Immigrations and Migrations - A Tale of Attila the Hun

We take a brief look at the life of Attila and the short lived Hunnic Empire.  

Transcript

Migrations and Immigrations – A Tale of the Attila the Hun

September 2023 

“All who came into contact with them, Persians, Armenians, Greeks, Romans, were impressed by the Huns’ fairness in dealing—considering that they were armed invaders; by their restraint and adaptability; by their judgment of affairs; by their easy luxury. They brought a new elegance to the Empire peoples, and they had assimilated a half dozen cultures, including that of China.”

R.A. Lafferty, The Fall of Rome

“One person’s ‘barbarian’ is another person’s ‘just doing what everybody else is doing.”

Susan Sontag

One of the frustrations with ancient history is the need for more sources. Our primary source for the Punic Wars lived nearly 300 years after the events and belonged to one of the participating parties. He cited other sources, but it is that game we played as children called the telephone in which, with each transfer, the original information is garbled. And even in the case of the Punic Wars, we can tell that it is Roman-centric. What were the Carthaginians thinking, how did they plan, what did they think of Hamilcar or Hannibal? But at least here we have a picture.  

In 1177 BCE, a great mystery occurred. You have six prosperous Bronze Age societies: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the Hittite Empire, and the Kingdom of Mittani. Add in the Greek Minoan civilization centered in Crete, and you have a group of societies intertwined through trade and various alliances. And then they all fell, except Egypt, within fifty years. In the book 1177 BC.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric H. Cline, the author states, 

“After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium BC, which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture.”

In fairness, it was not just the legendary Sea Peoples, whoever they were. There was drought, famine, and maybe even volcanoes. And given the interconnectedness, when one civilization fell, it made it easier for the others. This lesson should not be lost on us. We depend on Taiwan for nearly half the chips that power our cars, our infrastructure, and the computer upon which his podcast is being produced. If, under Xi Jinping, China should invade Taiwan, it will have a direct and deleterious effect upon America. 

But I still believe that the catalyst was the Sea Peoples, though we know little to nothing about them. A few Egyptian hieroglyphics and other scraps of information and archeology. “Marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations.” Adds Cline. The historical narrative for identifying the Sea People stems primarily from seven Ancient Egyptian sources (with some information from Hittite sources), which names nine ancient cultures possibly responsible. However, a French Archeologist concocted the term “sea peoples” millennia later. This much we do know. The six major powers were not only trading partners but there were documents showing interactions between their rulers, some referring to each other as “brothers.” The Sea Peoples were invaders from faraway lands compelled by forces, which we can only guess, to move to different places, and this movement ended the Bronze Age.  

There was rarely a time in the world when one or another group of people were not on the move. In addition to the Sea Peoples, we have a better-identified group called the Scythians. 

In Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China, the author provides a cultural, linguistic, and geographic overview of a prominent but little-understood people.  

Scythians, also called Scyth, Saka, and Sacae, were members of a nomadic people, originally of Iranian stock, known from as early as the 9th century BCE, who migrated westward from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 7th centuries. The first Scythian Empire (680 BCE – 370CE) interacted with civilizations as diverse as the Achaemenid Empire, the Kingdom of Parthia, the Thracians, and later, Rome. “Mobile horse herders who lived with their cats in wheeled felt tents, the Scythians made stunning contributions to world civilization―from capital cities and exquisite dress to political organization and the world-changing ideas of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Laotzu―Scythians all, notes Beckwith.  

In many regards, the Scythians were the first of a pattern in which peoples would migrate from East and Central Asia to modern-day Russia and Eastern Europe. These migrations would put tremendous pressure on the people already living in those areas and, finally, pressure on the fixed states, including first Rome and, later, Western European states.  

But of these migrations and later immigrations involving the Roman state, arguably none were more detrimental or critical than the Huns. Like the Scythians, The Huns were nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns’ arrival to Europe is associated with the migration westward of an Iranian people, the Alans. By 370 CE, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430, they had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe, conquering the Goths and many other Germanic peoples living outside of Roman borders and causing many others to flee into Roman territory.

