6
ATTILA LIVES AND BREATHES TODAY BECAUSE OF ONE MAN, a civil servant, scholar and writer: Priscus, the only person to have met Attila and to have left a detailed record of him. It is largely from Priscus that we get a sense of his true character – less the beastly barbarian, more the revered leader with mixed qualities: ruthless, ambitious, manipulative, swift to anger, even swifter to pretend it, acquisitive for his people but personally austere, terrifying in opposition, generous in friendship. It is the portrait of a man who almost has it in him to change the course of Europe’s history.
For Priscus, a bookish 35-year-old with a flair for writing, this was an absolute gift of a story – a visit to the empire’s greatest challenger, court intrigues, an assassination plot, a journey full of incident and tension, deception and life-threatening revelation. These bits of Priscus’ Byzantine History – eight volumes originally, most of it lost – would make a good thriller, which is why his account was quoted so thoroughly by others and has survived. Priscus slips easily from history into narrative. He lacks a flair for the details of daily life, military matters and geography, because they did not loom large in the literary tradition of his classical models, but he has a novelist’s feel for relationships, because diplomacy was his main interest. His point of view is not all-seeing, not quite eye-of-God, because he does not enter minds, even concealing his own emotional responses. He is good on structure, though. He reveals up front what he could not have known at the time, but learned later. As a result, we know of the assassination plot, although hedoesn’t until the very end. His whole journey is undertaken in ignorance, which injects a modern undertow of tension. Who knows what, exactly? When will all be revealed? How is he going to survive?
What follows is a version of Priscus’ account. The narrative technique is modernized by putting much of Priscus’ indirect speech into the form of direct quotation. I have added some details from other sources and brought others forward when it seems we should know them sooner. But the structure, the characters and many of the direct quotes are in his words, taken from the 1981–3 translation by R. C. Blockley (for details see the bibliography). Quotations from Priscus and other original sources appear in this different typeface to distinguish them from my own words.
* * *
The story starts with the arrival of Attila’s envoys at the court of Theodosius II in Constantinople in the spring of 449. The eminent team is led by Edika, the ex-Skirian leader and now Attila’s loyal ally, who has performed outstanding deeds of war. Orestes, a Roman from the strip of land south of the Danube now under Hun control, is the second senior member of the party, with a small retinue of his own, perhaps two or three assistants. Orestes, though rich and influential, is one of Attila’s team of administrators. He is always being sidelined by Edika and resents it. They are in the audience room of the Emperor Theodosius, in the Great Palace built at the behest of Constantine himself just over a century before, and they are open-mouthed with awe.
The Great Palace, the Mega Palation, is a sort of Byzantine Kremlin, a maze of residences, churches, porticoes, offices, barracks, baths and gardens, all surrounded by its own wall: a vast conglomeration of habitation, devotion and defence. Edwin Grosvenor, in his 1895 portrait of Constantinople, recalls its vanished glories: ‘In all the endless succession of those vast chambers and halls, all glittering with gold, mosaic and rarest marble, it seemed as if human resource and invention could achieve nothing more in overpowering gorgeousness and splendor.’ It was at this time still on the lower slopes of splendour, its peak lying 1,000 years in the future, but it already rivalled anything in Rome. Theodosius held court in Constantine’s core structure of the God-guarded palace, a mass of apartments and state rooms known as the Daphne, named after a diviner’s column brought from a grove in Greece.
Orestes reads the letters he took at Attila’s dictation, and Vigilas, the court interpreter, translates. In summary, Attila tells the emperor what he should do to secure peace. He should cease harbouring Hun refugees, who are cultivating the no-man’s-land that he, Attila, now owns. Envoys should be sent, and not just ordinary men, but officials of the highest rank, as befits Attila’s status. If they are nervous, the King of the Huns will even cross the Danube to meet them.
A tense silence, no doubt, as an official takes the papyrus rolls. That is half the business done. Now responses must be considered, replies drafted. The delegation will be official guests for the next few days. Edika, Orestes and the assistants are ushered into a suite of rooms belonging to the chamberlain, Chrysaphius. They are nervous, for Chrysaphius is the most powerful official in the land, as was his much admired and famously incorruptible predecessor, the praetorian prefect Cyrus, the poet, philosopher and art lover who sponsored numerous beautiful buildings, developed Constantine’s university, rebuilt the walls damaged by the 447 earthquake, and was the first to publish decrees in Greek rather than in Latin. Chrysaphius is very different: a baby-faced eunuch, as venal as Cyrus was honest, whose power derives from schemes and plots. It was he who had engineered Cyrus’ fall from grace, and soon (in the words of another historian, John of Antioch) ‘controlled everything, plundering the possessions of all and hated by all’. He now holds the compliant emperor in the palm of his hand, and it is he who will decide the best way of dealing with Attila. Chrysaphius joins them just as Edika is muttering his amazement at the lavish furnishings, thick carpets and gold-leaf ceiling.
Vigilas covers Edika’s embarrassment: ‘He was just praising the palace and congratulating the Romans on their wealth.’ He refers to his bosses and himself as Romans, although the ‘New Rome’ is becoming more Greek by the year.
No doubt there is an exchange of courtesies (I’m guessing: Priscus was not present to record such minor details and probably wouldn’t have done so anyway); then Chrysaphius picks up Edika’s comment with a hint at what he has in mind, speaking through Vigilas, who becomes a shadow: ‘You too, Edika, would become the owner of wealth and of rooms with golden ceilings if you should ever decide to work for the Romans.’ Chrysaphius has his eye on Edika, for he knows that Edika was once master of his own tribe, and must surely be resentful of his new overlord.
Edika is wary. ‘It is not right for the servant of another master to do this without his lord’s permission.’
Chrysaphius probes delicately. So Edika is that close to Attila? Does he, for example, have unrestricted access?
‘I am one of Attila’s closest attendants, responsible for guarding him.’
‘You alone?’
‘There are several of us. We take turns, a day each.’
