the World of the Huns Studies in Their History and Culture

Studies in Their History and Culture
By O T T O J. M A E N CH E N- H E L F EN
Edited by Max Knight
than their reputation as savage horsemen
vvho flourished at the beginning of the
Middle Ages and the name of one of their
leaders, A ttila . T hey appear ed in Europe
from "somevvhere in the East," terrorized
the later Roman Empire and the Germanic
tribes, caused the greatest upheaval that the
Me diter ra nea n vvorld had ever see n— the
Gr eat Mig ra tions — and va nished. Illiterate,
they Ieft no written records; such literary
evidence of them as cxists is secondary,
scattered in the writings of contemporary
and later reporters, frag mentar y , biased, and
unreliable. T heir sole tang ible relics are hug e
cauldrons and graves, some of vvhich con-
tain armor, equestrian gear, and ornaments.
W ho wer e the Hun s ? Hovv did they live?
Professor Maenchen- Helfen dedicated much
of his life to seeking ansvvers to these ques-
tions. VVith pertinacity, passion, scepticism,
a n d u n s u r p a s s e d s c h o l a r s h i p h e p i e c e d
together evidence from remote sources in
A s ia, Rus s ia , and Europe; cate g or ized and
interpreted it; and liv ed the absor bing detec-
tive stor y presented in this vol u me. He
spent many years and extensive resources
in exploring the mystery of the Huns and
in exploding popular myths about them. He
investiga ted the century- old hy pothesis that
the Hun s or ig inated in the obscure border-
lands of China, whence in the course of sev-
eral generations they migrated vvestvvard as
Castra Raetica
Cyrene
far as Central Europe. In his quest for infor-

T H O S P I T I S i .
~ M A T 1 A M S ,
Melitene—.— \ ) \
.Syriac V __________» V

T H E W O R L D O F T H E
* J t \ f l Y S
T h J L s O n e
GF68-2WH-2AXF
J H v i n s
Studies in Their History and Culture
B y j . o t t o m a e n c h e n - h e l f e n
E D IT E D B Y M A X K N I G H T
University of California Press /Bcrkeley / Los Angeles /London / 1973
Materialcudreplde autor

London, England
Library o f Congress Catalog Card Nu m ber: 79-94985
International Standard Book Number: 520-01596-7
Dcsigncd by James Mcnnick
Materia!cudrep tde autor

A uthor's Acknou)ledgnicnts (Fragmente)
Demcmizatiaii
Eguations .
The. Jj .uns_at . lh.e- D.ajmb.e_, The Invasion of Asia
Uldin , . . . . Chara Ion
Octar and Kuga
The Huns in Italv
Collapse and Aftermath
Tlie...Flr^L- .G.u.tliorHimiiic_W.ar
I M _S.C.C.Qn.dLG.Q.tll.Q.-Himnjc W a r T h e K i n i
H L Economij

A ris tocr acv .... .... ........ .... .... ........ .... ........ .... .... ........ .... ... 198
SJ.h v c s_______ ._____ i_____ i_____ t_____ ._____ ._____ i_____>__ 199
V , W a r f a r e ........................................................................201
General Characteristics_____ .____ .____ .____ .____ .__201
Smords_____ .__________ .____ _____ .____ .____ _____ . _ 2 3 3
Huns in the Roman Arrnv _____ . 255
V I. R e l i u i o n ........................................................................ 259
T he Huns and Chris tianitv . 260
Seers- and.- Shamans__ .______ .____ .____ .____ .____.___262
Divine K i n g s h i p ? .... ... ... ... ... ... ... .. .. ... ... ... .. .. ... ... .270
Strava______ _____ .____ ,______ .____ .____ ._____ .__________,__ 224
Thti..Sacr.ed...Sw.ox.d____ _____ _____ ._____.____ .____ __ 218
G.Qld_Dmdems___ .____ .____ .____ .____ .____ _____ _ 297
V III « fta cr_____ .____ .____ .____ .____ .____ ,____ ,____ .____ , 358
T he H s i u n g - n t i .......................................................367
Euro poids in Ea st A s i a .....................................369
IX . L a n g u a r f C ............................................................... 376
Speculations abo ut the L ang uage of the Huns . 376
T r a n s c r i p t i o n s .......................................................379
KLymologfcs.................................................................382
Ger manize.d_and. Ge rm a nic Names____________________ .___*____ * 386
Ira nian N a m e s ....................................................... 390
V I • T H E W O R L D O F T H E HU N S
Materia!cudrep tde autor

