of Avitus, the senator, a very great Gaulish nobleman who lived in the

city of Clermont, the chief town of the Auvergne.

In Avitus we have a figure which at once arrests our attention amid all

the welter of Barbarians of which even Gaul was full. In him we see,

and are assured, that the civilisation of Rome was still a living thing

in the West, that it had not been overwhelmed by savages or lost in a

mist of superstition. Avitus indeed seems to have stepped suddenly

out of the great Roman time, he reminds us of what we have learned to

expect a Roman noble of the time of Marcus Aurelius, or for that matter

of St. Ambrose, to be. In him we see one we can greet as a brother; we

should have been able to discuss with him the decline of the Empire.

A rich man, coming of a noble family which for long had enjoyed the

highest honour and the heaviest official responsibility, a scholar, a

connoisseur, above all a somewhat bored patriot, he was also a soldier

distinguished for his personal courage. He had already in 439 been

successful in arranging a treaty for Rome with the Visigoths, and it

was to him in this hour of enormous peril that Aetius turned again. He

found him in his beautiful, peaceful and luxurious villa of Avitacum

amid the foothills of the mountains of Auvergne, living as so many of

our great nobles of the eighteenth century lived, half a farmer, half a

scholar, wholly epicurean and full of the most noble self-indulgence,

surrounded by his family, his son and daughter, and his friends, poets

and scholars and delightful women. His son Ecdicius was the heir both

of his wealth and his responsibilities, his daughter Papianella had

married Sidonius Apollinaris of Lyons, a man already famous as a poet

and coming of a distinguished Gallo-Roman family. It was this man who

in the moment of crisis appeared on behalf of civilisation at the

Visigoths’ Court--we could not have had a more noble representative.

His mission was wholly successful; but the time spent in showing the

Visigoths where their interests lay was to cost Orleans dear. The

devoted city wholly surrounded and every day submitted to the assaults

and the clouds of arrows of the Huns, hearing no news of any relief,

was in despair. In vain the Bishop Anianus went in procession through

the streets, and even among the troops on the ramparts, bearing the

relics of his church; they called him traitor. Still firm in his faith

in God and in the promise of Aetius, daily he made men climb the last

high tower in expectation of deliverance. None came, no sign of the

armies of Aetius could be discerned. Day after day the mighty roads

southward lay in the sun white and empty of all life. At last he sent

by stealth a messenger to Aetius with this message: “My son, if you

come not to-day it will be too late.” That messenger never returned.

Anianus himself began to doubt and at last heard counsels of surrender

almost without a protest; indeed consented himself to treat with the

Huns. But Attila was beside himself at the length of the resistance, he

would grant no terms. Nothing remained but death or worse than death.

Upon the following morning, the week having been full of thunder,

the first rude cavalry of the Huns began to enter the city through

the broken gates. The pillage and massacre and rape began, and, as

to-day in Belgium, we read with a certain order and system. Nothing

was spared, neither the houses of the citizens, nor their holy places,

neither age nor sex. It seemed as though all would perish in a vast and

systematic vandalism and murder.

Suddenly a cry rose over the noise of the butchery and destruction.

The Eagles! The Eagles! And over the mighty bridge that spans the

Loire thundered the cavalry of Rome, and the tumultuous standards of

the Goths. They came on; nothing might stop them. Step by step they

won the bridge head, they fought upon the shore, in the water, through

the gates. Street by street, fighting every yard, the Imperial troops

pushed on, the glistening eagles high overhead. House by house, alley

by alleyway was won and filled with the dead; the Huns broke and fled,

the horses stamped out their faces in the byways, in the thoroughfares

there was no going, the Barbarian carrion was piled so high; Attila

himself was afraid. He sounded the retreat.

That famous and everlasting day was the 14th of June, for Aetius had

kept his word. Orleans had begun the deliverance of Gaul and of the

West.

VII

THE RETREAT OF ATTILA AND THE BATTLE OF THE CATALAUNIAN PLAINS

The retreat of Attila from Orleans would seem to have been one of

the most terrible of which we have any record. The Gothic chronicler

Jornandes, writing a hundred years after the events he describes,

wholly or almost wholly at the mercy of a Gothic and so a Barbarian

legend, would seem, though poorly informed as to facts and details, to

be fully justified in the general impression he gives of the horror and

disaster which befell the Hunnish host. It is certain that Attila’s

withdrawal of his army must have been not only difficult but impossible

without disaster: too many and too brutal crimes had been committed for

the ruined population of northern Gaul to permit it an easy passage

in retreat. The devastated country could no longer supply its needs,

everywhere ruined men awaited revenge: it can have been little less

than a confused flight that Attila made with his thousands towards the

Rhine, with Aetius and Theodoric ever upon his flanks.

Nor was he to escape without battle. The Imperial armies pressing

on behind him gained upon him daily, a sufficient comment upon his

state, and it was really in despair that he reached at last the city

of Troyes, more than a hundred miles from Orleans, an open city which

there might, he hoped, be time to loot, and so to restore to some

extent the confidence and the condition of his people. That he was not

able to loot Troyes is the best evidence we could have of the energy of

the Imperial pursuit; but here again we meet with one of those almost

incredible interpositions of the spiritual power that we have already

seen at Tongres, at Rheims, at Paris, and not least at Orleans. It must

have meant almost everything to Attila on his hurried and harassed

road north-east out of Gaul to be able to feed and to rest his army at

Troyes, where the great road by which he had come crossed the Seine.

That he was not able to do this was doubtless due fundamentally to

the pressure of Aetius upon his flanks, but there was something more,

we are told. Just as Anianus of Orleans had by his prayers saved his

city, so Lupus of Troyes defended his town in the same way. He, the

Bishop, and now perhaps the governor, of Troyes went forth to Attila,

faced and outfaced him, and indeed so impressed and even terrified the

superstitious Barbarian that he left Troyes alone and passed on, taking

only the Bishop himself with him a prisoner in his train. “For,” said

he, mocking him even in his fear, “if I take a man so holy as you with

me I cannot fail of good luck even to the Rhine.”

Attila passed on; he had crossed the Seine; before him lay the passage

of the Aube, and it was here that the advance guard of the Imperial

armies first got into touch with their quarry. It was night. Attila

had left the Gepidae to hold the crossing, and it was they who felt

the first blows of Aetius whose advance guard was composed of Franks;

the fight endured all night and at dawn the passage was won and some

15,000[12] dead and wounded lay upon the field. Attila had crossed into

Champagne, but the Imperial army was already at his heels; he would

have to fight. The battle which followed, one of the most famous as it

is one of the most important in the history of Europe, whose future was

there saved and decided, would seem to have been fought all over that

wide and bare country of Champagne between the Aube and the Marne, and

to have been finally focussed about the great earthwork still called

the Camp of Attila by Châlons; it is known to history as the battle of

the Catalaunian plains.

It may well be that the fight at the passage of the Aube had given

Attila time to reach that great earthwork, one of the most gigantic and

impressive things in Europe, which rises out of that lost and barren

country of Champagne like something not wholly the work of man. There

he halted; convinced at last that he could not escape without battle,

he encamped his army and made ready for the conflict.

In this terrible and tragic place he held council, and superstitious

as ever in the supreme moment of his career, began to consult an

endless procession of soothsayers, augurs and prophets upon the coming

battle. From the entrails of birds, or the veins upon the bones of

sheep, or the dying gestures of some animal, his sorcerers at last

dared to proclaim to him his coming defeat, but to save their heads,

perhaps, they added that the general of his enemies would perish in

the conflict. It is sufficient witness to the genius of Aetius, to

the fear he inspired in the Hun, and should be a complete answer to

his enemies and traducers, that Attila, when he heard this, from

despair passed immediately to complete joy and contentment. If after

all Aetius defeated him at the price of his life, what might he not

recover when his great adversary was no more! He therefore made ready

with a cheerful heart for the conflict. Jornandes, whom we are bound to

follow, for he is our chief, if not quite our only authority for all

this vast onslaught of the Hun upon the Gaul, describes for us, though

far from clearly, the configuration and the development of the battle.

In following this writer, however, it is necessary to remember that he

was a Goth, and relied for the most part upon Gothic traditions; also,

above all, it is necessary not to abandon our common sense, protest he

never so insistently.