‘H’m.’ Chrysaphius pauses. ‘There is something I would like to discuss with you, which I think may be to your advantage. It would be better to do so at leisure, in private, over dinner, at my place. Without the others.’ A glance across the room at Orestes and his entourage. ‘But I will need your assurance that it will remain between us.’
So there are just the three at dinner that evening, except for the slaves waiting at table. With Vigilas whispering his interpretations, Chrysaphius and Edika clasp right hands and exchange oaths, the one swearing he will speak not to Edika’s harm but to his great advantage, the other promising total discretion, even if he should feel unable to comply with whatever it is his host is about to suggest.
This is the proposal:
Edika will go home, kill Attila, then return to Constantinople, and to a life of happiness and very great wealth.
Edika does not react outwardly, but there would surely have been a stunned silence while he absorbed the implications of this astonishing suggestion. Vigilas waits, the image of professional composure.
Then, quite simply, Edika agrees. It will take money, of course. He will have to pay off the guards under his command. Not much, he says casually; 50 pounds of gold (3,600 gold coins, or solidi;1 $320,000 today) should be enough. It certainly should: enough to set up all his underlings for life.
Mere pocket money for such a man as the chamberlain. Edika can have the money immediately.
Well, not so fast. Edika lays out the practicalities. When he returns to Attila to report on the mission, Orestes and the others will be in the party. ‘Attila always wants to know all the details of gifts and who the donors are. He’ll question everyone. There is no way we could hide fifty pounds of gold. But Vigilas will have to return to Constantinople with instructions on what to do with the fugitives. He will tell you how to send the gold.’
This seems sensible to the chamberlain. Vigilas is a good man. After dinner, Edika goes to his room while Chrysaphius seeks an audience with the emperor, who summons his Master of the Offices, Martialis, the man in charge of messengers, interpreters (which includes Vigilas) and imperial bodyguards. The plot thickens. The three of them decide that Vigilas, despite previous experience on embassies, is not after all the right person to carry the emperor’s reply to Attila’s demands. He is told he is now under the authority of Edika (fair enough, considering that these two are the plotters, but putting a Roman under a Hun will be a potential source of tension). Besides, there is another delicate matter to be resolved, which involves negotiating the ransom of a number of Roman prisoners held by Attila. This should all be in the hands of an imperial ambassador. The man they have in mind is Maximinus, a man of illustrious lineage and an imperial confidant, just the sort of high-level envoy Attila had demanded. Although Priscus does not say so, there must surely be a hidden agenda too: they wish to have a senior man on hand when Attila is assassinated.
They brief Maximinus, without telling him about the plot. He is to point out that there is no need for Attila to stage a meeting across the Danube, which would obviously be a way of showing that he could enter Roman territory at will. If he wants a meeting, he can send his deputy, Onegesius (about whom we shall hear more later). Moreover, the letter from the emperor states categorically: ‘In addition to those already handed over, I have sent you seventeen fugitives, since there are no more.’ The fugitives are to be picked up from a military base on the new frontier, near Naissus, the town sacked by the Huns two years before.
This is where Priscus enters. Maximinus knows him, and of his skill with words. Possibly, Priscus is one of those who has been busy over the last ten years drafting the Theodosian Code of imperial laws. He certainly knows his Herodotus and his Thucydides well enough to lend his own writings authority by echoing their style and phraseology. He is good at writing speeches, too. He will be ideal for keeping an account of this important mission: scrupulous, a bit of a civil service fuddy-duddy, but with a fine turn of phrase. Unadventurous by nature, though; it takes more than a little persuasion to get him on board.
So they prepare to set out. The seven officials have been joined by a businessman, Rusticius, who has dealings with one of Attila’s several secretaries. And this connection reminds us that nothing is as simple as it seems in this barbarian-versus-Roman rivalry, for this secretary of Attila’s is an Italian named Constantius, sent to him by Aetius – Aetius, the great Roman general, who is happy to help Attila with his international contacts. Rusticius, with his friends inside Attila’s court, also has the advantage of speaking Hunnish, which will prove useful when the time comes.
Eight official appointees, then, plus Edika’s attendants to pitch the tents and prepare the meals, all on horseback: perhaps fifteen horses in all, with a large tent, some smaller ones for the slaves, cooking utensils – silver, as befits an embassy – and peppers, dates and dried fruits to tide them over in case fresh food is in short supply.
Over 300 kilometres and almost two uneventful weeks later they are in Serdica (Sofia). There, approaching the borders of Attila’s new territory, some of the hidden tensions begin to emerge. They break the journey for a day or two. Having slaughtered some locally bought sheep and cattle, the Romans offer their Hun travelling companions hospitality. Wine flows. There are toasts: To the emperor! To Attila!
It is Vigilas who starts the trouble. Vigilas, remember, is in on the plot. Priscus isn’t, and has no idea of the tension Vigilas must be under. Vigilas has a sudden thought that perhaps he had better show himself loyal to his emperor, and mutters to Priscus, ‘It isnot proper to compare a god and a man.’
‘What did you say?’ That’s Orestes, who knows Greek.
‘I said,’ slurs Vigilas, ‘it is not proper to compare a god to a man.’
‘Right. Attila is a god. Good to hear it from a Greek.’
‘No. Theodosius is the god, Attila the man.’
‘Attila a mere man?’ The Huns are up in arms at Vigilas. After what he has achieved? Doesn’t Vigilas know Attila’s authority comes from the sword of Mars himself? How could he do what he did if he were not a god? And so on, with every sign of coming violence, until Maximinus and Priscus turned the conversation to other matters and by their friendly manner calmed their anger with post-prandial gifts of silk and pearls.
But tensions remain. Orestes (not in on the plot) is still resentful at being left out of the supper with Edika, Vigilas and Chrysaphius back in Constantinople. He complains to Maximinus, who takes the matter up with Vigilas, who tells Edika, who is appalled that things have come to such a pass. Edika is cross with Vigilas, and Orestes is cross with Edika, and now the Huns and the Romans are cross with each other. Vigilas knows Edika plans to kill Attila, Edika has his own plans that he has told no-one. And the senior Romans, Maximinus and Rusticius, don’t know the half of it yet. Where will it all end?