The Romans became aware of the Huns when the latter’s invasion of the Pontic steppes forced thousands of Goths to move to the Lower Danube, the border of the Eastern Roman Empire, in 376.  This mass of Goths requested asylum within the Empire from the Huns. Eventually, war was joined between the Goths, their allies, the Alans, and the Romans, culminating in the battle of Adrianople in 378. Adrianople is considered one of the worst military defeats in Roman history. The late Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus compared it with the catastrophe at Cannae (216 BCE), where the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca annihilated around 50,000 legionaries. At Adrianople, the joint Gothic forces decisively defeated the Eastern Roman army led by Emperor Valens. About 20,000 soldiers perished that day, along with most high-ranking officers.

To make matters worse, Emperor Valens was killed in the battle, leaving the throne in Constantinople vacant. Following their triumph, the Goths invaded the Balkans. 

For me, this defeat was worse than the famous Cannae.  Not only was the Emperor killed, but unlike Cannae, the men lost could not easily be replaced. Though later Emperors such as Theodosius reestablished the Danube boundary, the Eastern Empire would not conduct offensive conquests for the next 150 years. This was indirectly caused by the Hunnish movement westwards that put the Goths and Alans on the Danube in the first place.  

In his book, Attila the Hun, Enemy of Rome, Ian Hughes notes, “Mention the name Attila to anyone over the age of 20 in the West, and the chances are they will have heard of Attila the Hun. The same cannot be said of his near contemporaries, whose actions were pivotal during the last years of the Roman Empire. The name Gaiseric the Visigoth or Euric the Goth have long since fallen from common usage.”

Hughes explores why the Huns are remembered. Some theories noted the early 20th-century application of the term to the Germans, not based on their origins but rather a speech by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Another view is that wherein the Germanic tribes were familiar and even somewhat civilized by Roman standards, the Huns arrived on the scene more East Asian than European, with all of the racial biases implied. The aforementioned Ammianus Marcellus wrote: 

“The people of the Huns, but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea (the sea of Azov, or what is left of it in modern times) exceed every degree of savagery. Since their children’s cheeks are deeply furrowed with steel since birth, they grow old without any beards and without beauty, like eunuchs. They all have compact, strong limbs and thick necks and are so monstrously ugly and misshapen that one might take them for two-legged beasts,” 

The savagery comment is interesting coming from a people who called their rulers Caesar after a man who killed nearly one million Gauls, but one man’s barbarism is another’s liberation. If our Roman historian’s physical description was fairly repellant, his description of the nature of the Huns is not much better. 

“They keep roaming from place to place like fugitives. In truces, they are faithless and unreliable, strongly inclined to sway to the motion of every breeze.” I began this podcast noting a dearth of good sources from Ancient Times, and as Hughes notes, “The great difficulty here is that Ammianus almost certainly never encountered a Hun and was forced in part to rely on information from people who exaggerated Hunnic atrocities. And one theory that Hughes puts forth from Attila’s continued hold on the imagination is Christianity. The Gothic tribes converted to Christianity sometime between 376 and 390, so that when the Huns arrived in Eastern Europe, they were still pagan.  

One theory of the origin of the Huns, dating their inception to the 2nd century BCE, has them descended from the Xiongnu people, who lived in northern China to the 1st century CE. Given a lack of archeological evidence, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. The issue remains controversial, but recent archaeogenetic studies confirm their Asian origins. We know that some sort of migration from central Asia to the Volga region occurred sometime after the 2nd century CE. By the late 300s and early 400s, the Huns had migrated from the Volga region into Eastern Europe and began empire-building.  