Jornandes tells us that Attila put off the fight as long as possible

and at last attacked, or so I read him, not without fear and

trepidation, about three o’clock in the afternoon, so that if fortune

went against him the oncoming of night might assist him to escape.

He then sketches the field. Between the two armies, if I read him

aright, was a rising ground which offered so much advantage to him who

should occupy it that both advanced towards it, the Huns occupying it

with their right and the Imperialists with their right, composed of

auxiliaries.

On the right wing of the Romans Theodoric and his Visigoths held the

field, on the left wing Aetius and the Romans; between them holding the

centre and himself held by Aetius and Theodoric was the uncertain Alan

Sangiban.

The Huns were differently arranged. In the midst, surrounded by his

hardest and best warriors, stood Attila considering as ever his

personal safety. His wings were wholly composed of auxiliaries, among

them being the Ostrogoths with their chiefs; the Gepidae with their

King; and Walamir the Ostrogoth; and Ardaric, King of the Gepidae,

whom Attila trusted and loved more than all others. The rest, a crowd

of kings and leaders of countless races, waited the word of Attila.

For Attila, king of all kings, was alone in command and on him alone

depended the battle.

The fight began, as Jornandes insists, with a struggle for the

rising ground between the two armies. The advantage in which seems

to have rested with the Visigoths, under Thorismund, who thrust back

the Huns in confusion. Upon this Attila drew off, and seeing his

men discouraged, seized this moment to harangue them, according to

Jornandes, somewhat as follows:

“After such victories over so many nations, after the whole world has

been almost conquered, I should think it ridiculous to rouse you with

words as though you did not know how to fight. I leave such means to a

new general, or to one dealing with raw soldiers. They are not worthy

of us. For what are you if not soldiers, and what are you accustomed to

if not to fight; and what then can be sweeter to you than vengeance and

that won by your own hand? Let us then go forward joyfully to attack

the enemy, since it is always the bravest who attack. Break in sunder

this alliance of nations which have nothing in common but fear of us.

Even before they have met you fear has taught them to seek the higher

ground and they are eager for ramparts on these wide plains.

“We all know how feebly the Romans bear their weight of arms; it is

not at the first wound, but at the first dust of battle they lose

heart. While they are forming, before they have locked their shields

into the _testudo_, charge and strike, advance upon the Alans and press

back the Visigoths. Here it is we should look for speedy victory. If

the nerves are cut the members fail and a body cannot support itself

upright when the bones are dragged out of it. Lift up your hearts and

show your wonted courage, quit you like Huns and prove the valour of

your arms, let the wounded not rest till he has killed his enemy, let

him who remains untouched steep himself in slaughter. It is certain

that nothing can touch him who is fated to live, while he will die

even without war who will surely die. And wherefore should fortune

have made the Huns the vanquishers of so many nations if it were not

to prepare them for this supreme battle? Why should she have opened to

our ancestors a way through the marshes of Azov unknown till then if

it were not to bring us even to this field? The event does not deceive

me; here is the field to which so much good fortune has led us, and

this multitude brought together by chance will not look into the eyes

of the Huns. I myself will be the first to hurl my spear against the

enemy, and if any remain slothful when Attila fights, he is but dead

and should be buried.”

These words, says Jornandes, warmed the hearts of the Huns so that they

all rushed headlong into battle.

We know really nothing of the tremendous encounter which followed, the

result of which saved the Western world. It is true that Jornandes

gives us a long account of it, but we are ignorant how far it is likely

to be true, whence he got it, and how much was his own invention.

That the battle was immense, we know; Jornandes asserts that it had

no parallel and that it was such that, if unseen, no other marvel in

the world could make up for such a loss. He tells us that there was a

tradition that a stream that passed over the plain was swollen with

blood into a torrent: “they who drank of it in their thirst drank

murder.” It was by this stream, according to Jornandes, that Theodoric,

King of the Visigoths, was thrown from his horse and trampled under

foot and slain, and so fulfilled the prophecy which Attila’s sorcerers

had declared to him. The fall of the King appears so to have enraged

the Visigoths--and here we must go warily with Jornandes--that they

engaged the enemy more closely and almost slew Attila himself in their

fury. Indeed, it was their great charge which flung him and his guard,

the Hunnish centre, back into the mighty earthwork which before them

seemed but a frail barrier so enormous was their rage. Night fell upon

the foe beleaguered and blockaded within that mighty defence.

In that night Thorismund, the son of Theodoric, was lost and found

again. Aetius, too, separated in the confusion of the night from his

armies, found himself, as Thorismund had done, among the waggons of the

enemy, but like Thorismund again found his way back at last and spent

the rest of the night among the Goths.

When day dawned, what a sight met the eyes of the allies. The vast

plains were strewn with the dying and the dead, 160,000 men had fallen

in that encounter, and within that terrible earthwork lay what was left

of the Huns, wounded and furious, trapped as Alfred trapped Guthrum

later upon the Wiltshire downs.

The battle had cost the Imperialists dear enough. Nor was their loss

all. The death of Theodoric brought with it a greater anxiety and

eventually cost Aetius his Gothic allies. A council of war was called.

It was determined there to hold Attila and starve him within his

earthwork. In the meantime search was made for the body of Theodoric.

After a long time this was found, “where the dead lay thickest,” and

was borne out of the sight of the enemy, the Goths “lifting their harsh

voices in a wild lament.” It is to be supposed that there Theodoric

was buried. And it is probable that the bones and swords and golden

ornaments and jewels which were found near the village of Pouan by

the Aube in 1842 may well have been the remains of Theodoric and his

funeral, for the fight doubtless raged over a great territory, and it

is certain that the king would be buried out of sight of the foe. On

the other hand, these bones may have belonged to a Frankish chief who

had fallen in the fight for the passage of the Aube.

But it is in his account of the events that followed the burial of

Theodoric that we most doubt our guide Jornandes. He declares that

Thorismund, Theodoric’s son and successor, wished to attack the Hun

and avenge his father’s death; but that he consulted Aetius as the

chief commander, who “fearing if the Huns were destroyed, the Goths

might still more hardly oppress the Empire, advised him to return to

Toulouse and make sure of his kingdom lest his brothers should seize

it. This advice Thorismund followed without seeing the duplicity of

Aetius.” Such an explanation of the treason of the Goths was doubtless

accepted by the Gothic traditions and especially comfortable to

Jornandes. It is incredible, because any observer could see that Attila

was not so badly beaten that he was not a far greater danger to the

Empire than ever the Visigoths could be. To let him escape, and that is

what the departure of Thorismund meant, was treason, not to the Goths,

but to the Empire. It served the cause not of Aetius but of Thorismund,

not of Rome but of the Goths, whose loyalty was never above suspicion

and whose slow adhesion to the Imperial cause had been the talk of Gaul

and the scandal of every chancellery.

But Aetius could not have been much astonished by the desertion, and

it was no less, of Thorismund. Rome was used to the instability of her

Barbarian allies who if they really could have been depended upon, if

they had really possessed the quality of decision, and known their own

minds would no longer have been Barbarians. It was Attila who was

amazed. He had given himself up for lost when looking out from that

dark earthwork at dawn he saw the Visigothic camp empty and deserted,

and at the sight “his soul returned into his body.” Without a moment’s

hesitation, broken as he was, he began a retreat that Aetius was not

able to prevent or to turn into a rout, which he could only ensure and

emphasise. Upon that long march to the Rhine all the roads were strewn

with the Hunnish sick and wounded and dead, but the main army, what was

left of the half-million that had made the invasion, escaped back into

the forests of Germany. Gaul was saved, and with Gaul the future of the

West and of civilisation. But Attila was not destroyed.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Jornandes, _R. Get._, 41. According to the Abbe Dubos the “XC

millibus” which appears in the text of Jornandes is the mistake of a

copyist for “XV millibus.”

VIII

ATTILA’S ATTACK UPON AND RETREAT FROM ITALY

It might seem to be a hard question to answer whether Attila was

really beaten or not in Gaul. This at least is certain, the retreat

from Orleans to the Camp by Châlons was a disaster for him, and the

great battle which followed was only not annihilating because of the

desertion of the Visigoths. Attila saved what that retreat and battle

had left of his army, and without delay, for necessity pushed him on,

turned to prove upon the body of Italy itself that he was still the

“universal tyrant” and the “scourge of God.”