The sight of Naissus brings them all up short. It’s a wreck, pretty much as the Huns left it two years before: the walls half rubble, hardly anyone around, the Christian hostels acting as hospitals for the sick. Between the tumbledown walls and the river, where the Huns built the pontoon bridge for their siege machines, is a litter of bones. Aghast at the desolation, they ride on in silence.
Not far beyond is a military camp where they spend the night. Here the Hun fugitives are being held – but not the seventeen promised in the emperor’s letter; only five.
Next day they depart for the Danube, with the fugitives in tow, literally – all tied together. They are heading on north-west, aiming to cross the river at Margus, 120 kilometres and at least four, maybe five days’ journey away. The road is unfamiliar to Priscus. All day they plod on, through forests, up and down hills, and on and on as darkness falls. They find themselves in a thickly shaded place, where the path takes many twists and turns and detours. There’s nothing for it but to struggle on by flickering torchlight, hoping they are still going north-west. But then, saddle-sore, footsore and exhausted, they see the sky lightening straight ahead of them. The sun, a Roman shouts from the shadows – it’s rising in the wrong place! It’s a portent! You can imagine the response from the front. That’s the east, you idiot. It’s just this winding road. We’ll be fine.
On then through a forested plain, always north-west on the single road, until by chance they come across a contingent of Huns. The Huns have just crossed the Danube to prepare the way for Attila himself, who is going to come hunting in his newly acquired forests, not just for fun and for meat, but as a means of training his troops in unfamiliar territory. Not far beyond is the river, and a mass of Huns with dug-out canoes who have been acting as ferrymen for their soldiers, probably with rafts for horses and wagons.
On the other side, they travel on for another couple of hours before being told by their Hun guides to wait while Edika’s attendants go to Attila to announce the new arrivals. Late that evening, while they are dining in their tents, the Hun attendants gallop back with the news that all is ready. Next day, late in the afternoon, they arrive at Attila’s camp – wagons and circular tents by the score, line upon line flowing across the billowing, open pasture of what is today the Serbian province of Vojvodina. Maximinus wants to pitch his own tent on the hillside, but that is forbidden, because it would place the Romans’ tents higher than Attila’s.
With the tents erected in a suitably low and submissive spot, a delegation of senior Huns led by Orestes and Scottas come to ask what the Romans want exactly. Consternation and an exchange of glances between the Romans. ‘The emperor has ordered us to speak to Attila, and to no-one else,’ Maximinus tells them.
Scottas, brother of Attila’s second-in-command Onegesius, and number three in the Hun hierarchy, speaks up (Onegesius himself being away among the Akatziri, imposing Attila’s elder son, Ellac, as their new king). The Romans had better understand that it’s Attila himself who is asking. No Hun would make such a demand on his own account.
Maximinus stands upon protocol, with which, as he points out, the Huns should be familiar, having come on so many embassies to Constantinople. ‘It is not the rule for ambassadors that they should wrangle through others over the purpose of their mission. We deserve equal treatment. If we do not receive it, we will not tell the purpose of the embassy.’
An unnerving pause. The Huns leave with Edika, and return again without him, to thumb their noses at Maximinus by announcing that Edika has just told Attila the Romans’ purpose (at least, their official purpose; the unofficial purpose is still a secret known only to Edika and Vigilas). And Attila is not interested in anything more they have to say. So there. Now the Romans can go home.
There’s nothing to be done. The despondent Romans are packing up when Vigilas, who must see that his hidden mission has suddenly become impossible, becomes desperate. He is the key to the assassination plot; it’ll be up to him to fetch the gold, and he stands to lose a substantial reward if it fails. They can’t just leave, without achieving anything, he blurts out. Better to lie, say we’ve got other things to discuss, and stay rather than tell the truth and go! ‘If I had been able to speak to Attila, I should easily have persuaded him to set aside his differences with the Romans. I became friendly with him on Anatolius’ embassy.’
Meanwhile, what of Edika? He is keeping a low profile, embarrassed at his minor betrayal of the Romans, and in a bind. He has divulged the official purpose of the visit, but that’s not the half of it. He also knows its real purpose, and is afraid that Orestes will tell Attila that he and Vigilas dined alone with the dreadful and duplicitous Chrysaphius, and what would Attila make of that? Especially as he, Edika, is a foreigner, and dispensable. He spends the night in an agony of indecision – to tell or not to tell? To betray or to remain loyal? – fearing that, whatever he does, he’s doomed.
Next morning, the tents are packed, the horses already moving off, when Priscus sees how depressed Maximinus is. The sight goads Priscus into making one more try. He beckons Rusticius, the Hun-speaking businessman, who must be equally depressed at the imminent failure of his commercial plans, and leads him over to Scottas. ‘Tell him that he will receive many presents if he can get Maximinus an interview with Attila.’ Rusticius passes this on. ‘And another thing – tell him he will also benefit his brother Onegesius, because if he ever comes to settle outstanding matters with us, he too will receive great gifts. I’m sure he will be very grateful.’ Scottas is listening carefully. Priscus looks him in the eye. ‘We hear you too have influence with Attila. Perhaps you would like to prove it?’
‘Be assured’, says Scottas, ‘that I speak and act on an equal basis with my brother.’ He mounts, and gallops off to Attila’s tent.
Priscus returns to his two colleagues, who are lying downcast on the grass, and jolts them with his news. Get up! Get the pack animals back here! Prepare gifts! Work out your speeches! In seconds, despair turns to shouts of joy and thanks to Priscus, their saviour. Then a flurry of anxiety: how will they address Attila? How exactly will they present him with their gifts?
