Attila de Hun is een van de meest met legenden van wreedheid omgeven veroveraars uit de wereldgeschiedenis.

Moord en doodslag door rondreizende barbaren was een van de meest gevreesde soorten rampspoed die een sedentair levende bevolking overkomen kan – want voor boeren extreem moeilijk te bestrijden. De Hunnen, een Turks volk dat oorspronkelijk afkomstig is van de Siberische steppen is er niet het enige, maar wel het perfecte voorbeeld van.

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A marauding barbarian with a reputation as one of history’s monsters, even today Attila’s name is a synonym for savagery.

Attila (/ˈætɨlə/ or /əˈtɪlə/; ?–453), frequently referred to as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea.

During his reign he was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans, but was unable to take Constantinople. His unsuccessful campaign in Persia was followed in 441 by an invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire, the success of which emboldened Attila to invade the West . He also attempted to conquer Roman Gaul (modern France), crossing the Rhine in 451 and marching as far as Aurelianum (Orléans) before being defeated at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

Subsequently he invaded Italy, devastating the northern provinces, but was unable to take Rome. He planned for further campaigns against the Romans but died in 453.

The historiography of Attila is faced with a major challenge, in that the only complete sources are written in Greek and Latin, by the enemies of the Huns. His contemporaries left many testimonials of his life, but only fragments of these remain. Priscus, a Roman diplomat and historian who wrote in Greek, was both a witness to and an actor in the story of Attila, as a member of the embassy of Theodosius II at the Hunnic court in 449. Although he was obviously biased by his political position, his writing is a major source for the life of Attila and he is the only person known to have recorded a physical description of him. He was the author of an eight-volume work of history covering the period from 434 to 452.

Today we have only fragments of this work, but it was cited extensively by the 6th-century historians Procopius and Jordanes, especially in Jordanes’s The Origins and Deeds of the Goths. As it contains numerous references to Priscus’s history, it is an important source of information about the Hunnic empire and its neighbours. Here, he describes the legacy of Attila and the Hunnic people for a century after Attila’s death. Marcellinus Comes, a chancellor of Justinian during the same era, also describes the relations between the Huns and the Eastern Roman Empire.

Numerous ecclesiastical writings contain useful albeit scattered information, sometimes.

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