The road leading to that confrontation can be easily discerned. The east Romans had conceded the treaty of 442/3, with its increased annual gold subsidy, only in a moment of weakness when much of its Balkan army had been away in Sicily. As soon as the forces returned, attitudes hardened. At some point in 443 or soon afterwards, the authorities stopped paying the tribute. Hence the arrears of 6,000 pounds of gold that had built up by 447. So if the payments began in 442 when peace was negotiated, and the payment was indeed 1,400 pounds per annum, the east Romans paid only part of two years’ instalments before calling a halt.14 Other countermeasures followed. On 12 September 443, a new law was put in place to ensure military readiness: ‘We command that each duke [dux, commander of limitanei garrisons] . . . shall restore the soldiers to the ancient number . . . and shall devote himself to their daily training. Furthermore, we entrust to such dukes also the care and repair of the fortified camps and the river patrol boats.’15 Eastern field forces had also been strengthened by the recruitment of a large number of Isaurians – traditionally bandits – from the highlands of Cilicia in south-west Asia Minor.16 Everything was now in place, and the east Romans were confident of being able to overturn the Huns’ ascendancy.
They may also have been encouraged in this belief by a major ruction in the top Hunnic echelons. In 444 or 445, Attila had his brother Bleda murdered, and took unchallenged command of his people. Nothing survives from Priscus’ account of this murder, so all we have is a date, no how or why. It coincided chronologically, though, with the east Roman countermeasures to overturn the peace of 442/3. Constantinople no doubt grasped the opportunity to cut off the annual payments without fear of immediate retribution, because the new sole ruler of the Huns was far too busy consolidating his authority to mount a major campaign. But both sides were gearing up for a test of strength, and it duly followed in 447.
Attila opened the exchanges, sending an embassy to Constantinople to complain about the arrears and the fact that fugitives had not been handed over. The east Romans replied that they were ready enough to talk, but nothing else. So Attila unleashed his armies, sweeping over the Danube and destroying the frontier forts in his way. So much for the poor old garrison troops, supposedly put on their mettle by the law of 443. The first big fortress Attila encountered was Ratiaria, an important base close to the river in the province of Dacia. It quickly fell. The Hunnic horde then advanced westwards along the Danube to the north of the Haemus Mountains. There they had their first confrontation with the Roman army. Arnegisclus, commander of imperial field forces in the eastern Balkans (magister militum per Thraciam), having advanced north-east from his headquarters at the city of Marcianople with every available man, gave battle on the river Utus. The Romans, we are told, fought bravely but were overwhelmed, and Arnegisclus himself fell, having carried on the fight after his horse was killed underneath him. Victory opened up the mountain passes to the Huns, who now swarmed south on to the Thracian Plain. Attila’s first port of call was the eastern imperial capital.
On 27 January 447, during the second hour after midnight, an earthquake had struck Constantinople. The whole district around the Golden Gate was in ruins, and, even worse, part of the city’s great landwalls had collapsed. Attila was on the point of invading anyway, but news of the earthquake may have altered his line of attack. By the time he got there, the crisis was over. The Praetorian Prefect of the east, Constantinus, had mobilized the circus factions to clear the moats of rubble and rebuild gates and towers. By the end of March the damage was repaired and, as a commemorative inscription put it, ‘even Athene could not have built it quicker and better’.17 Long before Attila’s forces got anywhere near the city the opportunity to take it had gone, and the Huns’ advance led not to a siege but to the second major confrontation of the year. Although the Thracian field army had been defeated and scattered, the east Romans still had central forces stationed around the capital on either side of the Bosporus. This second army was mobilized in the Chersonesus, where a second major battle, and a second huge defeat for the Romans, duly followed.