Priscus is not aware of anything that’s going on back at Attila’s tent, so we must guess. Perhaps it is Scottas’ arrival that precipitates the crisis. Perhaps Edika sees Scottas gallop up, and his imagination works overtime. Attila guesses something – Vigilas is going to be tortured to reveal all – he, Edika, will appear as a traitor, unless— He can’t afford to wait, he must move now to prove his loyalty. As Scottas leaves with the news that Attila will, after all, see the Romans, Edika begs an audience . . . and tells Attila all about the plot as proposed by the eunuch Chrysaphius, confessing that he himself is supposed to be the assassin, to be financed with the gold that Vigilas is supposed to collect.
Meanwhile, Scottas has arrived back at the Roman tents, where the Romans are ready.
They thread their way through the lines uphill to the grand tent surrounded by guards.
The door is opened (for no doubt the king’s tent has a wooden door, as Mongol gers do today).
They enter.
What is it like in there? Priscus does not say anything about a richly carpeted floor, a central brazier, a table crowded with little shamanic figures, the crowd of guards, attendants and secretaries, because his attention is wholly taken with the sight of Attila himself, the unsmiling, scary little man sitting on a wooden chair, which is also a throne, which implies solid, carved arms and a high back.
This is their first view of the man who has so devastated the Balkans and terrified the rulers of the eastern empire these last ten years. It is at this point that Priscus describes him in the words that survive secondhand in the account left by the Gothic historianJordanes, the words quoted in the previous chapter painting a portrait of the little man with the haughty gait, the small eyes darting here and there, the broad chest, the large head, the thin beard flecked with grey, the snub nose, the bad complexion, and in behaviour that surprising combination of self-restraint, graciousness and supreme self-confidence.
He certainly has every reason for confidence at this moment, because he now knows about the plot, and can afford to play cat-and-mouse with the Romans.
Maximinus steps forward and hands Attila the emperor’s scroll. ‘The Emperor’, he says, through Vigilas, ‘prays that Your Majesty and his followers are safe and well.’
‘You will have what you wish for me,’ Attila replies coldly. Then he turns to Vigilas as interpreter and tears into him. How dare he, the shameless beast, appear at all – a moment to savour, this, because Attila might have accused him then and there of planning regicide – when, according to the last treaty, no ambassadors should come to him before all the fugitives had been surrendered!
Vigilas stutters that all the fugitives have been surrendered. There are no others . . .
‘Silence! Shameless effrontery! I would have you impaled and fed to the birds, if it did not infringe the rights of ambassadors. There are many fugitives among the Romans! Secretaries: the names!’
And so, their bowels turning to water, Vigilas, Priscus and the rest must listen as scrolls are selected and unrolled, the grim silence broken by the rustle of papyrus. Then come the names. ‘Seventeen’ the emperor had mentioned; five were picked up outside Naissus; and here, scroll after scroll, are listed all those known to have fled across the border over past years – since the time Aetius’ son, Carpilio, was a hostage – traitors all, carefully noted by the secretariat – scores, hundreds perhaps, who knows how many? Who was counting? Certainly not the Romans.
Silence at last, and Attila speaks.
He will have the fugitives, if only because he could not have Huns fighting with the Romans in the event of war. Not that they are any use to the Romans, of course. For what city or fortress had been saved by them after he had set out to capture it? Not one. Vigilas would leave immediately with a Hun, Eslas, to demand the lot of them. Only then, Priscus implies, would it be possible to discuss the ransom to be paid for the Roman prisoners held by Attila. If the Romans would not comply, it would be war.
Maximinus could remain to draft letters, and as for the rest of you – hand over the presents, and get out.
Back at their tents, the Romans worked over what had happened.
‘I can’t understand it,’ says Vigilas. ‘Last time, he was so calm and mild.’
Priscus sighs. ‘Perhaps he had heard about you calling Theodosius a god and him a man.’
Maximinus nods. That must be it.
Vigilas remains perplexed. He’s sure he’s in the clear. The Huns would be too scared to report that loose talk at supper (and, he must have thought, Edika would never divulge the assassination plot, and condemn himself as a traitor).
Just then Edika himself comes in. He beckons Vigilas aside and mutters something. As Priscus learns later, Edika tells Vigilas to make arrangements to go and get the gold for the conspirators.
This is the only time Edika has appeared since he told Attila the purpose of the embassy. He can only have come at the behest of Attila himself, who must therefore have decided Edika is not a traitor after all. Edika’s gamble has worked.
So now there are two plots – the planned assassination and Attila’s revenge – in both of which Edika is central. He has compromised the first, and has now kick-started the second.
What was that about? someone asks as Edika leaves. Oh, nothing much – Vigilas waves an arm dismissively – just that Attila is still angry over the fugitives and the rank of the ambassadors, that’s all. Fair enough; everyone knows that Edika was given authority over Vigilas before they set out from Constantinople.
He is saved from further questions by a bevy of attendants from Attila, bringing new orders. None of the Romans is to buy anything – no Roman prisoners, slaves, horses, nothing except food – until all disputes are settled. Vigilas is to go back to Constantinople with Eslas and sort out the fugitive question. Everyone else stays. Onegesius, on his way back from overseeing Attila’s son crowned King of the Akatziri, is the next designated ambassador to Rome, and he will certainly wish to pick up the presents he’s owed.
Now Attila has everyone where he wants them. The Romans are virtually under arrest, while Vigilas – as Attila very well knows – is off to fetch the gold for Attila’s assassination. On his return, the trap will spring.
The day after Vigilas leaves, Attila orders everyone back to his main HQ. There will be no hunting south of the Danube after all, for there are more important matters to attend to. A chaos of folding up tents, packing and spanning wagons, and saddling horses gives way to ordered columns – wagons, outriders, bowyers and grooms and cooks all trailing deferentially after Attila’s entourage, all winding north over the grassland of what is now northern Serbia.
After a while, the column splits: Attila is sidetracking to a village where he is to pick up yet another wife, the daughter of one of the local logades. The rest continue over a plain and across three large rivers and several smaller ones. Sometimes there are locals with dug-outs, sometimes, while the rank and file swim with their horses, the VIPs cross with the wagons on the rafts carried for just this purpose. Along the way, villagers supply millet, mead and barley-beer. (Note that these people are villagers: no longer pastoral nomads, but making their living as settled farmers living in huts of wattle, daub and thatched reeds.)