Historians of the decline and fall of the Empire, of the invasions of

the Barbarians, have consistently expressed surprise, often not unmixed

with contempt and derision, that Attila was allowed to escape. But it

must be remembered that it is the almost unbroken characteristic of the

Barbarian wars that the invaders did escape; so Alaric continually

avoided destruction at the hands of Stilicho; and if the Visigoths were

thus able to save themselves how much more was Attila whose armies were

so largely composed of mounted men. It might seem that the superiority

of the Barbarian lay in just that, mobility; the rude and savage men

that composed their armies were content and able to live upon the

country they ravaged, they were not dependent as were the Imperial

armies upon their bases and their supply; they were always a bolt shot

at a venture. Their success is paralleled in our own day by that of

the Boers in South Africa. We do not blame Roberts and Kitchener that

they allowed De Wet to escape them for so long; we understand that

it was inevitable it should be so. Not thus argued the Romans. Full

of discontent, rotten with intrigue and corruption as the Imperial

Government was, there were many who from personal hatred and ambition,

or mere treason, blamed and traduced Aetius for the escape of Attila

which they had planned and prayed for in their hearts. Any weapon was

good enough to use against the great general who apparently suffered

neither fools nor traitors gladly, and was as ambitious if as able as

Stilicho. Every sort of calumny was used against him. It was recalled

that he had had intimate relations with Roua, the uncle of Attila, it

was suggested that he had purposely spared the Huns.

To all this bitterness much was added by the acts of Aetius himself.

Immeasurably proud, like Stilicho, he pretended to claim the hand

of the Princess Eudoxia, the daughter of the Emperor Valentinian,

for his son; moreover, among his other preparations against a new

attack of Attila was a plan to remove the Emperor into Gaul; that he

might replace him himself, his enemies declared. So violent grew the

opposition to this last project that it had to be abandoned. Aetius was

content to send Valentinian to Rome, while he himself, with his army,

held Ravenna and the line of the Po.

In the first chapter of this book I have briefly explained the Imperial

theory of the defence of Italy; that theory I have at greater length,

and I think for the first time, set forth in a previous work.[13] Here

I must very briefly recapitulate in saying that the valley of the Po,

the whole Cisalpine Plain between the Alps and the Apennines, was in

the Imperial theory, and rightly, the defence of Italy. That defence

was barred again upon the inward or southern side by the barren and

therefore impassable range of the Apennines,--impassable, that is,

save at the eastern extremity, where the Via Emilia ran between the

mountains and the sea into the city of Rimini. That narrow pass was

commanded and held not by Rimini, which was indefensible, but by

Ravenna which, on account of its position in the marshes, could not be

taken and scarcely attacked. It was the due and wise recognition of

these facts that caused the Emperor Honorius to take up his residence

in Ravenna when Alaric crossed the Alps. That city had been the key to

the defence of Italy ever since; it remained so now, therefore Aetius

went thither gathering his army along the Via Emilia behind the line of

the Po to await the final adventure of Attila.

Having failed to destroy the Eastern Empire, having failed in his

attack upon the western provinces, the only thing that remained for

Attila to attempt was the destruction and rape of the soul of all,

the citadel of civilisation, Italy and Rome. It was the hardest task

of all, therefore in his prudence, and he was always prudent, he had

not tried it till now. It was his last throw. It was to fail, and that

so contemptibly that his campaigns East and West in comparison

seem like triumphs. Like Kaiser Wilhelm II., what Attila lacked in

real force he strove to supply with blasphemy and boasting. He was

as ill-informed and as ignorant of the real nature and strength of

the forces opposed to him as the German statesmen of our day; he

exaggerated and relied upon the corruption of the Empire; above all,

like the Kaiser, he failed to see that the future frowned against him

dark and enormous as the Alps.

[Illustration: CISALPINE GAUL AND THE DEFENCE OF ITALY]

Tradition rightly imposed upon Aetius the defence of Italy at the

expense as it were of Cisalpine Gaul; it insisted that Cisalpine Gaul

was to be the scene of the encounter. He determined to hold the line of

the Po as he had held the line of the Loire; there was no need to be

doubtful of his success. Already so many Barbarian invaders had found

destruction in the immensity of that great plain. Nevertheless Aetius

reinsured himself and Rome; he reinsured himself with Constantinople.

It was no longer Theodosius the Calligrapher who sat on the Eastern

throne, but Marcian the soldier. To him Valentinian sent ambassadors;

Marcian heard them and promised an army. If, then, Aetius could lure

Attila on far enough, but not too far for the safety of Italy, if he

could hold him in the Cisalpine Plain, Marcian coming into Pannonia

would be in time to cut off his retreat, and so at last the Hun would

be utterly destroyed, and the bones of his great host might bleach

beside the rivers of Lombardy. There at any rate we have the best

explanation of what followed.

Before the winter was over, the winter of 451-452, Attila was already

moving south-west out of Barbary over the Danube, and at last by the

great Roman road through Pannonia, crossing the Julian Alps as Alaric

had done before him to cross the Isonzo, to lay siege to the first

great Italian fortress, then perhaps, save Ravenna, the strongest place

in all Italy, Aquileia, the capital of the province of Venetia. The

walls of this mighty stronghold which was some sixty stadia from the

sea were washed by the rivers Natiso and Turrus. I say it was, save

Ravenna, the strongest place in Italy. It had been made so about the

end of the fourth century, but it had much longer ranked third among

Italian fortresses, only outstripped by Milan and Capua. Though set

in the plain it was so strongly held with walls and towers that it

enjoyed the reputation of being impregnable. Both Alaric and Radagaisus

had passed it by; in the early spring of 452 Attila laid siege to

it. For three months he laboured in vain; no engine he possessed, no

contrivance he could command, no labour he could compel, were enough

to break those Roman walls and to batter down the gates of this virgin

fortress. He hoped to starve it out, but in three months the number of

his armies, their depredations and ravages of the countryside began to

tell far more against him than against the beleaguered city. Living on

the country as he must do he was himself like to go hungry; moreover

the spring heats in the marshy plains were already due, his hosts were

discontented, they expected the loot of Italy, they began to remember

the siege of Orleans and the battle of Châlons.

Furious at being denied, enraged with his people, and perhaps most

of all with himself, the Hun was about to pass on as Alaric had done

in spite of the danger which was greater far now than in the time of

the Goth, when one evening, so it is said, as he moodily rode within

sight of the walls and towers of his inaccessible prey after the heat

of the day he saw by chance a stork preparing to leave her nest on

one of the towers of the great city, and to fly with her young into

the country. In this he saw an assurance of victory. On the morrow

once more he hounded his Huns to the assault: and no man since that

day has found even the ruins of Aquileia.[14] It was not defeat, it

was extermination, complete pillage, and fire. So horrible were the

cruelties there committed that they can only be compared with what the

Germans have done, and in our day, in Belgium. History records the fate

of a young and beautiful woman, Dougna by name, who, pursued by a band

of Huns, wrapped her head in her veil and flung herself from the walls

into the Natiso.

The fall of Aquileia, the extermination of its inhabitants and the

horrors that were committed terrorised all Venetia. It was the Prussian

doctrine of “frightfulness” carried out with as little scruple as,

though more excuse than, that we have seen at work with so great an

amazement, and rage, and disgust here in the West upon the body of our

Godchild Belgium. Attila marched on; Altinum and Concordia suffered

the same fate; they too disappear from the pages of history; Padua and

Modena were ravaged and burnt. Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan

and Pavia opened their gates, they were but spoiled, their inhabitants

exchanged death for slavery. In that long night such as might flee fled

away doubtless demanding of God whither they should go. God led them to

the lagoons.

That Attila thought he was already victorious when he looked on his

ruins as Kaiser Wilhelm did when his “heart bled for Louvain” (blood

from a stone indeed!) an incident twice recorded by Suidas bears

witness. It seems that in Milan, among the mural decorations of the

palace, was one representing two Roman Emperors enthroned and clothed

in the purple with certain Barbarians, Huns or Scythians, prostrate,

demanding mercy at their feet. This work Attila ordered to be effaced

and in its stead to be painted one in which he himself sat enthroned,

while before him the two Roman Emperors poured gold from great sacks

which they bore on their backs. A witty, if brutal jest; futile, too,

since along the Po still flashed the eagles of Aetius and already over

the Alps came the rumour of the armies of Byzantium.