Attila had failed to force his way into Constantinople, but having reached the coast of both the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, at Sestus and Callipollis (modern-day Gallipoli) respectively (map 11), he had mastery of the Balkans in all other respects. And he proceeded to wield his domination to dire effect for the Roman provincial communities. In the aftermath of victory the Hunnic forces split up, raiding as far south as the pass of Thermopylae, site of Leonidas’ famous defence of Greece against the Persians nearly a thousand years before. Accounts of the devastation are easy to come by, such as that recorded in the life of the more or less contemporary Thracian saint Hypatius:
The barbarian people of the Huns . . . became so strong that they captured more than a hundred cities and almost brought Constantinople into danger, and most men fled from it. Even the monks wanted to run away to Jerusalem . . . They so devastated Thrace that it will never rise again and be as it was before.18
One hundred is a suspiciously round number, but there is no doubt that many strongholds were captured and destroyed. Theophanes says that everywhere except Hadrianople and Heracleia fell to the Huns, and other sources give us some names of the victims: Ratiaria, where it all began, Marcianople, Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv), Arcadiopolis and Constantia. The list includes most of the major Roman towns of the Balkans, though many of the other places destroyed were no doubt quite small. We also have some specific evidence of what it meant for such a city to be taken by Hunnic assault. As mentioned earlier, the one major Roman city of the northern Balkans to have been excavated more or less completely is Nicopolis ad Istrum, in the northern foothills of the Haemus Mountains. Like Carthage, this site was abandoned in the Middle Ages and has no modern town on top of it, so that it has been possible, in a long-running excavation, to take a good look at a lot of the city. In the Gothic war of 376 to 382, all the rich villas in the countryside around Nicopolis had been destroyed and looted, presumably by Gothic marauders. These villas were never rebuilt, but from the later 380s onwards a large number of rich houses were built in the urban centre, by the first half of the fifth century occupying over 49 per cent of it. One reasonable guess would be that the local Roman landowners responded to increased insecurity in the period after 376 by moving into houses in the walled city, while still continuing to farm their estates as absentee landlords. The dig revealed that these houses, as well as the city centre, terminated in a substantial destruction layer, which the end of a more or less continuous coin sequence dates firmly to the mid- to late-440s.
There is little doubt, therefore, that in the total destruction of the old city we are looking at the effects of its sack at the hands of Attila’s Huns in 447. At a slightly later date part of the site was rebuilt, but it covered a much smaller area and the place had changed out of all recognition. Gone were all the opulent houses; in their place, the excavators found only an episcopal complex, some poor housing and some administrative buildings. Roman urban development north of the Haemus Mountains, a phenomenon stretching back 300 years to the Romanization of the Balkans in the first and second centuries AD, was destroyed by the Huns, never to recover. This was evidently no cosy little sack, like that of Rome in 410 when the Goths were paid off, then went home. What we’re looking at in Nicopolis is large-scale destruction.19
Whether it was like this everywhere the Huns descended is impossible to say. Of those places that managed to survive, the most famous is the town of Asemus, perched on an impregnable hilltop. Armed and organized, its citizens not only weathered Attila’s storm but emerged from the action with Hunnic prisoners. Their city would survive further storms in the centuries to come.20 But there can be no doubt that the campaigns of 447 were an unprecedented disaster for Roman life in the Balkans: two major field armies defeated, a host of defended strongholds captured and some destroyed. It’s hardly surprising, then, that in the aftermath of their second defeat in the Chersonesus the east Romans were for
ced to sue for peace. An extract from Priscus’ history gives us the terms:
[Any] fugitives should be handed over to the Huns, and six thousand pounds of gold be paid to complete the outstanding instalments of tribute; the tribute henceforth be set at 2,100 pounds of gold per year; for each Roman prisoner of war [amongst the Huns] who escaped and reached his home territory without ransom, twelve solidi [one-sixth of a pound of gold] were to be paid . . . and . . . the Romans were to receive no barbarian who fled to them.
As Priscus went on to comment wryly:
The Romans pretended that they had made these agreements voluntarily, but because of the overwhelming fear which gripped their commanders they were compelled to accept gladly every injunction, however harsh, in their eagerness for peace.