After a hard day’s travel, they camp near a small lake. In the middle of the night they are awoken from their exhausted sleep by one of those summer storms that sweep the Hungarian puszta, one so violent it flattens the tent and blows the spare clothing and blankets into the pond. This is a Roman tent, not designed for wilderness living; not like the round Hunnish yurts, which remain snug in the coldest weather and can shoulder a hurricane. Blinded by rain, deafened by thunderclaps, the Romans find their way by lightning flashes to the village, yelling for help. Villagers waken, light reed tapers and lead them inside to the welcome warmth of reed fires.
It turns out that the village has a matriarch. Even more surprising, she is a widow – one of several – of Bleda, the brother Attila killed. Apparently she has been allowed to keep her own enclave on Bleda’s territory, where she is still in effect queen. Although it’s the middle of the night, she arranges for food to be sent. Then, when they are dry and fed, there troop in a number of attractive young women, who, Priscus is told, are for intercourse, which is a mark of honour among the Huns. ‘Attractive women’, Priscus calls them: what has happened to those racist opinions that the Huns were so revolting in their looks and behaviour that they were scarcely human? Wiped out by the reality of being confronted by hospitality and beauty. A bit embarrassing, this, for Christians, civil servants and diplomats, especially as the women had been chosen for their looks. Polite reserve was the answer. ‘We plied the women generously with the foods placed before us, but refused intercourse with them.’
The next day is fine and hot. The Romans retrieve their sodden baggage, dry it in the sun, pay a courtesy call on the village matriarch to thank her with a gift of three silver bowls and some dried fruit, and are on their way.
So it goes, for a week and probably something over 200 kilometres. They come to another village. Here there is something of a traffic jam. Everyone has to wait because Attila is to rejoin the convoy, and he has to lead. And here, too, by an astonishing coincidence, is another embassy, this one from the western empire, from Rome, with some familiar and eminent faces: a general and a governor; a returning envoy, Constantius, the secretary originally sent by Aetius to Attila; a count named Romulus and his son-in-law, who is none other than the father of Orestes. It seems that being part of embassies to Attila is a family business.
The western envoys have their own story, which centres on the golden bowls of Sirmium. These had once belonged to the bishop who, when the city was besieged by the Huns in the early 440s, gave them to one of Attila’s other secretaries for safe keeping, thinking the gift might come in handy if he were captured. That made the bowls Attila’s. But the secretary pawned the bowls to a banker in Rome. When Attila learned of this, he had the man crucified. Now he wants either the bowls or the banker. Here was a whole embassy come to tell Attila that, since the banker had received the bowls in good faith, they were not stolen goods and the Hun leader cannot now claim either them or the innocent banker.
At last Attila turns up, and the swollen columns proceed across an open plain until they reach a very large village – Attila’s capital, which, as suggested in the previous chapter, is probably some 20 kilometres west of present-day Szeged, well away from the meandering and flood-prone Tisza.
As the royal procession winds between the wooden buildings, women give a ritual welcome, lines of them holding up long strips of white linen that form a canopy under which walk a procession of young girls, all singing. They lead the way between the compounds, and then straight into Onegesius’ enclosure.
Second only to Attila’s, Onegesius’ compound contains a surprise – a bath-house made of stones brought all the way from Pannonia, 150 kilometres to the south. It was built by a Roman architect taken prisoner in Sirmium. Priscus does not mention the furnace and hot water, sine qua non for a bathhouse, nor does he explain how the water got to the bath – there was no aqueduct, of course, because this was a mere village in Roman terms; a ditch, perhaps, or just pot-carrying Roman prisoners trooping back and forth to the river at bath-time. In any event, in this barbaric setting the bath is a terrific status symbol for Onegesius, for baths were temples to civilization, bath-water its very essence. He would have approved a poem by one of the greatest poets of the age, Sidonius, who wrote in praise of his own baths in southern Gaul, baths of which we shall hear more praise later, and of which Attila himself might hear rumours in two years’ time:
Enter the chill waves after the steaming baths,
That the water by its coldness may brace your heated skin.
Priscus makes no mention of Attila taking a bath, but it is inconceivable that the work would have gone forward without his permission, even encouragement. The unnamed Roman architect had no doubt provided Onegesius with tepidarium, calidarium, hypocaust and perhaps even laconium, a sweat-room, complete of course with furnace. Not much point in a bathhouse, he would have argued, if you freeze in winter. He hoped it would win him his freedom. No such luck: as Priscus notes, he is the bath attendant.
In the enclosure, overseen by Onegesius’ wife – his senior wife, perhaps – servants from many households offer the horsemen food and wine from silver plates and goblets. Attila deigns to take a delicacy here, a sip there, and the servants hold up the plate and cup to boast of the honour to the surrounding throng. Then onwards, out of Onegesius’ compound by its other entrance, up a rise to the palace.
This is the Romans’ first view of their destination, though all they can see for the moment are the wooden walls made of smoothly planed boards so well set by the Gothic or Burgundian carpenters that the joints are hardly visible. Only the size of the walls shows it to be the royal palace. Attila vanishes inside, into instant audience with Onegesius on the subject of the Akatziri and their new young ruler. In fact, it is quite urgent: Attila’s son has fallen and broken his right arm. No doubt a healer must be called to set it, with the correct rituals.
Meanwhile, after dinner provided by Onegesius’ long-suffering wife, the Romans set up camp between the two compounds, ready for their summons into the royal presence next day. They wait. No-one comes. Maximinus sends Priscus down to Onegesius’ place, with servants carrying the presents both for the king and for his right-hand man. The doors are still closed. It’s going to be another long wait.