And, indeed, in the heart of Attila there was more fear than hope, fear

of the gods of this strange and lovely country he had ruined, of the

gods of the marshes and the heats that were already devastating his

armies with fever, of those gods Peter and Paul whom he had already

learnt to dread in Gaul and whose City, the most ancient and the most

holy in the world, it was in his heart next to ravage and to sack; fear

of his own armies now heavy with loot and riches, anxious for home and

already on the verge of starvation in a country they had made utterly

barren; fear most of all, perhaps, of his own destiny. “What,” he asked

himself, “if I conquer like Alaric only to die as he did?”

That the very name of Rome was still terrible to the Barbarians is

certain. They feared her name. Nevertheless the pride of Attila and

his ambition conquered his fear of his army, of his destiny, of the

name of Rome. He was determined to go on, and with this intention he

ordered his troops to concentrate from Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia,

Bergamo, Milan and Pavia upon Mantua, whence he proposed to cross the

Po, probably at Hostilia, and so to descend upon the Via Emilia at

Bologna.

This move seems to have disturbed Rome profoundly. The enemies of

Aetius were there in the ascendant with the Emperor, and their

influence with the government was enough to cause a deep disquietude

with regard to the strategy of the great general. They remembered

Alaric; they remembered Radagaisus; they recalled the fate of Orleans,

and the escape after the battle of Châlons, above all they whispered

of Aquileia, Altinum and Concordia which were no more. In this state

of panic they left Aetius out of account, they forgot the army of

Marcian already on the move, they repudiated the whole strategy of

their general and with it their own traditions. They decided to send an

especial and unprecedented embassy to Attila, to offer a price for the

safety of Italy. The ambassador they chose was the Pope.

Perhaps this amazing act ought not to astonish us, for we have seen

the like so often in Gaul. The acts of Anianus of Orleans, of Lupus

of Troyes, should have prepared us for the supreme act of S. Leo the

Great. That they have not done so is sufficient to prove to us that

we have failed to understand the time. Moreover, this great embassy

was not the first Leo had undertaken on behalf of the Imperial Court.

During the pontificate of Sixtus III (432-40), when Leo was Roman

Deacon, Valentinian III had sent him to Gaul to settle a dispute and

bring about a reconciliation between Aetius their chief military

commander in that province and Albinus the chief magistrate. Sixtus

III died on August 19, 440, while Leo was in Gaul, and the ambassador

was chosen as his successor.

The great Pope did not go alone upon this his last great mission, with

him were two illustrious nobles, the Consul Gennadius Avienus, who

after the Emperor was the greatest noble in the West, and the Prefect

Trigetius. They set out from Rome by the Via Flaminia and met Attila

as they had intended before he crossed the Po, on the Mincio near

Mantua--in a place called the Campus Ambuleius. It was there one of the

most grave and famous conferences that have ever been held in Europe

met.

The ambassadors were all in official dress, Leo wore his pontifical

vestments, the golden mitre, a chasuble of purple with the pallium.

It was he who dealt with Attila, in what manner we know not, but with

complete success. It was not the armies of Aetius after all that saved

Italy, and with Italy all that was worth having in the world, but an

old and unarmed man, Leo our Pope, for above him in the sky the Hun

perceived, so he declared, the mighty figures of S. Peter and S. Paul;

his eyes dazzled, he bowed his head. Yielding, he consented to retreat

and evacuate Italy and the Empire. It is as though the new head and

champion of civilisation, of Christendom, had declared himself. It was

the Pope.

The terms of the treaty then made were doubtless shameful enough to

old Roman ideas, for they certainly involved an annual tribute to

the Hun, from whom, moreover, no indemnity was exacted for the ruin

of the Transpadana. But the great fact of the situation created by

Leo overshadowed all this; Italy, the soul of the West, was saved.

If, as we have a right to suppose, Aetius had no direct part in this

achievement, both he and Marcian were probably indirectly responsible

for it and in fact had far more to do with it than Leo. Were the

Roman armies nothing, then, or the Byzantine threat against Attila’s

communications only a dream?

Not so. Attila retreated because like another Barbarian he “could do no

other,” and even so he dared not retrace his way over the Julian Alps,

for Marcian was already in Moesia, and ready and anxious to meet and to

punish him. He retreated instead upon that Verona which he had ruined,

crossed the Alps there, and after pillaging Augsburg, was lost, as it

proved for ever, in the storm of the north and the darkness of his

Barbary.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See my “Ravenna; a Study” (Dent), 1912.

[14] So Jornandes who asserts that Aquileia was so utterly destroyed

“ita ut vix ejus vestigia ut appareant reliquerint.”

IX

ATTILA’S HOME-COMING

Such was the return, such was the failure of Attila. He had looked to

hold the world in fee; he returned for the last time across the Danube

his desire unaccomplished, his hopes dead. He had struck first the East

and perhaps ruined it, but he had failed to take Constantinople. He had

struck Gaul and left its cities shambles, but he had not destroyed the

armies of Aetius. He had desired Rome for his plunder and his pride,

but Leo had turned him back before he crossed the Po. Every attack

had ended in a long retreat; if he brought ruin to a hundred Imperial

cities, at last he but achieved his own. He returned to his wooden

stockade in the heart of Hungary with all his hopes unfulfilled, all

his achievements undone, a ruined man.

That he did not realise his failure is but to emphasise the fact that

he was a Barbarian. To him, doubtless, destruction and booty, ruin and

loot seemed the end of war, he had not even in this his last hour

begun to understand what the Empire was. And so if we ask ourselves

what in reality the enormous energy of the Hunnish onslaught achieved

in the first half of the fifth century, we are compelled to answer,

nothing; nothing, that is, consciously and directly. Unconsciously

and indirectly, however, the restless brutality of Roua and of Attila

brought to pass these two great and even fundamental things; it was

the cause of the passing of Britain into England, and it founded the

republics of the lagoons which were to produce Venice the Queen of the

Adriatic.

Of all this, of his failure as of those strange achievements, Attila

was wholly unaware. He came home like a conqueror to his wooden palace

in the midst of a great feast prepared for him, to be greeted as

Priscus describes he had been greeted before, on his return from the

ruin of the East and his failure to reach Constantinople. He had made

the West his tributary; he was laden with the gold and the spoil of

northern Italy. It was enough for him, and so he made ready with joy to

marry yet another wife, to add yet one more to his concubines; not that

Honoria who would have been the sign of his victory, but one rather a

prey than a prize, pitiful in her youth and helpless beauty, Ildico,

or as the German legends call her Hildegrude, perhaps a Frankish or a

Burgundian princess.

It is said, we know not with how much truth, that upon that long and

last retreat as he crossed the river Lech by Augsburg an old woman with

streaming hair, a witch or a sorceress, cried out to him thrice as he

passed, “Retro Attila!” It is part of the legend which makes so much of

his history.

Upon the night of his last orgy or wedding he had feasted and drunk

beyond his wont and he was full of wine and of sleep when he sought the

bed of the beautiful and reluctant Ildico, the last of his sacrifices

and his loot. What passed in that brutal nuptial chamber we shall never

know. In the morning there was only silence, and when his attendants

at last broke into the room they found Attila dead in a sea of blood,

whether murdered by his victim or struck down by apoplexy cannot be

known. It is said that Ildico had much to avenge--the murder of her

parents and her brothers as well as her own honour.

From that dreadful, characteristic chamber the Huns bore the body of

their King, singing their doleful uncouth songs, to bury him in a

secret place prepared by slaves who were duly murdered when their work

was accomplished. Jornandes has preserved or invented for us the great

funeral dirge which accompanied the last Barbarian rite. It celebrated

Attila’s triumphs over Scythia and Germany which bore his yoke so

meekly, and over the two Emperors who paid him tribute.

He left no memorial but his terror written in the fire and smoke of

burning cities, and that tradition of “frightfulness” to which Kaiser

Wilhelm II first appealed to his troops on their departure for China,

and which he is practising upon the body of Europe to-day. For upon

his death Attila’s vast and barbaric hegemony fell to pieces. Enormous

revolts broke it in sunder, and e’er many years had passed the very

memory of it was forgotten.

“Kingless was the army left:

Of its head the race bereft.

