Showing posts with label Jordanes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jordanes. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Resisting the Huns!

A representation of the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields
We mentioned here that the Huns under Bleda and Attila negotiated a treaty with the Eastern Roman Empire. In 450, as sole ruler of the Huns after his brother Bleda's death, Attila put the Western Roman Empire in his sights. The Western Emperor's (Valentinian III) sister, Honoria, sent a message to Attila requesting help; she was betrothed to a senator named Herculanus who kept her confined.

Attila considered Honoria's request for help as an offer of marriage, and thought her dowry should include half the Empire. Emperor Valentinian made it clear that Attila was misunderstanding the situation completely. Attila reacted as one might expect: he invaded Gaul in 451, attacking the town of Metz on 7 April and reaching Orleans (then called Aurelianum) in June.

The general of the Western Roman forces, Flavius Aetius, left Italy for Gaul to counter the Huns. With support from the Visigoths, he reached Aurelianum on 14 June just as Attila had breached the city, chasing him off. (Attila was already in the city, but to remain when news came of an approaching army meant the chance they would be surrounded and besieged themselves.) The combined Roman and Visigothic forces caught up with the Huns on 20 June in the Catalaunian Fields (true location unknown, but presumed to be Chalons in the Champagne region).

We are told by Jordanes that Attila, according to Hunnic custom, had a bird killed and its entrails examined to determine how the battle would go. The prediction was defeat for the Huns but death for an enemy commander. Theodoric, at the head of the Visigoths, was killed. When his son wanted to avenge him, Flavius convinced him to go home and secure the throne. As the Visigoths withdrew from the battlefield, Attila thought it was a ruse to lure him into a trap, so he withdrew the Hunnic troops and abandoned the battle.

Some historians have seen the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields as a pivotal moment when the Huns were prevented from taking over Western Europe. But Attila was not opposed to continue his assault on the Empire. The following year he approached Rome with the goal of claiming Honoria after all. Pope Leo I met him at the edge of Rome, and Attila turned away. When Attila died a year or so later, the Huns became less of a threat to Europe.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Life with the Huns

A 6th century Roman politician named Jordanes turned to writing history in his retirement. He wrote Romana, about Rome, and Getica, about the Goths (of whom he was one). He is the best contemporary source we have for information about the Goths.

In the Getica he tells us about one of the rivals of the Goths, the Huns. He obviously looked down on them as savages (I imagine this was similar to the way Romans looked down on Goths when the Goths approached Rome to conquer it). He claims that their origin was with the Goths themselves, when a Goth ruler expelled witches from the tribes. These witches wandered until:
There the unclean spirits, who beheld them as they wandered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon them and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps, -- a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech. Such was the descent of the Huns who came to the country of the Goths. [GothsChapter 24]
The Huns were ferocious in actions and appearance:
For by the terror of their features they inspired great fear in those whom perhaps they did not really surpass in war. They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes. Their hardihood is evident in their wild appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds. 
Hence they grow old beardless and their young men are without comeliness, because a face furrowed by the sword spoils by its scars the natural beauty of a beard. They are short in stature, quick in bodily movement, alert horsemen, broad shouldered, ready in the use of bow and arrow, and have firm-set necks which are ever erect in pride. Though they live in the form of men, they have the cruelty of wild beasts. [Ibid.]
Jordanes had no trouble describing them as inferior despite the problems they caused for Rome. Tomorrow we will look at what happened when the Huns under Attila turned their sights back to Rome five years after they negotiated a treaty.