Hv brid N a m e s ................................................... 422
Tribal Names____,_____ ,1____ ,____,____ ,____ , . 422
CO NT EN T S • V I I
X I. A p p e n d ix e s ................................................... ........ 45ii
1. The Chronicle of 452___ _____________ ._.. 45ii
2. Armcnian Sources__.____ .____ .____.____ . . 452
4. The Alleged Loss of Pannonia Prima in 395 452
5. Heligious Motifs in Hunnic Ari? . .. 4H1
X I I . Backf jround: The Roman Em pire, at thc Time o f
the J la nn iv Inuasioria, by Pa ul A lex ander . . 4 M
B i b l i o g r a p h y ............................................................4M
A b b r e v ia t io n s ...... ...... ... ... ...... ...... ... ........... ...... . IS li
Classical and Medieval lteg ister . . . . 4 M
Sourccs____ *____ .____ .____ .____ .____ ,____ * . 5113 I n d e x ....................................................................522
Materialcudrep tde autor

F I G U R E
1 A horse w ith a “hookcd” head and bushy tail represented on a bronze plaque fr om the Ordos region. Fr om E g am i 1948, pl. 4.
2 Grav e stela from T heodosia in the Crimea w ith the representation of the deceased mounted on a liorse marked with a Sarmatian tamga, first to third centuries a .d . From Solomonik 1957, fig. 1.
3 T wo- wheeled cart represented on a bronze piaquc from the Wu- huan cemetery at Hsi- ch’a- kou. Fr om S un Shou- tao 1960, fig. 17.
4 Br onze plaque from Sui- yuan w ith the represe ntation of a man holding a s\ vord w ith a ring handle before a car t draw n by three horses. Fr om Rostov tsev 1929, pl. X I, 56.
5A Miniature pa inting fr om the Radzi\ vil manuscript showing the \ vagons of the K umans. Fr om Pletneva 1958, fig. 25.
5B Miniature pa inting fr om the Ra dziw il manuscript sho\ ving human heads in tents mounte d on carts. Fr om Ple tnev a 1958, fig. 26.
6 Ceramic toy from K erch sho\ ving a \ vagon of Late Sar matian type. From Narysy starodau’noi istorii Uk rains’ko i R S Ii 1957, 237.
7 Deta il of a Sas anian- type silver plate fr om a priv ate collection. Detail from Ghirshman 1962, fig. 314.
8 Detail of a Sasanian silver plate from Sari, Ar chaeological Museum, T eheran. Deta il from G hirshman 1902, pl. 248.
9 Silver plate from Kulag v sh in the Her mitage Museum, L eningrad. From S P A , pl. 217.
10A Scabbard tip of a sword from A ltluss heiin near Mainz. Fr om J . \ Verner 1956, pl. 58:4.
10B Detail of the sword from A ltluss heim near Mainz. Fr om J . \ Verner 1956, pl. 38 A.
11 Stone relief from Palm y ra , datable to the thir d century a .d .
Ghirshman 1902, pl. 91. 12 A g ate s\ vord g uard from Chersonese, thir d century a .d . From
Khersoncsskii sbornik , 1927, fig. 21. 12A Br onze pendant said to have been found in a gr ave a t B arna ul,
A lt a i reg ion, show ing a ma n in scale armo r and conical ha t w ith
P A G E