Far from the stereotype of the unwashed, uneducated barbarian Ammianus exhibited, Attila was born into one of the most powerful families on the northern bank of the Danube River. His uncles — Rugila and Octar — jointly ruled the Hun Empire, which stretched from the Caspian Sea to the borders of modern Austria. As members of the Hunnic nobility, both Attila and his brother Bleda were trained in archery, sword-fighting, and, most notably, for a Hun, horse-riding. The Huns were renowned for their ability to shoot arrows accurately from horseback during battle. At some point in the future, I would love to do a podcast focusing exclusively on the recurve bow and its military and historical impact, but for now, we stay focused on the Huns.  

Unlike Ammianus, the Roman writer Priscus actually met Attila, but his account, though a bit less racial in tinge, still provides the civilized vs. barbarian tone, “Short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head; his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with grey; and he had a flat nose and tanned skin, showing evidence of his origin.” 

In some ways, the Huns were the Johnny Cash of Ancient migrants; they seemed to be everywhere, man. Their conquests ranged from the Persian Sassanids to, as we shall see with Attila, France. In the late 300s, the Huns conquered the Alans, most of the Greuthungi or Eastern Goths, and then most of the Thervingi or Western Goths, with many fleeing into the Roman Empire. 

In 395, the Huns began their first large-scale attack on the Eastern Roman Empire. Huns attacked Thrace, overran Armenia, and pillaged Cappadocia. They entered parts of Syria, threatened Antioch, and passed through the province of Euphratesia. At the same time, the Huns invaded the Persian Sasanian Empire. This invasion was initially successful, coming close to the capital of the Empire at Ctesiphon; however, they were defeated badly during the Persian counterattack.

It was in 434 that Attila, along with his brother Bleda, began to rule the Hunnic Empire. After a series of campaigns against the Eastern Roman Empire, in which the latter agreed to pay, then later reneged, on a bribe to make the Huns go away, The Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II gave in to Hun demands and, in autumn 443 signed the Peace of Anatolius with the two Hun kings. In 445, Bleda died, leaving Atilla as sole ruler. After yet another war with the East, The Romans agreed to give Atilla The price was 2100 pounds of gold. Good work if you can get it.

At this point in Attila’s story, a woman enters the scene. Honoria was described by contemporary historians as ambitious and promiscuous, using her sexuality to advance her interests. She is one of those figures, a bit like Cleopatra of who our modern media likes to portray as some sort of femme fatale.  In one version the fabulous Sophia Loren portrayed her which should give one an idea of how Hollywood views this historical figure. And of course she was portrayed like this given that all of the historians were men and many Christian to boot.  One possible false story comes from John of Antioch (writing in the 7th century): Honoria seduced her chamberlain, Eugenius, but their affair was discovered. What is certain are two key facts: she regarded her brother, Valentinian III, as weak and indolent, and her brother decided to marry Honoria to a Roman senator named Bassus Herculanus, who was considered “safe” and unlikely to use this connection to seize the throne. 

Faced with this unwanted marriage, Honoria sought the aid of Attila. She sent the Hunnish king a plea for help – and her ring – in the spring of 450. Though Honoria may not have intended a marriage proposal, Attila chose to interpret her message as such for the simple expedient that having milked the Eastern Empire of a good portion of its wealth; he was turning to the Western half for new opportunities of conquest.   

And now we come to the last great Roman general of the West (the last great Roman general of the East has a name, Belisarius, of which I am fond which should be no surprise to frequent listeners). But here we are talking of Aetius. Magister Militum of the Western Rome Empire Aetius is often called “Last of the Romans.” Edward Gibbon refers to him as “the man universally celebrated as the terror of Barbarians and the support of the Republic” for his victory at the Catalaunian Plains. Gibbon seems to have momentarily forgotten that the Republic was dispensed with some 400 years earlier but I digress.  

The Irish classicist JB Bury notes of Aetius, “That he was the one prop and stay of the Western Empire during his lifetime, which was the unanimous verdict of his contemporaries.”  