Every fury of the pit

Tortured and dismembered it.

Lo, upon a silent hour,

When the pitch of frost subsides,

Danube with a shout of power

Loosens his imprisoned tides:

Wide around the frighted plains

Shake to hear his riven chains,

Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath,

As he makes himself a path:

High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile

Floes to bergs, and giant peers

Wrestle on a drifted isle;

Island on ice-island rears;

Dissolution battles fast:

Big the senseless Titans loom,

Through a mist of common doom

Striving which shall die the last:

Till a gentle-breathing morn

Fires the stream from bank to bank,

So the Empire built of scorn

Agonized, dissolved and sank.”

SOURCES

I

AMMIANI MARCELLINI RERUM GESTARUM LIBER XXXI

II. 1. Totius autem sementem exitii et cladum originem diversarum, quas

Martius furor incendio solito miscendo cuncta concivit, hanc comperimus

causam. Hunnorum gens, monumentis veteribus leviter nota, ultra paludes

Maeoticas glacialem oceanum accolens, omnem modum feritatis excedit. 2.

Ubi quoniam ab ipsis nascendi primitiis infantum ferro sulcantur altius

genae, ut pilorum vigor tempestivus emergens corrugatis cicatricibus

hebetetur senescunt imberbes absque ulla venustate, spadonibus

similes: compactis omnes firmisque membris, et opimis cervicibus:

prodigiosae formae et pandi, ut bipedes existimes bestias, vel quales

in commarginandis pontibus effigiati stipites dolantur incompte. 3.

In hominum autem figura licet insuavi ita visi sunt asperi, ut neque

igni, neque saporatis indigeant cibis, sed radicibus herbarum agrestium

et semicruda cuiusvis pecoris carne vescantur, quam inter femora sua

et equorum terga subsertam, fotu calefaciunt brevi. 4. Aedificiis

nullis umquam tecti: sed haec velut ab usu communi discreta sepulchra

declinant. Nec enim apud eos vel arundine fastigatum reperiri tugurium

potest. Sed vagi montes peragrantes et silvas, pruinas, famem, sitimque

perferre ab incunabulis adsuescunt. Peregre tecta nisi adigente

maxima necessitate non subeunt; nec enim apud eos securos existimant

esse sub tectis. 5. Indumentis operiuntur linteis, vel ex pellibus

silvestrium murium consarcinatis: nec alia illis domestica vestis est,

alia forensis. Sed semel obsoleti coloris tunica collo inserta non

ante deponitur aut mutatur, quam diuturna carie in pannulos defluxerit

defrustata. 6. Galeris incurvis capita tegunt: hirsuta crura coriis

munientes haedinis: eorumque calcei formulis nullis aptati, vetant

incedere gressibus liberis. Qua causa ad pedestres parum accommodati

sunt pugnas: verum equis prope adfixi, duris quidem, sed deformibus,

et muliebriter iisdem nonnumquam insidentes, funguntur muneribus

consuetis. Ex ipsis quivis in hac natione pernox et perdius emit

et vendit, cibumque sumit et potum, et inclinatus cervici angustae

iumenti, in altum soporem adusque varietatem effunditur somniorum.

7. Et deliberatione super rebus proposita seriis, hoc habitu omnes

in commune consultant. Aguntur autem nulla severitate regali, sed

tumultuario optimatum ductu contenti, perrumpunt, quidquid inciderit.

8. Et pugnant nonnumquam lacessiti, sed ineuntes proelia cuneatim

variis vocibus sonantibus torvum. Utque ad pernicitatem sunt leves et

repentini; ita subito de industria dispersi vigescunt, et incomposita

acie cum caede vasta discurrunt: nec invadentes vallum, nec castra

inimica pilantes prae nimia rapiditate cernuntur. 9. Eoque omnium

acerrimos facile dixeris bellatores, quod procul missilibus telis,

acutis ossibus pro spiculorum acumine arte mira coagmentatis, sed

distinctis: cominus ferro sine sui respectu confligunt, hostesque, dum

mucronum noxias observant, contortis laciniis illigant, ut laqueatis

resistentium membris equitandi vel gradiendi adimant facultatem. 10.

Nemo apud eos arat, nec stivam aliquando contingit. Omnes enim sine

sedibus fixis, abseque lare vel lege, aut ritu stabili dispalantur,

semper fugientium similes: cum carpentis, in quibus habitant: ubi

coniuges taetra illis vestimenta contexunt, et coërunt cum maritis,

et pariunt, eo adusque pubertatem nutriunt pueros. Nullusque apud

eos interrogatus, respondere, unde oritur, potest, alibi conceptus,

natusque procul, et longius educatus. 11. Per indutias infidi,

inconstantes, ad omnem auram incidentis spei novae perquam mobiles,

totum furori incitatissimo tribuentes. Inconsultorum animalium ritu,

quid honestum inhonestumve sit, penitus ignorantes: flexiloqui et

obscuri, nullus religionis vel superstitionis reverentia aliquando

districti: auri cupidine immensa flagrantes: adeo permutabiles, et

irasci faciles, ut eodem aliquoties die a sociis nullo irritante

saepe desciscant, itidemque propitientur nemine leniente. 12. Hoc

expeditum indomitumque hominum genus, externa praedandi aviditate

flagrans immani, per rapinas finitimorum grassatum et caedes, adusque

Alanos pervenit, veteres Massagetas: qui unde sint, vel quas incolant

terras (quoniam huc res prolapsa est) consentaneum est demonstrare,

geographica perplexitate monstrata, quae diu multa luda..., et

varia, tandem reperit veritatis interna ...* ...* ad.... 13. Hister

advenarum magnitudine fluenti Sauromatas praetermeat adusque amnem

Tanaim pertinentes, qui Asiam terminat ab Europa. Hoc transito, in

immensum extentas Scythiae solitudines Alani inhabitant, ex montium

adpellatione cognominati, paullatimque nationes conterminas crebritate

victoriarum attritas ad gentilitatem sui vocabuli traxerunt ut Persae.

14. Inter hos Neuri mediterranea incolunt loca, vicini verticibus

celsis, quos praeruptos geluque torpentes aquilones adstringunt. Post

quos Budini sunt, et Geloni perquam feri, qui detractis peremptorum

hostium cutibus indumenta sibi, equisque termina conficiunt, bellatrix

gens. Gelonis Agathyrsi collimitant, interstincti colore caeruleo

corpora simul et crines: et humiles quidem minutis atque raris, nobiles

vero latis, fucatis et densioribus notis. 15. Post hos Melanchlaenas

et Anthropophagos palari accepimus per diversa, humanis corporibus

victitantes: quibus ob haec alimenta nefanda desertis, finitimi omnes

longa petiere terrarum. Ideoque plaga omnis Orienti aestivo obiecta,

usque dum venitur ad Seras, inhabitabilis mansit. 16. Parte alia prope

Amazonum sedes Alani sunt Orienti acclines, diffusi per populosas

gentes et amplas, Asiaticos vergentes in tractus, quas dilatari adusque

Gangen accepi fluvium, intersecantem terras Indorum, mareque inundantem

australe.

17. Ibi partiti per utramque mundi plagam Alani (quorum gentes

varias nunc recensere non refert) licet dirempti spatiis longis, per

pagos, ut Nomades, vagantur immensos: aevi tamen progressu ad unum

concessere vocabulum, et summatim omnes Alani cognominantur mores

et media et efferatam vivendi, sed iam immaturam. 18. Nec enim ulla

sunt illisce tuguria, aut versandi vomeris cura, sed carne et copia

victitant lactis, plaustris supersidentes, quae operimentis curvatis

corticum per solitudines conferunt sine fine distentas. Cumque ad

graminea venerint, in orbiculatam figuram locatis sarracis ferino

ritu vescuntur: absumptisque pabulis, velut carpentis civitates

impositas vehunt, maresque supra cum feminis coëunt, et nascuntur in

his et educantur infantes: et habitacula sunt haec illis perpetua;

et quocumque ierint, illic genuinum existimant larem. 19. Armenta

prae se agentes cum gregibus pascunt: maximeque equini pecoris

est eis sollicitior cura. Ibi campi semper herbescunt, intersitis

pomiferis locis: atque ideo transeuntes quolibet, nec alimentis nec

pabulis indigent: quod efficit humectum solum et crebri fluminum

praetermeantium cursus. 20. Omnis igitur aetas et sexus imbellis circa

vehicula ipsa versatur, muniisque distringitur mollibus: iuventus vero

equitandi usu a prima pueritia coalescens, incedere pedibus existimat

vile: et omnes multiplici disciplina prudentes sunt bellatores. Unde

etiam Persae, qui sunt originitus Scythae, pugnandi sunt peritissimi.