X • L IS T O F IL L U S T R A T IO N S
an hour- glass- shaped quive r, datable to the f ourt h century a . d .
From Aspelin 1877, no. 327.
12B Tw o horsemen in scale ar mor shown in gold pendants fr om wester n 244 Siberia. Fr om K ondak ov and T olstoi, 3, fig. 49.
12C T he repres entation of a Sar matian member of the Rox olani tribe in 246 a detail of the marble relief from T ra jan’s Column, in the Forum of T ra jan, Rome . Da table to the second decade of the second century A .D. Photos courtesy Deutsches archaologisches Ins tit ut, Rome .
13 Mask- like human heads stamped on gold sheet from a Hunnic bur ial 281 at Pokrovsk - V oskhod. Fr om Sinitsy n 1936, fig. 4.
14 Mask- like huma n heads sta mped on silver sheet on a bronze phaler a 281 from kurg an 17, Pokr ovsk . Fr om Minaeya 1027, pl. 2:11.
15 T he represe ntation of the head of a Sc y thian in clay from T ranscau- 283 casia. Photo courtes y S tate Hist oric al Museum, Moscow.
16 Br onze mountings from a wooden casket from Intercisa on the Da- 284 nube. Fr om Paulovics, A l? , 1940.
17 F iat bronze amulet in the shape of an ithy phallic human figure of 286 Sarmatian type. (Source not indicated in the manuscript. — Ed.)
18 Sandstone pilla r in the shape of a huma n head from kur g an 16 289 at Tr i B rata near Elista in the K alm uk steppe. (Heig ht 1 m.) From Sinitsyn 1956b, fig. 11.
19 Chalk eidola from an A lanic gr ave a tB a ita l Chapkan in Cherkessia, 291 fifth century a .d . From Minaeva 1956, fig. 12.
20 Chalk figure from a L ate Sa rma tian grav e in Focsani, Rum ania . 293 (He ig ht ca. 12 cm.) Fr om Morintz 1959, fig. 7.
21 Stone slab at Zadzr os t', near T er nopol', former eastern Ga licia, 295 marked w ith a Sar matian tamga. (Height 5.5 m.) Fr om Drachuk, S A 2, 1967, fig. 1.
22 Fr ag ment of a gold plaque from K arg aly , Uzun- Ag ach, near A lma 298 A ta, K azak hs ta n. (A bout 35 cm. long .) Photo courtesy Akademiia Nauk Kazakhskoi SSR.
23 H unnic diadem of gold sheet, orig inally mounted on a bronze pla- 300 que, decorated with gamets and red glass, from Csorna, >vestern Hung ar y . (Orig inally about 29 cm. long, 4 cm. wide.) Fr om Archo- logische Funde in Ungarn, 291.
24A- C Hun nic diadem of g old sheet over bronze plaques decorated 301 w it h green glass and f la t almandines , from K erch. Photos cour tesy Rheinisches Museum, Bildarchiv, Cologne.
25 Hun nic diadem of thin bronze sheet over bronze plaques set w ith con- 302 vex glass from Shipovo, west of Uralsk, northwestern Kazakhstan.
Fr om J . \ Verner 1956, pl. 6:8. 26 Hun nic diadem of g old sheet over bronze plaques set w ith conve x 302
almandines from Dehler on the Berezovka, near Pokrovsk, lower V olg a reg ion. From Ebe r t, R V 13, “Sudrussland,” pl. R V 41 :a.
27 Hun nic diadem of gold sheet over bronze plaques (now lost) set w ith 303 convex almandines, from T iligul, in the Romisch- Germanisches Zentra lmuseum, Mainz. Fr om J . Wer ner 1956, pl. 29:8.
28 Br onze circlet covered w ith g old sheet and decorated w ith conical 304 “bells” suspended on bronze hooks, fr om K ar a A g ach, south of
/laterialcudreptdeautor