The romantically named Battle of the Catalaunian Fields took place on June 20, 451 or so we think. The exact date, and place, are lost to us. Though Aetius got much of the credit, the reality is that the Romans were assisted by the Visigothic king Theodoric I. The Huns were not alone either, having many of their vassal states represented at the battle, though they composed most of the coalition army. One contention is that the battle was the first time European forces could defeat the Hun army and keep them from their objective and that Attila’s aura of invincibility evaporated. In a different view, the Siege of Aurelianum was the decisive moment in the campaign and stopped the Huns’ attempt to advance further into Roman territory or establish vassals in Roman Gaul. Either way, Attila retreated out of Gaul, modern day France.

In 452, Attila returned with an even larger army, this time striking deep into northern Italy and aiming for Rome itself. After taking a dozen cities in the Po valley, including Aquileia and the old western capital of Milan, Attila met with a peace envoy, Pope Leo I, and obtained from him the promise that he would withdraw from Italy and negotiate peace with Emperor Valentinian. This meeting was later glorified by Christian historians and is featured in a fresco by no less than Raphael. It was a neat piece of propaganda that the holiness of Leo was enough to deter the savagery of Attila. The reality was that the Huns halted their advances, not because of military defeat or the majesty of Leo but because of disease and famine. Attila turned back and retreated to Pannonia for the last time: no Honoria, no taking of a large chunk of the Western Empire. 

The retreat from Italy marked the beginning of the end for Attila the Hun. In 453, while he was planning a new attack on the Eastern Roman Empire and its new Emperor Marcian, Attila decided to take a new wife. Her name was Ildico, and she was probably a Germanic princess. However, on their wedding night, a tragedy occurred. The historian Jordanes tells us Attila suffered a seizure after “giving himself to excessive joy.” Of course poison could have been the culprit or just simply something in his body gave out.  5th century autopsies were not really a thing.  In the morning, appalled attendants found Attila dead, with a weeping young woman at his bedside.

This is one of those things I love about Attila’s story. It is hard enough to get good sources on the men of the ancient world. However, there is even less information regarding Shammuramat of the Assyrians, Parysatis of the Achaemenids, Cleopatra of Egypt, or Hypatia of Alexandria, born just before Honoria. Here however we know that women certainly played a role in Attila’s life and might have been the cause of his death.  

Were the Huns principally responsible for the fall of Rome, as many 18th and 19th-century classicists would contend? I loaded this question with the word principally because this would be an incorrect assumption. 

Except for the exertions of Aurelian, Diocletian’s genius, and Constantine’s ruthlessness, the Empire would not have survived until the 370s. Again, at some future point, I would like to discuss the fall of the Western Empire (the fall of Rome is always interesting because the East endured for nearly 1,000 years after the West, albeit in a much-reduced form). However, the Empire had three fundamental issues:

1. Because the office of the Emperor was not purely royal, any general who led an army could make a claim.
2. The advent of Christianity was initially not a unifying state, even after Constantine’s conversion.
3. Most importantly, Rome, at least in the West, was conflicted by the advent of Germanic tribes pressing the borders while simultaneously relying on them to maintain the Empire.  

All of these comings and goings, Goths and Huns and Romans, seem more like a fairy tale than anything of learning for our modern days. But fairy tales and fables are conceived to educate, so it is with this tale. The migrations of these people, including Visigoths, Goths, or Huns, were not something compelled by a desire for wanderlust but, in the case of the Huns, a better life than in Central Asia and for the 370s era Goths, a chance to escape oppression and deprivation at the hands of others.  

Then we have the Romans. Once mighty but in decline, unable to maintain or control its borders.   And here we have something highly pertinent. There needed to be more Romans. According to Melanie Holcomb, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The increasing strength and reach of the military in the later centuries of the Empire required the incorporation of ever greater numbers of barbarian units—known as foederati—into the army. By the fourth century, some 75,000 soldiers were stationed in the Roman province of Gaul, most of them Germanic.” That was the West, and I have already noted that to beat the Huns, Aetius needed the help of the Visigoths. Theodosius, the last Emperor to rule the combined Roman state, resorted to Gothic mercenaries to fill out his army 20 years after Adrianople. Not enough Romans. And this was something familiar. In Augustus’ day, he too noted the decline of Roman births, but the Empire of his time could make up manpower from the provinces.  By the time of the Good Emperors in the 100s CE, rulers such as Trajan and Hadrian were not even born in Italy but instead in Spain. And Aurelian and Diocletian of the late 2nd century were from Illyria. But by the 5th century, only people from across the borders could meet Roman needs. The trick was using the barbarian tribes while assimilating them into the Empire and Roman culture. 