21. Proceri autem Alani paene sunt omnes et pulchri, crinibus

mediocriter flavis, oculorum temperata torvitate terribiles, et

armorum levitate veloces, Hunnisque per omnia suppares, verum victu

mitiores et cultu: latrocinando et venando adusque Maeotica stagna

et Cimmerium Bosporon, itidemque Armenios discurrentes et Mediam.

22. Utque hominibus quietis et placidis otium est voluptabile; ita

illos pericula iuvant et bella. Iudicatur ibi beatus, qui in proelio

profuderit animam: senescentes enim et fortuitis mortibus mundo

digressos, ut degeneres et ignavos conviciis atrocibus insectantur:

nec quidquam est, quod elatius iactent, quam homine quolibet occiso;

proque exuviis gloriosis, interfectorum avulsis capitibus detractas

pelles pro phaleris iumentis accommodant bellatoriis. 23. Nec templum

apud eos visitur, aut delubrum, ne tugurium quidem culmo tectum cerni

usquam potest: sed gladius barbarico ritu humi figitur nudus, eumque

ut Martem, regionum, quas circumcircant, praesulem verecundius colunt.

24. Futura miro praesagiunt modo: nam rectiores virgas vimineas

colligentes, easque cum incantamentis quibusdam secretis praestituto

tempore discernentes, aperte, quid protendatur, norunt. 25. Servitus

quid sic ignorabant, omnes generoso semine procreati: iudicesque etiam

nunc eligunt, diuturno bellandi usu spectatos. Sed ad reliqua textus

propositi revertamur.

II

EX HISTORIA BYZANTINA PRISCI RHETORIS ET SOPHISTAE

_Excerpta de Legationibus Gentium ad Romanos._

(Niebuhr. Bonn. 1829.)

1. Scythae, quo tempore mercatus Scytharum et Romanorum frequenti

multitudine celebrabatur, Romanos cum exercitu sunt adorti, et multos

occiderunt. Romani ad Scythas miserunt, qui de praesidii expugnatione

et foederum contemptu cum eis expostularent. Hi vero se non ultro

bellum inferentes, sed factas iniurias ulciscentes, haec fecisse

responderunt. Margi enim episcopum in suos fines transgressum, fiscum

regium et reconditos thesauros indagatum expilasse. Hunc nisi dederent

una cum transfugis, ut foederibus convenerit, (esse enim apud eos

plures,) bellum illaturos. Quae cum Romani vera esse negarent, barbari

vero in eorum, quae dicebant, fide perstarent, iudicium quidem de his,

quae in contentione posita erant, subire minime voluerunt, sed ad

bellum conversi sunt. Itaque transmisso Istro, oppidis et castellis

ad ripam sitis plurima damna intulerunt, et inter cetera Viminacium,

quae Moesorum urbs est in Illyrico, ceperunt. His gestis, cum multi

in sermonibus dictitarent, episcopum dedi oportere, ne unius hominis

causa universa Romanorum respublica belli periculum sustineret:

ille se deditum iri suspicatus, clam omnibus civitatem incolentibus

ad hostes effugit, et urbem traditurum, si sibi Scytharum reges

liberalitate sua consulerent, pollicitus est. Ad ea cum beneficium

omni ratione se repensuros promitterent, si rem ad exitum perduceret,

datis dextris et dictis iureiurando utrinque praestito firmatis, ille

cum magna barbarorum multitudine in fines Romanorum est reversus. Eam

multitudinem cum ex adverso ripae in insidiis collocasset, nocte dato

signo exsiliit, et urbem in manus hostium traduxit. Et ab eo tempore

barbarorum res in diem auctiores melioresque fuerunt.

2. Sub Theodosio Iuniore Imperatore Attilas Hunnorum rex delectum ex

suis habuit, et litteras ad Imperatorem scripsit de transfugis et de

tributis, ut, quaecumque occasione huius belli reddita non essent,

quam citissime ad se mitterentur, de tributis autem in posterum

pendendis legati secum acturi ad se venirent: nam si cunctarentur aut

bellum pararent, ne se ipsum quidem Scytharum multitudinem diutius

contenturum. His litteris lectis, Imperator nequaquam Scythas, qui

ad se confugissent, traditurum dixit, sed una cum illis in animo

sibi esse, belli eventum exspectare. Ceterum se legatos missurum qui

controversias dirimerent. Ea sicuti Romani decreverant, ubi Attilas

rescivit, ira commotus Romanorum fines vastavit, et castellis quibusdam

dirutis, in Ratiariam urbem magnam et populi multitudine abundantem

irruptionem fecit.

3. Post pugnam in Chersoneso commissam Romani cum Hunnis pacem per

Anatolium legatum fecerunt, et in has conditiones convenerunt: profugos

Hunnis reddi, sex millia auri librarum pro praeteritis stipendiis

solvi; duo millia et centum in posterum singulis annis tributi nomine

pendi. Pro unoquoque captivo Romano, qui in Romanorum fines, non

soluto redemptionis pretio, evasisset, duodecim aureorum mulctam

inferri. Quae si non solveretur, qui captivum recepisset, restituere

teneri. Romanos neminem ex barbaris ad se confugientem admittere. In

has quidem foederum leges Romani sponte consensisse videri volebant:

sed necessitate coacti, superante metu, qui Romanorum ducum mentes

occupaverat, quantumvis duras et iniquas conditiones sibi impositas

summo pacis consequendae studio ducti lubentibus animis susceperunt,

et gravissimum tributum pendere non recusabant, quamquam opes

imperii et regii thesauri non ad necessarios usus, sed in absurda

spectacula, in vanos honorum ambitus, in immodicas voluptates et

largitiones consumptae fuerant, quales nemo sanae mentis vel in maxime

affluentibus divitiarum copiis sustineret, nedum Romani isti, qui

rei militaris studium adeo neglexerant, ut non solum Scythis, sed et

reliquis barbaris, qui proximas imperii Romani regiones incolebant,

vectigales facti essent. Itaque tributa et pecunias, quas ad Hunnos

deferri oportebat, Imperator omnes conferre coegit: nulla etiam eorum

immunitatis habita ratione, qui terrae onere, tanquam nimis gravi ad

tempus, sive Imperatorum benignitate, seu iudicum sententia, levati

erant. Conferebant etiam aurum indictum qui in Senatum ascripti

erant, ultra quam facultates ferre poterant, et multis splendida et

illustris fortuna vitae commutationem attulit. Conficiebantur enim

pecunias, quae unicuique imperatae erant, cum acerbitate et contumelia

ab iis, quibus huius rei cura ab Imperatore erat demandata. Ex quo,

qui a maioribus acceptas divitias possidebant, ornamenta uxorum et

pretiosam suam supellectilem in foro venum exponebant. Ab hoc bello tam

atrox et acerba calamitas Romanos excepit, ut multi aut abstinentia

cibi, aut aptato collo laqueo vitam finierint. Tunc igitur, parvo

temporis momento exhaustis thesauris, aurum et exules (nam Scotta,

qui susciperet, advenerat,) ad Scythas missi sunt. Romani vero multos

ex profugis, qui dedi reluctabantur, trucidarunt, inter quos aliqui

fuerunt e regiis Scythis, qui militare sub Attila renuerant et Romanis

se adiunxerant. Praeter has pacis conditiones Attilas Asimuntiis quoque

imperavit, ut captivos, quos penes se habebant, sive Romanos, sive

barbaros, redderent. Est autem Asimus oppidum validum, non multum ab

Illyrico distans, quod parti Thraciae adiacet, cuius incolae gravibus

damnis hostes affecerunt. Non illi quidem se murorum ambitu tuebantur,

sed extra propugnacula certamina sustinebant contra infinitam Scytharum

multitudinem et duces magni apud eos nominis et existimationis. Itaque

Hunni omissa spe ab oppugnando oppido destiterunt. Illi autem vagantes

et a suis longius aberrantes, si quando hostes exisse et praedas ex

Romanis egisse, exploratores denuntiabant, inopinantes aggressi parta

ab eis spolia sibi vindicabant, numero quidem inferiores adversariis,

sed robore et virtute praestantes. Itaque Asimuntii plurimos ex Scythis

in hoc bello necaverunt, et multos Romanorum in libertatem asseruerunt,

et hostium transfugas receperunt. Quamobrem Attilas, se exercitum

non ante moturum, aut foederis conditiones ratas habiturum professus

est, quam Romani, qui ad Asimuntios pervenissent, redderentur, aut pro

his mulcta conventa solveretur, et liberarentur abducti in servitutem

barbari. Quum, quae contra ea dissereret, non haberet Anatolius

legatus, neque Theodulus, praesidiariorum Thraciae militum dux, (nihil

enim rationibus suis barbarum movebant, qui recenti victoria elatus,

promte ad arma ferebatur, ipsi contra propter recens acceptam cladem

animis ceciderant,) Asimuntiis per litteras significarunt, ut Romanos

captivos, qui ad se perfugissent, restituerent, aut pro unoquoque

captivo duodecim aureos penderent, et Hunnos captivos liberarent.