No doubt the propaganda machine was trundled out to explain the whys and wherefores of this latest Roman ‘victory’, but when the taxman came knocking no one could have been left in any doubt as to its true nature. Priscus went on to describe how hard it was to come up with the cash for the arrears payment: ‘even members of the Senate contributed a fixed amount of gold according to their rank’. As with the west after the loss of Carthage, the terms of the 447 peace were sufficiently fierce for tax privileges to be at least partly rescinded. That the regime was willing to hit its chief political constituency in the pocket is a clear sign of the desperation to which Attila’s campaigns had reduced the Constantinopolitan authorities.
The extent of Attila’s success in the 440s emerges clearly, then, even from the truncated sources that have survived. What we’re as yet no closer to understanding, though, is how he was so successful, or why, having been content hitherto with little more than a modest annual subsidy, he so fundamentally transformed the dynamic of the Huns’ relationship with the Empire. We must begin with Attila himself, the man behind the reign of terror.
On the Trail of Attila
WE CAN GET closer to Attila than to most other ‘barbarian’ leaders of the late fourth and fifth centuries because the historian Priscus, following the path pioneered by Olympiodorus and his parrot forty years before, wrote a full account of the embassy that took him first into Hunnic territory and eventually into the presence of the great man himself. In 449 one of Priscus’ friends, a distinguished staff officer by the name of Maximinus, having drawn the short straw became the latest in a long line of east Roman ambassadors to trudge north and attempt to placate Attila. Maximinus’ brief was to tackle two outstanding issues: one was the perennial topic of Hunnic fugitives; the other concerned a strip of territory ‘five days’ journey wide’ south of the Danube, which Attila was claiming as a result of his victories in 447. The Huns wanted this area evacuated, presumably to form some kind of buffer zone between Roman and Hunnic possessions – they complained that some of its native population were still farming there. The Romans’ strategy was to try to get Attila’s right-hand man Onegesius involved in the negotiations, in the hope that he had enough clout with his leader to persuade him to come to a settlement. They were well aware, though, that these two issues might yet provide Attila, should the mood take him, with the pretext for another war.
There were many preparations to make before the embassy could leave. We saw in Chapter 3, through the person of Theophanes, how cumbersome it was for a Roman official to get around even within the Empire, despite the logistic support provided by the public transport system, the cursus publicus. Moving outside the Empire was even more difficult. Theophanes had to take with him not only every conceivable item of household equipment and a gang of slaves to operate them, but also letters of introduction and gifts for anyone of substance he was likely to encounter. Going on a diplomatic embassy, especially such a sensitive one to a potential enemy whose hostility Maximinus and Priscus were anxious to head off, required a plentiful supply of rich and elegant presents. I count no fewer than five separate occasions when Priscus records gifts being handed over, and there may well have been others. Silks and pearls were delivered to the Hunnic ambassadors in whose company our heroes travelled. Bleda’s wife, who gave the Romans hospitality, received unspecified ‘gifts’, as did Attila himself when the ambassadors were finally ushered into his presence. To solicit his good offices Onegesius was given gold, and there were yet more presents for Attila’s wife Hereka. Gold, silks, pearls, perhaps also silver and gemstones, were clearly part of your average ambassador’s luggage. Although, like the accompanying slaves, not explicitly mentioned by Priscus, an armed escort is likely to have been part of the delegation.
Ambassadors had also to be briefed on diplomatic niceties. Some potential banana skins were pretty obvious. If you were travelling on the same road as Attila you made sure that you were behind him, never in front. When camping near him, you made sure that your tents were not pitched on higher ground than his. (These were essential tips, in view of the fact that it was for Attila’s camp they were heading.) Maximinus and Priscus got this last one wrong at one point, and had to move.21 But it was also important for a Roman ambassador to maintain his dignity. He could not be seen hanging about Attila’s headquarters trying to catch the eye of Hunnic bigwigs. That was Priscus’ job, and the reason he went along. Their respective roles are nicely caught in his own words after the mission’s first exchange with Onegesius: ‘Having instructed that I should confer with him on questions we wished to ask of him – for continual visiting was not proper for Maximinus, a man in an official position – [Onegesius] went away’.22 Priscus was, in short, Maximinus’ go-between, there to lend dignity and grandeur to the Roman ambassador’s presence; but he was also a significant player in the action, and had to be briefed accordingly. And all this placed him in an excellent position to make notes for his new bestseller.