The advent of the Huns, in pushing unromanized Goths into the Eastern Empire and severely weakening the structure of the Western Empire, meant assimilation could not be done in time. 

The Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, and Burgundians invasions throughout the 5th century were by purely Germanic tribes without a true identity to Rome. 

Given our current fertility rates in the US, an aging population, and a reluctance of American citizens to perform certain tasks or learn specific trades, immigration can be as much of a boon to our nation as it is problematic. A few podcasts ago, I noted how a CEO needed help finding enough manufacturing personnel to fill the ranks of his company. 

As of this writing, our nation boasts over 1.5 million holders of Bachelor of English degrees. Subsequently, we have only 1 million electricians and less than 600,000 plumbers. To be certain, I love English literature ranging from Beowulf to Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Steinbeck and Fitzgerald up to Cormac McCarthy. But the justification for someone to teach me insights about this pales for when my lighting shorts out or, worse; my toilet does not work. At those moments, you realize what you really need. And increasingly, these roles are staffed by immigrants.  

Here is another stat from CNN, “Even though US manufacturing activity surged to a 37-year high in March, the industry has more than half a million job openings. Factories struggle to find skilled workers for specialized roles, such as welders and machinists. Manufacturers are even having trouble hiring entry-level positions that do not require expertise.”

But like the Romans, we face similar dilemmas. Increasingly, we are dispensing with the cultural touchstones that would once have been vital tools for assimilating immigrants. English is not a national language. Our schools are more interested in teaching the stains of our history rather than our triumphs and common culture. We have competing touchstones such as a “black National Anthem” in competition with our star-spangled banner.  

This comparison is obviously fraught. The Goths and later Huns looked at Roman provinces for conquest. Today’s Immigrants, mainly from Latin America, see our nation as a home, and we have a fantastic opportunity to fill our manpower needs while creating a new generation of Americans. Yet neither party seems interested in finding a workable compromise about handling immigration. The left wants a porous border. In the 400s, the Rhine froze over, and hundreds of thousands of Germans poured across. Only in our case the left wants these people as voters, which is why they have an open border policy. They disingenuously accuse GOP border governors of bigotry until said governors, especially Texas governor Greg Abbot, ingeniously sent immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities where the burden of care means the sanctuary gets closed, fast. Funny how the virtues of the left fade when actual action and sacrifice is called upon.  

It is okay when the burden is on the border states, but when spread around, the progressives sound more like House Majority Leader and Republican Steve Scalise, a strong border closure advocate than Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.  

The right wants the issue to denigrate the left and create fear of the other that they may take your job and demand welfare without paying taxes. Take what job exactly.  Native born Americans are not filling the openings that exist today.  GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s 2025 plan would go much further than this original wall building, including having the Coast Guard blockade areas of Latin America and targeting drug cartels within Mexico. He would ramp up the deportation process involving millions. I agree with some of his plans, including greater screening and completing the wall. But this does not change the fact that, like the Romans, our society cannot exist without millions of immigrants performing essential functions. Mass deportation sounds great on the stump, but our society can no longer function any more than the Romans could fill the legions with peoples born in Italy.  

To vote on a comprehensive plan opens politicians to possible political ruin by being primaried by a radical progressive or MAGA Republican. So, we have no comprehensive plan for a complex issue. Instead, our choices are to open it up or close it down. These simple approaches might have appealed to a guy like Attila. It should be noted, however, that 16 years after his death, the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Caspian Sea to the borders of Northern Italy, was gone, lying in ruins. Conquering proved much more difficult than building a lasting state.