As Priscus wanders about outside the stockade, a Hun approaches, dressed, as Huns usually are, in jerkin and felt trousers. To Priscus’ amazement, the Hun hails him in Greek: Khaire! The Huns are a mixed bunch, both Hunnish and Gothic being spoken routinely, while those used to dealing with westerners – like Onegesius himself – also have reasonable Latin. But not Greek. The only Greek-speakers around are prisoners taken in the recent wars, the ones the Romans want to ransom. You can tell them at a glance, oppressed and tousled down-and-outs. This man, in his forties I imagine, is smartly dressed, with his hair neatly clipped in the Hunnish style, confident, relaxed.
‘Khaire!’ replies Priscus, and fires off a string of questions. Who is he? Where does he come from? How is it that he’s adopted barbarian ways?
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘You speak Greek! Of course I’m curious!’
The man laughs, and must surely have introduced himself, though Priscus avoids giving us his name, for reasons that will become clear. Yes, he’s Greek, a businessman who had set up in Viminacium, had married a rich wife and was doing well when the Huns attacked eight years before and burned the place to the ground. He had been among those led away into captivity. The business was ruined, of course, but because of his wealth Onegesius had chosen him as a prime hostage. It turned out well for both. He had shown valour in fighting the Romans and the Akatziri, which probably means he had supplied and commanded his own troops. In whatever way, he had acquired enough booty to buy his freedom. Now he is part of Onegesius’ entourage, with a new Hun wife and children, and once again doing very well.
In fact, life is better here than it was in Viminacium. He should know; he is in a unique position to compare the two cultures. In the empire, he says, ordinary people rely on their leaders, so have lost their fighting spirit. But the generals are useless cowards, so we’re bound to lose wars. In peace, we’re at the mercy of tax-men and criminals. There’s no such thing as justice any more. The rich bribe the judges, the poor languish in gaol until they die. Faced with incompetence, insecurity, corruption and oppression, no wonder it’s better here.
Priscus, remember, is a civil servant, writing an official report. His ears are open to criticism, because no-one can deny that the empire is going to the dogs for just the reasons given by this Greek-turned-Hun. But it would not look good officially to let this sort of thing go unchallenged. So he writes himself a prim reply. The men who framed the Roman constitution were good and wise. They ordained that there should be soldiers, good military training, fair taxation, fair-minded judges, independent lawyers to defend the rights of the common people. If trials last a long time, it is only because the judges want to make sure they come to the right conclusion. How unlike the barbarians are the Romans, who treat their slaves as fathers do and punish them, like their own children, if they do wrong, so that they are restrained from improper behaviour. Even in death, a Roman can provide for increased freedom, because wills are legally binding. Why, even the emperor himself is subject to the law. It is a very long speech, which would all be in direct quotes if ancient Greek had direct quotes. It has them in Blockley’s translation. And what was the result of this peroration?
‘My acquaintance wept and said that the laws were fair and the Roman polity good.’
Well, really. Have you ever heard anything so unlikely? This unnamed man, who had had a wife, a business, a home, and lost the lot and lived through four wars and started again in a foreign land and rebuilt himself from scratch – he hears prim and pious phrases that come straight from some civil service handbook on how to sound like Socrates, and he weeps?
Many have remarked on Priscus’ presumed deficiencies here. A feeble and prolix declamation, says Gibbon. Indefensible . . . throws a sinister light on his recording abilities, says Thompson. But I think he knows exactly what he’s up to. It’s a common device of the scholar or civil servant who wishes to criticize: This is just a hypothesis or the opinion of others, which of course I do not support, so it’s not my fault if my readers take it seriously. Galileo later used this ploy in his Dialogue proposing a sun-centred solar-system; so did Luther in his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ condemning the pope and setting off the Reformation. In a minor way, this is what Priscus is doing – using a chance meeting to sneak in a sharp critique of Roman society, then making it even more persuasive by countering it with no more than tight-lipped and tedious pedantry. This is why the man remains anonymous: Priscus blows the incident up out of proportion, and would not wish either to embarrass his source or to risk a rebuttal. His protest is to be taken not with tears, but with a knowing nod and many grains of salt.
The doors open. A message is passed, and answered. Onegesius emerges, receives gifts, and comes to see Maximinus, who urges him to visit Rome as an ambassador and work out a new peace treaty. Onegesius is aloof. He will do only what Attila wants – ‘or do the Romans think that they will bring so much pressure on me that I will betray my master?’ Service to Attila, he says, is better than wealth among the Romans! Better for him to stay at home.
Next day, it falls to Priscus as go-between to make direct contact with Attila. He approaches the palace’s wooden wall, and is let in. Now he sees the true size of Attila’s compound, which contains a palace, a separate dining-hall and a large cluster of other buildings, some of planks ornamented with carvings, others of planks merely stripped of bark, planed and fitted, some – belonging to Attila’s senior wife, Erekan – of planks rising from stone foundations. Now known to Hun officials, Priscus makes his way through a milling crowd of guards, servants, envoys from other barbarian tribes and ordinary Huns anxious to have Attila judge their complaints. Voices babble in Hunnish, Gothic, and Latin. Somewhere in the crowd are the members of the other Roman embassy, the ones who have come to settle the dispute of the golden bowls. Priscus enters the queen’s house, probably removing his sandals to walk over the felt rugs, and finds the queen reclining on a couch, Roman-style, surrounded by servant girls embroidering linen cloaks. There’s no interpreter to hand, so Priscus presents gifts, and takes his leave again.
He is in the crowd outside Attila’s palace when Attila and Onegesius come out. Attila has a habit of glancing around him (a trick of leadership taught to politicians and public speakers nowadays to help them grasp the attention of all and give an impression of authority). As petitioners make their appeals and receive judgement, members of the other Roman embassy come up to find out what’s going on. Priscus asks about the golden bowls affair. It’s not good news. Attila is adamant: it’s the bowls, or war. One of the team, Romulus, with long experience as an envoy, explains why. No previous ruler has ever achieved so much in so short a time. Power has made him arrogant. He’s ambitious for more, too. Wants to attack Persia. Persia? comes an astonished voice from the crowd, which prompts Romulus to tell the story of the war of 395, when the Huns raided through the Caucasus and returned past the flaming rocks of the Caspian shore. Yes, it would soon be the Persians’ turn again.