We don’t know how many Romans took to the road. Priscus’ narrative concentrates on just three: Maximinus, himself and their interpreter Vigilas, who had participated in the peace delegation after the debacle of 447.23 With them also travelled the two Hunnic ambassadors, Edeco and Orestes, the latter a Roman from Pannonia who had ended up in Attila’s service after Aetius had handed over the province to the Huns. These two, and their large entourage, had come to Constantinople earlier in 449 to raise the issues to which it was now Maximinus’ job to respond. Such was the pace of shuttle diplomacy in antiquity.
Setting off together from Constantinople in a northwesterly direction, the two parties followed the main military road through the Balkans. After thirteen days travelling at breakneck speed, they reached the city of Serdica, 500 kilometres from the east Roman capital. There the Romans decided to break the ice by holding a dinner party, buying sheep and cattle for the purpose from the locals. Everything was going swimmingly until the toasts: ‘When we were drinking, the barbarians toasted Attila and we Theodosius [the east Roman emperor]. But Vigilas said it was not proper to compare a god and a man, meaning Attila by a man and Theodosius by a god. This annoyed the Huns, and gradually they grew heated and angry.’
A bit of quick thinking saved the day: ‘We turned the conversation to other things and by our friendly manner calmed their anger, and when we were leaving after dinner, Maximinus won over Edeco and Orestes with gifts of silk garments and pearls.’
All returned to sweetness and light, but there was one rather bizarre incident – or so it seemed at the time. As the Huns were waiting to return to their tents, Orestes remarked that he was very pleased that Maximinus and Priscus hadn’t committed the same faux pas as the authorities in Constantinople: they had invited Edeco to dinner, but not himself. Neither Priscus nor Maximinus quite knew what Orestes was getting at, but the significance of the remark was to emerge later.24
Over the next few days, the caravan slowly wound its way northwest through the Balkans, crossing over the Succi Pass, to Naissus. There, the evidence of the city’s capture by the Huns in 441/2 assailed the eye. The two parties had to search at length beside the river outside the city walls before they found a camping ground that wasn’t still littered with the bones o
f the slaughtered. The next day, their numbers were increased by the arrival of five of the seventeen Hunnic fugitives that had been the subjects of Attila’s complaints to Constantinople. They were handed over to Maximinus by Agintheus, commanding general of the Roman field forces in Illyricum. Everyone realized that these men were returning home to their deaths, so it must have been an emotionally charged occasion; Priscus notes that Agintheus treated them with great kindness. At Naissus, the road turned north and the cavalcade wound its way through woods and wasteland to the banks of the Danube. Here they found none of the proud cutters of the Roman navy that the law of September 443 had so recently commanded, but only ‘barbarian ferrymen’. These conveyed the party across the river in canoes, each made from a single hollowed-out tree trunk. Now they were on the last lap of their journey. Another 70 stades (about 14 kilometres), plus another halfday’s journey, and they finally arrived at the camp of Attila.
Here a second odd thing happened, this one rather more disturbing. Having finally reached their destination, after the best part of a month on the road, the ambassadors were ready to do their stuff. They had just pitched camp when a party of Huns rode up, including Edeco and Orestes, together with Scottas, another of Attila’s inner circle. Onegesius, potential smoother of diplomatic channels, was not present, being away with one of Attila’s sons. This was a setback in itself, but things went from bad to worse. The messengers demanded to know what the ambassadors wanted, and when the Romans replied that their message was for Attila’s ears alone, went back to consult their leader. They then returned, and, Priscus reports, this time the Hunnic emissaries ‘told us everything for which we had come on the embassy, ordering us to leave with all speed if we had nothing further to say’.
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History Page 38