Quibus litteris lectis, Romanos, qui ad se confugissent, liberos

se abire sivisse, Scythas vero, quotquot in suas manus venissent,

trucidasse responderunt. Duos autem captivos retinere, propterea quod

hostes, obsidione omissa, in insidiis collocati, nonnullos pueros, qui

ante munitiones greges pascebant, rapuissent, quos nisi reciperent,

captivos iure belli sibi acquisitos, minime restituros. Haec

renuntiarunt qui ad Asimuntios missi fuerant. Quibus auditis, Scytharum

regi et Romanis principibus placuit exquiri pueros, quos Asimuntii

raptos esse querebantur. Sed nemine reperto, barbari ab Asimuntiis

capti sunt dimissi, prius tamen fide a Scythis accepta, non esse

apud ipsos pueros. Iuraverunt etiam Asimuntii, se Romanos, qui ad se

effugissent, libertate donasse, quamvis adhuc multos in sua potestate

haberent. Nec enim sibi perierasse videbantur, modo suos a barbarorum

servitute salvos et incolumes praestarent.

4. Pace facta, Attilas rursus legatos ad Romanos Orientales mittit,

qui transfugas repeterent. At illi legatos plurimis donis ornatos,

cum nullos perfugas apud se esse asseverassent, dimiserunt. Misit

et iterum Attilas alios, quibus non minus amplis muneribus ditatis,

tertia ab eo, post illam itidem quarta legatio advenit. Ille enim

Romanorum liberalitatem, qua utebantur, veriti, ne a foederibus barbari

discederent, ludibrio habens, novas subinde causas fingebat, et vanas

occasiones legatorum mittendorum excogitabat, et ad suos necessarios,

quos liberalitate ornare volebat, eas legationes deferebat. Romani vero

in omnibus rebus Attilae dicto audientes erant, et quae praecipiebat,

domini iussa ducebant. Non solum enim a bello contra eum suscipiendo

eorum rationes abhorrebant, sed et Parthos, qui bellum apparabant,

et Vandalos, qui maritimas oras vexabant, et Isauros, qui praedis

et rapinis grassabantur, et Saracenos, qui regiones ad Orientem

excursionibus vastabant, metuebant. Praeterea gentes Aethiopum in

armis erant. Itaque Romani animis fracti Attilam colebant, sed ceteris

gentibus resistere conabantur, dum exercitus comparabant, et duces

sortiebantur.

5. Edecon, vir Scytha, qui maximas res in bello gesserat, venit

iterum legatus cum Oreste. Hic genere Romanus Paeoniam regionem,

ad Saum flumen sitam, incolebat, quae ex foedere inito cum Aetio,

Romanorum Occidentalium duce, barbaro parebat. Itaque Edecon in

palatium admissus, Imperatori litteras Attilae tradidit, in quibus de

transfugis non redditis querabatur, qui nisi redderentur, et Romani a

colenda terra abstinerent, quam bello captam suae ditioni adiecerat,

ad arma se iturum minabatur. Ea vero secundum Istrum a Paeonibus ad

Novas usque in Thracia sitas in longitudinem extendebatur. Latitudo

autem erat quinque dierum itinere. Neque vero forum celebrari, ut

olim, ad ripam Istri volebat, sed in Naisso, quam urbem a se captam

et dirutam quinque dierum itinere expedito homini ab Istro distantem,

Scytharum et Romanorum ditionis limitem constituebat. Legatos quoque

ad se venire iussit controversa disceptaturos, non ex quolibet hominum

genere et ordine, sed ex consularibus illustriores, quos si mittere

intermiserint, se ipsum ad eos arcessendos in Sardicam descensurum. His

litteris lectis, digresso ab Imperatore Edecone, cum Bigila, qui ea,

quae Attilas verbis Imperatori denuntiari voluit, interpretatus erat,

cum reliquas quoque domos obiret, ut in conspectum Chrysaphii spatharii

Imperat. veniret, qui plurimum auctoritate et gratia apud Imperatorem

valebat, admirabatur barbarus regiarum domuum magnificentiam. Bigilas

autem, simulatque barbarus in colloquium venit cum Chrysaphio,

interpretans retulit, quantopere laudasset Imperatorias aedes, et

Romanos beatos duceret propter affluentes divitiarum copias. Tum

Edeconi Chrysaphius dixit, fore eum huiusmodi domuum, quae aureis

tectis praefulgerent, compotem et opibus abundaturum, si, relicta

Scythia, ad Romanos se conferret. “Sed alterius domini servum,

Edecon ait, nefas est eo invito tantum facinus in se admittere.”

Quaesivit ex eo eunuchus, an facilis illi ad Attilam pateret aditus,

et num qua potestate apud Scythas esset. Ille sibi necessitudinem

intercedere cum Attila, respondit, et decretam sibi cum nonnullis

aliis Scythiae primoribus eius custodiam. Nam per vices unumquemque

eorum praescriptis diebus cum armis circa Attilam excubias agere. Tum

eunuchus, si fide interposita se obstringeret, inquit, se maximorum

bonorum illi auctorem futurum. Cui rei tractandae otio opus esse.

Hoc vero sibi fore, si ad coenam rediret sine Oreste et reliquis

legationis comitibus. Facturum se pollicitus barbarus coenae tempore

ad eunuchum pergit. Tum per Bigilam interpretem datis dextris et

iureiurando utrimque praestito, ab eunucho, se de rebus, quae Edeconi

minime damno, sed fructui et commodo essent, verba facturum, ab

Edecone, se, quae sibi crederentur, non enuntiaturum, etiamsi exsequi

nollet. Tunc eunuchus Edeconi dixit, si in Scythiam rediens Attilam

sustulerit, et Romanorum partibus accesserit, vitam in magnis opibus

beate traducturum. Eunucho Edecon assensus est. Ad hanc rem peragendam

opus esse pecuniis, non quidem multis, sed quinquaginta auri libris,

quas militibus, quibus praeesset, qui sibi ad rem impigre exsequendam

adiumento essent, divideret. Cum eunuchus, nulla mora interposita, dare

vellet, dixit barbarus, se prius ad renuntiandam legationem dimitti

oportere, et una secum Bigilam, qui Attilae de transfugis responsum

acciperet; per eum enim se illi, qua ratione aurum sibi mitteret,

indicaturum. Etenim Attilam se, simulatque redierit, percunctaturum,

ut reliquos omnes, quae munera sibi et quantae pecuniae a Romanis dono

datae sint. Neque id celare per collegas et comites licitum fore. Visus

est eunucho barbarus recta sentire, et eius est amplexus sententiam.

Itaque eo a coena dimisso, ad Imperatorem consilium initum detulit, qui

Martialium, magistri officiorum munere fungentem, ad se venire iussum

docuit conventionem cum barbaro factam: id enim illi credi et committi

iure magistratus, quem gerebat, necesse fuit. Nam omnium Imperatoris

consiliorum magister est particeps, sub cuius cura sunt tabellarii,

interpretes et milites, qui palatii custodiae deputati sunt. Imperatore

autem et Martialio de tota re consultantibus placuit, non solum

Bigilam, sed et Maximinum legatum mittere ad Attilam.