‘Better the Persians than us.’
‘Yes, but what then?’ This is one of the senior western officials, from the bit of Pannonia now under Hun rule. Attila will return as master, he says. Now we call him an honorary general, so that our tributes look like regular payments. But if he defeats the Persians he won’t be interested in Roman gold. He’ll want to be addressed as king and make the Romans his servants. Already, he says, Hun generals are as good as Roman ones, and—
At this point Onegesius comes out. A flurry of questions ends with Maximinus being summoned to see Attila.
Inside, as he reports later, he gets short shrift. Attila wants ambassadors he knows, high-rankers like Nomus, Anatolius or Senator, men who have been before. When Maximinus says it might make the emperor suspect treachery if Attila prefers them, Attila says: Do as I say, unless you want war.
Back at the tent, as he is pondering what to do, a dinner invitation arrives for the Romans. This is their first opportunity to see Attila relaxing, if he ever does. When the time comes, the Romans walk up to the dining-hall, where waiters offer a cup of wine so that guests can make a prayer before being seated.
Note the wine. Traditionally the Huns drank kumiss, fermented mare’s milk, and barley beer. Wine was a new addition to the Hun diet, an important trade item, and a welcome part of formal feasts like this one.
There’s Attila, in everyday clothing, even his bootlaces free of the usual Hun adornments, sword at his side, sitting on a Roman-style couch, with young Ellac sitting deferentially on the end, his broken right arm presumably bound up. He’s a king in his own right now, but he doesn’t look like it, his eyes downcast in awe of his father. His brother Ernak, Attila’s favourite, sits on a chair beside him. Actually, Priscus now sees, this dining-hall is also Attila’s official bedroom. Behind Attila is a second couch, and behind that a few steps lead up to a bed screened off by ornate and colourful hangings of linen and silk.
The chairs line the walls, each chair with its waiter. Priscus does not count the number, but I imagine 30 or 40, as befits a state banquet with Roman embassies from both eastern and western capitals. Onegesius is on Attila’s right, the side of honour, with other Hun notables ranging away along the same wall. The Romans are seated on the left. Waiters offer gold and silver goblets. A waiter gives Attila wine in a wooden cup. The king formally greets everyone in turn, his cup being passed to each guest, who takes a sip and returns it, at which point everyone sips from his own cup. Priscus has a hard time explaining exactly how this long introduction is done, but it sounds like a cross between a Roman drinking session and a Christian communion service. Then tables are carried in, one for each group of three or four, so that everyone can eat without leaving his place. Now comes the food: meat of various kinds and bread, on silver platters – for everyone except Attila, who makes a show of his simple, honest nomad roots by using a wooden plate and his wooden cup.
The first course ends, and all must stand, drain their cups, toast Attila and wish him good health. Now comes another course. Priscus does not record what exactly is served: he is not interested in food, and besides, his gaze is getting blurry, the impressions running together. It’s just a different lot of cooked dishes. End of second course. Everyone stands. Another toast, once again the whole cup to be drained. It’s got dark. Here come pine torches, and it’s time for entertainment. Two bards chant songs of their own composition in praise of Attila’s victories and his courage. This is very affecting. Around the hall young men recall the battles with nods and smiles, old men become tearful. Now it’s the turn of a comedian. For a Roman, it is hard to imagine anything worse than a Hunnish comedian, and of course his act goes entirely over Roman heads. Priscus dismisses the man as deranged, uttering outlandish, unintelligible and altogether crazy words. But to the Huns he is a hoot. They fall about with laughter.
And the best is still to come. This is the moment they’ve all been waiting for. It’s Zercon, the hobbling, noseless, hunchback dwarf captured in Libya who had been Bleda’s jester. Everyone knows the story of how he ran away, was recaptured and received a wife from among his master’s entourage. When a year or two later Bleda was murdered, Attila parted Zercon from his wife and gave him to Aetius, who gave him back to Aspar, his original master. What a strange life Zercon has had, snatched from beggary in Libya and then passed between patricians, generals and chiefs from Romans to Huns to Romans, and now back at last to the Huns. It was the Skirian chief, Edika, with his international contacts, who had somehow brought him back to Attila’s court, having persuaded him that he had a right to reclaim his lost wife. Attila was not happy to see this reminder of Bleda, and the lost wife remained lost.
Now Zercon enters. He is not a dimwit; he knows his fate depends on his entertainment value; so he probably has an act, a speech of some kind, uttered with his usual lisp, and a deliberate mixture of Hunnish, Gothic and Latin. To modern sensibilities, it is a dreadful idea. Unfortunately, sensibility to deformity is quite modern. Most audiences until the early twentieth century would have loved it, as they loved bearded ladies and midgets and the Elephant Man. To get an idea of just how low this act is, imagine a black dwarf with crippled feet performing a music-hall song in a pastiche Franco-German accent, and with a lisp and a stutter. The onlookers fall about, point, slap their thighs, and laugh until the tears run.
All except Attila, who sits stony-faced and unmoving. After all, he has had Zercon on and off for the last seven years. Enough is enough. He responds only when young Ernak comes and stands by him. Ernak is special. As a Latin-speaking Hun whispers to Priscus, the shamans had told Attila that the Huns would fall, but their fortunes would be restored by Ernak. Attila draws his son closer with a soft hand on his cheek, and smiles gently, while Zercon brings his bizarre performance to a close.
Official business takes another five days: letters written for the emperor, a Roman woman prisoner ransomed for 500 solidi, another meal arranged by Attila’s senior wife Erekan; and a final supper with Attila. They will leave with one matter to be resolved, concerning Constantius, the secretary sent to Attila by Aetius. Aetius had promised Constantius a wealthy wife. The emperor had found just the woman, but the arrangement had been scuppered by court politics. As part of the Roman–Hun interplay of bellicosity and diplomacy, Attila insists that his secretary shall have the promised wife. That is what has been agreed. Let it be so!
