The Huns, Through Others' Eyes

It’s the final entry of our series about the civilizations on the periphery of the Greco-Roman world, and we’ll end, fittingly, with the most storied and caricatured group of them all… the Huns.

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What does it take for an ancient civilization to invade our modern consciousness?

Some societies were so big and powerful that they still command attention (as the meme told us, lots of men still think about the Roman Empire all the time). Others had a distinguishing characteristic that was useful for modern purposes. The Huns, for example, were seen as so aggressive, so vicious, so barbaric, that, one and a half millennia after they disappeared, they continue to serve as an example of pure, destructive aggression.

The Huns have shown up in film as marauding barbarians:

And served as an effective propaganda image against the Germans in World War I:

The story most people hear about the Huns — the one on which these pop-culture depictions are based — is pretty simple: The Huns emerged from the steppes into Eastern Europe. Their fearsome armies pushed other Germanic groups, who had been living on the fringes of the Roman Empire, to attack the civilized Romans. After creating indirect havoc in Rome for decades, the Huns came under the rule of Attila, who demonstrated his ruthlessness by killing his brother and directly invading the empire. Hapless Roman armies failed to stop him, and soon his armies were poised to strike at Italy, in the heart of the empire. Only the Pope, who traveled out to meet with Attila and somehow persuaded him to withdraw, could save the Eternal City from destruction. Soon after, in 453 CE, Attila suffered a hemorrhage, saving Rome from further attacks, but the damage was done. Rome never recovered.

The visual representations of the Huns have remained pretty consistent over time. A medieval Hungarian book shows their hordes besieging the Roman city of Aquileia:

In 1514, Raphael painted the meeting between Pope Leo and the wild Hunnic hordes (note Saints Peter and Paul appearing in the sky to scare off Attila):

Eugene Delacroix put Attila in a wolfskin, riding over the bodies of his enemies:

Ulpiano Checa painted the Huns in 1887 as a swirling horde, almost a force of nature:

This early 20th-century painting by Georges Rochegrosse shows the vicious Huns hauling away a Roman maiden:

And here, in a painting by Ferenc Paczka, Attila drinks himself to death in a bed strewn with animal skins on his wedding night:

These depictions all tell the standard story. The Huns were fearsome barbarians. Their military prowess was impressive, no doubt, but they serve mostly as a foil for the weakening but noble Roman Empire.

But how do we know all this? The Huns are mentioned in passing by a few ancient chroniclers, but detailed stories come from only two contemporary sources: Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman soldier who wrote about the history of Rome in the late 300s, when the Huns first appeared in Europe, and Priscus, a Roman official who visited Attila on a diplomatic mission.

Ammianus, it’s fair to say, did not admire the Huns. He describes them this way:

[Y]ou would not hesitate to call them the most terrible of all warriors, because they fight from a distance with missiles having sharp bone, instead of their usual points, joined to the shafts with wonderful skill; then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords, regardless of their own lives; and while the enemy are guarding against wounds from the sabre-thrusts, they throw strips of cloth plaited into nooses over their opponents and so entangle them that they fetter their limbs and take from them the power of riding or walking. No one in their country ever plows a field or touches a plow-handle. They are all without fixed abode, without hearth, or law, or settled mode of life, and keep roaming from place to place, like fugitives, accompanied by the wagons in which they live; in wagons their wives weave for them their hideous garments, in wagons they cohabit with their husbands, bear children, and rear them to the age of puberty…

This race of untamed men, without encumbrances, aflame with an inhuman desire for plundering others’ property, made their violent way amid the rapine and slaughter of the neighbouring peoples as far as the Halani, once known as the Massagetae.

But Priscus, who actually visited Hunnish territory, was a little more positive. He describes the Huns as living in circumstances not that different from the Romans’. Attila lives in a “splendid” house, is “temperate” in his tastes, and behaves as any great man would:

The next day I entered the enclosure of Attila’s palace, bearing gifts to his wife, whose name was Kreka. She had three sons, of whom the eldest governed the Acatiri and the other nations who dwell in Pontic Scythia. Within the enclosure were numerous buildings, some of carved boards beautifully fitted together, others of straight, fastened on round wooden blocks which rose to a moderate height from the ground. Attila’s wife lived here, and, having been admitted by the barbarians at the door, I found her reclining on a soft couch. The floor of the room was covered with woollen mats for walking on. A number of servants stood round her, and maids sitting on the floor in front of her embroidered with colours linen cloths intended to be placed over the Scythian dress for ornament. Having approached, saluted, and presented the gifts, I went out, and walked to another house, where Attila was, and waited for Onegesius, who, as I knew, was with Attila. I stood in the middle of a great crowd--the guards of Attila and his attendants knew me, and so no one hindered me. I saw a number of people advancing, and a great commotion and noise, Attila’s egress being expected. And he came forth from the house with a dignified gait, looking round on this side and on that. He was accompanied by Onegesius, and stood in front of the house; and many persons who had lawsuits with one another came up and received his judgment. Then he returned into the house, and received ambassadors of barbarous peoples.

This 19th-century painting by Mor Than of emissaries visiting Attila is based on Priscus’ account; the Huns here are a lot less wild:

You’ll notice here that Priscus uses the words “Scythian” and “Hun” rather interchangeably in his description. It was hard for the Romans — and it’s still hard for modern historians — to tell exactly who the Huns were and how they differed from other groups that lived in the same area. For much of their history, the Huns were not a politically unified group with clear leadership. We don’t know what language they spoke, and it’s hard for archaeologists to clearly delineate Hunnic burials from those of other groups like the Goths or the Scythians.

We have a few artifacts that have been identified as Hunnish. They do look a lot like some of the art we’ve seen in previous weeks from groups like the Goths and Scythians. There’s a lot of simple but beautiful gold ornamentation:

Some horse-themed imagery:

And the use of gems and glass to add a bit of color:

In fact, we have such a poor handle on the Huns that there’s a big scholarly debate about whether the Huns are the same people as the Xiongnu, who had attacked China from the steppes in previous centuries, and the Huna people, who entered India later on. This 1873 drawing plays on the theory that the Huns were an Asiatic people:

Did the Huns travel back and forth across the plateaus of Asia to torment and trade with all of the great civilizations in the region? Or did people just attach the name “Huns” to every group that emerged from the steppes?

This could be frustrating, but I find it kind of fascinating. The Huns are one of the most consequential historical groups, led by one of the world’s most remarked-upon leaders, and we know so little about them. Maybe we will have some kind of breakthrough someday and learn much more about them. But I suspect they’ll remain mysterious, having left no writing of their own, destined to be refracted through the eyes of their enemies and descendants, all of whom seem eager to use the Huns to support their own assumptions about the world. It seems that the most fearsome people in Roman history are now the most malleable.

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