6. Bigila insidiarum in Attilam manifeste convicto, Attilas, ablatis ab

eo centum auri libris, quas a Chrysaphio acceperat, extemplo Orestem

et Eslam Constantinopolim misit, iussitque Orestem, crumena, in quam

Bigilas aurum, quod Edeconi daretur, coniecerat, collo imposita, in

conspectum Imperatoris venire atque eunuchum interrogare, num hanc

crumenam nosset; deinde Eslam haec verba proferre, Theodosium quidem

clari patris et nobilis esse filium, Attilam quoque nobilis parentis

esse stirpem, et patrem eius Mundiuchum acceptam a patre nobilitatem

integram conservasse. Sed Theodosium tradita a patre nobilitate

excidisse, quod tributum sibi pendendo suus servus esset factus.

Non igitur iustam rem facere eum, qui praestantiori et ei, quem

fortuna dominum ipsi dederit, tanquam servus improbus clandestinas

paret. Neque se prius criminari illum eo nomine destiturum, quam

eunuchus ad supplicium sit traditus. Atque hi quidem cum his

mandatis Constantinopolim pervenerunt. Eodem quoque tempore accidit,

ut Chrysaphius a Zenone ad poenam deposceretur. Maximinus enim

renuntiaverat, Attilam dicere, decere Imperatorem promissis stare,

et Constantio uxorem, quam promiserit, dare, hanc enim, invito

Imperatore, nemini fas fuisse desponderi: aut enim eum, qui contra

ausus fuisset, poenas daturum fuisse, aut eo Imperatoris res deductas

esse, ut ne servos quidem suos coercere posset, contra quos, si vellet,

se auxilium ferre paratum. Sed Theodosius, iracundiam suam palam fecit,

cum bona puellae in publicum redegit.

7. Cum primum Attilae nuntiatum est, Martianum post Theodosii mortem

ad imperium pervenisse, et quae Honoriae accidissent, ad eum, qui in

Occidente rerum potiebatur, misit, qui contenderent, Honoriam nihil

se indignum admisisse, quam matrimonio suo destinasset; seque illi

auxilium laturum, nisi summa quoque imperii ei deferretur. Misit et

ad Romanos Orientales tributorum constitutorum gratia. Sed re infecta

legati utrimque sunt reversi. Etenim qui Occidentis imperio praeerat,

respondit, Honoriam illi nubere non posse, quod iam alii nupsisset.

Neque imperium Honoriae deberi. Virorum enim, non mulierum, Romanum

imperium esse. Qui in Oriente imperabat, se minime ratam habere tributi

illationem, quam Theodosius consensisset: quiescenti munera largiturum;

bellum minanti viros et arma obiecturum ipsius opibus non inferiora.

Itaque Attilas in varias distrahebatur sententias, et illi in dubio

haerebat animus, quos primum aggrederetur. Tandem melius visum est ad

periculosius bellum prius sese convertere, et in Occidentem exercitum

educere. Illic enim sibi rem fore non solum cum Italis, sed etiam cum

Gothis et Francis: cum Italis, ut Honoriam cum ingentibus divitiis

secum abduceret: cum Gothis, ut Genserichi gratiam promereretur.

8. Et Francos quidem bello lacessendi illi causa fuit regum ipsorum

obitus et de regno inter liberos controversia, quum maior natu

Attilam auxilio vocasset, Aëtium minor, quem Romae vidimus legationem

obeuntem, nondum lanugine efflorescente, flava coma, et capillis propter

densitatem et magnitudinem super humeros effusis. Hunc etiam Aëtius

filii loco adoptaverat, et plurimis donis ornatum ad Imperatorem, ut

amicitiam et societatem cum eo faceret, miserat. Quamobrem Attilas

antequam in eam expeditionem ingrederetur, rursus legatos in Italiam

misit, qui Honoriam poscerent: eam enim secum matrimonium pepigisse:

cuius rei ut fidem faceret, annulum ab ea ad se missum per legatos,

quibus tradiderat, exhiberi mandavit. Etiam dimidiam imperii partem

sibi Valentinianum debere, quum ad Honoriam iure paternum regnum

pertineret, quo iniusta fratris cupiditate privata esset. Sed quum

Romani Occidentales in prima sententia persisterent et Attilae mandata

reiicerent, ipse toto exercitu convocato maiore vi bellum paravit.

9. Attilas, vastata Italia, ad sua se retulit, et Romanorum

Imperatoribus in Oriente bellum et populationem denuntiavit, propterea

quod tributum sibi a Theodosio constitutum non solveretur.

EX HISTORIA GOTHICA PRISCI RHETORIS ET SOPHISTAE

_Excerpta de Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes._

(Niebuhr. Bonn. 1829.)

1. Cum Rua, Hunnorum rex, statuisset cum Amalsuris, Itimaris,

Tonosuribus, Boiscis ceterisque gentibus, quae Istrum accolunt, quod

ad armorum societatem cum Romanis iungendam confugissent, bello

decertare, Eslam componendis Romanorum et Hunnorum controversiis

adhiberi solitum misit, qui Romanis denuntiaret, se a foedere, quod

sibi cum illis esset, recessurum, nisi omnes Scythas, qui ad eos se

contulissent, redderent. Romanis vero consilium de mittendis ad Hunnos

legatis capientibus, Plinthas et Dionysius, hic ex Thracia, ille ex

Scythia oriundus, ambo exercituum duces, et qui consulatus dignitatem

apud Romanos gesserant, hanc legationem obire voluerunt. Ut vero

visum est non ante legatos proficisci, quam Eslas ad Ruam rediisset,

Plinthas una cum Esla misit Singulachum, unum ex suis necessariis, qui

Ruae persuaderet cum nullo alio Romanorum, quam cum ipso, colloquium

inire. Cum autem, Rua mortuo, Hunnorum regnum ad Attilam pervenisset,

Senatus decrevit Plintham legationem ad Attilam exsequi. Quo S.C.

Imperatoris suffragio comprobato, Plintham cupido incessit, Epigenem,

qui sapientiae laude celebris erat et quaesturae dignitatem obtinebat,

socium legationis sibi adsciscere. Qua de re lato quoque suffragio

ambo in eam legationem profecti sunt, et Margum pervenerunt. Est autem

Margus urbs in Illyrico Mysorum ad Istrum sita, ex adverso Constantiae

arcis, ad alteram fluminis ripam collocatae, quo et regii Scythae

convenerant. Extra civitatem equis insidentes utrique congressi sunt.

Nec enim barbaris de plano verba facere placuit, et legati Romani suae

dignitatis memores eodem quoque apparatu in Scytharum conspectum venire

statuerunt, ne sibi peditibus cum equitibus disserendum foret. Itaque

placuit, profugos omnes, etiam qui multo ante profugerant, una cum

captivis Romanis, qui non soluto redemtionis pretio ad sua redierant,

dedi: aut pro unoquoque captivo Romano his, qui eum bello ceperant,

octo aureos dari, Romanos belli societatem cum barbara gente, quae

bellum cum Hunnis gerat, non facere. Conventus ad mercatus paribus

legibus celebrari, et in tuto Romanos e Hunnos esse. Foedera rata

manere et observari, si quoque anno septingentae auri librae tributi

nomine Scythis regiis a Romanis penderentur, cum antea tributum annuum

non fuisset nisi trecentarum quinquaginta librarum. His conditionibus

pacem Romani et Hunni pepigerunt, qua iureiurando patrio ritu utrimque

praestito firmata, utrique ad sua redierunt. Itaque qui ex barbaris ad

Romanos transierant redditi sunt, de quorum numero erant filii Mama

et Attacam ex regio genere, quos Scythae receptos in Carso, Thraciae

castello, crucis supplicio affecerunt, et hanc ab his fugae poenam

exegerunt. Pace cum Romanis facta, Attilas et Bleda ad subigendas

gentes Scythicas profecti sunt, et contra Sorosgos bellum moverunt.

2. Theodosius misit Senatorem, virum consularem, ad Attilam legationem

obiturum. Et ille quidem quamvis legati nomen adeptus esset, minime

tamen est ausus terrestri itinere Hunnos adire: sed iter per Pontum

Euxinum instituit, et in Odessenorum civitatem navigavit, in qua

Theodulus dux commorabatur.