Then the embassy sets out on its journey home. It is not a happy one. They see a spy impaled – a grim reminder of Attila’s ruthlessness and the awful skills of his executioners – and two slaves dying a slow death for murder, hanging by their necks from V-shaped branches. Their main Hun companion turns nasty halfway, reclaiming the horse he had given as a gift.
And on the road from Constantinople, for there is only one, they meet Vigilas, returning with his Hun minder, Eslas, and the (carefully concealed) 50 pounds of gold which he is planning to give to Edika to fund the assassination of Attila. Since he was sent off to discuss fugitives and prisoners, his return is no big secret. He has no Hun fugitives with him, but he does presumably carry another letter from the emperor on the subject. He is at the head of a mini-embassy of slaves and horses, and blithely unaware that he is walking into a trap. He cannot, of course, learn the truth, because it is known only to Edika and Attila, and Edika has not been seen or heard of since his muttered briefing to Vigilas just after he spilled the beans to Attila. It does not seem to occur to him that one of the main struts of the plot – that there should be a high-level Roman delegation in Hun lands when Attila is assassinated, ostensibly by his own officers – has been cut away. So confident is Vigilas that he has brought along his son as a companion.
Priscus will learn later what happens. When Vigilas crosses into Hun lands, Attila’s men are waiting. An escort would be in order, a pleasant surprise. It turns into a nasty shock. He is arrested, searched, relieved of his bag of gold and dragged with his son before Attila.
So what exactly is all this gold for? asks Attila, as if he didn’t know.
For me, for the others – Attila allows Vigilas to stumble on, miring himself in a swamp of deceit and pompous words – so that we might not fail to achieve the object of the embassy through lack of supplies. Or, he struggles, or . . . through the inadequacy of the horses and baggage animals. In case they became exhausted on the long journey, and more had to be bought. (In which case, what need of the gold in Hun lands, now that the Romans have left?) And to purchase captives. So many in Roman territory had begged him to ransom their relatives.
What Vigilas might have done, had he been truly sure of himself, was to come back at Attila with outrage at such treatment – an ambassador arrested and robbed! Unheard of! The emperor will hear of this, etc., etc. Instead, he stands condemned by his own mealy-mouthed words.
‘Worthless beast!’ yells Attila, who does anger very effectively. These are his words as Priscus reports them: ‘You will escape justice no longer with your tricks! Your excuses cannot save you from punishment!’ Vigilas is being treated as a mere criminal, and a Hun criminal at that, not the Roman that he is, let alone a diplomat. Attila is very sure of his ground, and rants on. The money is much more than any delegation needs for provisions, horses, baggage animals and captives. And, anyway, Vigilas must surely recall that Attila refused to ransom captives when he first came with Maximinus.
At this point, Attila nods to the guards holding Vigilas’ son. A sword is drawn. One word from me, says Attila, and the boy dies. Now tell me the truth.
This is the moment Attila has been waiting for since he first learned of the scheme some six weeks ago. A Roman ambassador caught in an assassination plot, and such a stupid one. Could anything better reveal the duplicity of the Romans and the superiority of the Huns?
Vigilas breaks down, bursts into tears, and calls upon Attila, in the name of justice, to let the sword fall upon him, not on the innocent lad, who knows nothing.
The truth, then.
So it all comes out: the truth, as Attila has known it all along. Chrysaphius, Edika, the meetings in the palace in Constantinople, the emperor’s agreement, the gold, everything.
It was enough to save lives. If Attila can do anger, he can also do magnanimity. But there is more to be squeezed out of this. Vigilas is put in chains, and becomes a hostage. He, who said he had come to ransom others, will himself be ransomed. The son is to be sent back with the news, and will return with another 50 pounds of gold. There is something poetic in the way this works out. Fifty pounds was the amount suggested to fund the assassination of a king. Now Attila demands the same sum for a mere ambassador. The emperor will lose twice what he committed, and will gain nothing but humiliation. For anyone with a sense of drama, and Attila has that in abundance, this revenge is exquisite.
But there is no point unless he can ensure the humiliation is public, for both the emperor and the dreadful eunuch Chrysaphius. He sends Orestes and Eslas, both of proven honesty, along with the boy. Their job is to rub salt into the emperor’s wound.
When they have their audience with Theodosius in Constantinople, Orestes wears around his neck the bag in which Vigilas had hidden the gold. Chrysaphius is present, of course. The words in this scene are Attila’s, given to Eslas to speak:
Do the emperor and Chrysaphius recognize the bag? A significant pause for explanation and recognition, then Attila’s message:
‘Theodosius is the son of a nobly born father. So am I, Attila, the son of my father the King of the Huns, Mundzuk. I have preserved my noble lineage, but Theodosius has not. Who now is the barbarian, and who the more civilized?’
The answer is obvious: the bag proves the point. Theodosius, by plotting the assassination of Attila, his superior, his master, has acted like a rebellious slave. As a result, Attila declared, he would not absolve Theodosius from blame unless he handed over the eunuch for punishment.
There is something else to be resolved as well: the matter of Constantius’ wife. His intended has been married off to someone else, taking her dowry with her. But Theodosius surely knew about this, in which case he had better get her back. Or was he not in control of his own servants? In which case, Attila would be happy to make the man an offer he would be unlikely to refuse.
There is only one way to get out of this mess and save the life of Chrysaphius: find a lady even richer and better connected than the one promised to Constantius, and then pay, and pay, and pay. An embassy is prepared, headed by men even more eminent than Maximinus. In exchange for cash on a scale never seen before, all is resolved. Attila withdraws from the lands south of the Danube, lands he would have struggled to keep anyway. Constantius gets his rich wife (she is the daughter-in-law of the general and consul Plinthas whose son has died). Vigilas is released, Chrysaphius saved to scheme again, the Roman prisoners of war released, the fugitive Huns conveniently forgotten.
And Attila is free to turn his attention to a softer target than Constantinople – the decaying empire of Rome itself.
1 A solidus weighed 4.54 grams/0.22 oz. A fifth-century gold solidus today fetches up to $600.