A k mo lins k , c.cntral K az ak hst.au. (Cir cumfcr cnce 49 cm., \ vidth ca. 4 cm.) Fr om J . \ Vcrncr 1056, pl. 31:2.
29A T er minal of a gold torg ue in the shape of a dragon. decoraled \ vith 304 g ra nulation and cloisonn gar nets, amber, and roothor- of- pcarl. From Kara- A gach, south of A kmolinsk , centra! K azakhstau. From I A K 16, 1905, p. 34, fig. 2.
20B Gold carrings from Kara- A gach, ccntral Ivazak hstan. Fr om I a K 305 16, 1905, fig. 3:a- b.
30 Silve r earr ing decoraled \ vith alma ndincs and ga rncls from kur- 305 ga n 36, S W g roup, near Pokrov sk. Fr om Sinitsv n 1036, fig. 10.
31 Fold earring from K alag v a, Caucasian A lbania. From T rever 1959, 305 167, fig. 18.
32 F ra g me nt of a bronze lug of a ca uldro n fr om Be ncšov. near Opa v a 307 (T roppau), Czechoslovakia, (Height 29 cm., w idth 22 cm.,lhick noss 1 cm.) From A Us chl es im 9, 19-10, pl. 14.
33 Ilnn nic bronze cauldron from .Icdrz.vcho\ vice (H oc k iichl) , l ’ppcr 308 Silcsia, Pola nd. (He ig ht 55 cm.) Fr om .f. W em er 1056, p). 27:10.
34 Hu nnic bronze cauldr on fo und a l Uie fo ol of a bural mound at T or lel, 309 Hunga ry . (Height 89 cm., diam. 50 cm.) From A rchaolauischr i* u rute in Untiarn* 293.
35 Hu nnic bronze cauldr on found n a ocat bog at K urdcs ibra k , in the 310 K apos Hivc r vallcv , Ilung ar v . (He ig ht 52 cm., dam. 33 cm., thick - ness of w all 0.8 cm., \ veight 16 kg .) Fr om F et lich 1940, pl. 11.
36 Hunnic bronze cauldron from B ftntapuszta, near V arpalot a, 1lung ar v . 311 From Tak&ts, A O H , 1959, fig. 1.
37 F rag ment of a bronze cauldron from Dimauivar oš (Inlcrcisa), 311 Ilunga rv . From A lfoldi 1932, fig. 6.
38 Hmt nic bronze cauldron from a lake. Desa, Ollonia reg ion, Rum an ia. 312 (He ig ht 54.1 cm., diam. 29.6 cm.) Fr om Nestor and Nicolaescu-
Piopsor 1937, pls. 3a-3b. 39 Fr ag ment of a bronze lug fr om a lake , I lota ran i, Olte nia region, 313
Rum an ia. (Heig ht 16.2 cm., \ vidlh 19.7 cm.) Fr om Nestor and Nicolaescu- Plopsor 1937, pl. 39:1.
40 Fr ag ment of a bronze lug probablv from \ veslern Oltcnia, K umam a. 313 (He ig ht 8.4 cm.) Fr om Nestor and Nicolacscu- Plopsor 1937, pl. 39:2.
41 Fr ag ment of a bronze lug found near the eastern shore of L ake Mo- 314 tiste a> from Bos neagu, Humania. (lieg ht 18 cm.) From Mitrea 1961, figs. 1-2.
42 Fr ag ments of a lug and \ valls of a bronze cauidron from Celci, 311 Munlenia, Humania. From T aka ts 1055, fig. I3:a- d.
43 J lunnic bronze cauldron from Shestachi, Moldav ian SS R. From 315 Pole vol, Is tor i i a Moldamk oi S S R , pl. 53.
AA B r o n z « « r n t i l d f o n f r t >r n f %o ] » k> »i sU , I V r m r o ^ i t u i , t ‘S S H . ( J I c i g h l 0 o m . ) .‘i1 (i
From Alfoldi 1932, fig. 5.
45 Br onze cauldron found in thesa nd near the Osoka hrook, L T va novsk 317 reg ion, I.JSSK . (He ig ht 53.2 cm., diam. 31.2 cm., weight 17.7 kg.) From Polivanova, T r udi} V I I A S 1, 39, pl. 1.
46 Bronze cauldron from V erk hnii K onets, K orili A SS H. Fr om Ham pcl, 318
Ethnologische Mitthcilungen aus Ungarn 1897, 14, fig. 1.
T H E W O R L D O F T H E H U N S • X I
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X I I • L IS T O F IL L U S T R A T IO U S
47 Bronze cauldron from Iva novk a, gubernie Ekaterinoslav, US SR . From Fettich 1953, pl. 36:4.
48 Bronze cauldron found near La ke T eletskoe, in the Hig h A ltai, now in the State Histor ical Museum, Moscow. (Heig ht 27 cm.,diam . 25-27 cm.) Photo courtesy Sta te Histor ical Museum, Moscow.
49 Fra gme nt of a bronze lug from Narindzhan- baba, K ara- K alpak A S S R. From T olstov 1948, fig. 74a.
50 Fr ag ment of a bronze lug, allegedly found “011 the Catalaunian battle ficld.” (Heig ht 12 cm., w idth 18 cm.) Fr om T akAts 1955, fig . 1 :a- b.
51 Br onze cauldron from Borovoe, northern K aza khs tan. From B er nshtam 1951a, fig. 12.
52 T he repres entation of a cauldron in a detail of a rock picture fr om Pis annay a Gora in the Minusinsk area. Fr om Appelgr en- K ivalo, fig. 85.
53 Repre se ntation of cauldrons in a rock picture fr om B oPs hava Bo- y arskay a pis anitsa, Minus ins k area. From Dv le t, S A 3, 1965, fig. 6.
54 Br onze cauldron of a ty pe associated w ith Hsiung- nu gr aves at Noin Ula and the Kiran River. From Umehara 1960, p. 37.
55 Ceramic vessel from the Gold Bell T omb at Ky ong ju, K orea ,showing the manner in w hich cauldrons were trans ported by nomads. Fr om Government General Museum of Chosen 1933, Museum Exhibits II- lusirated V .
56 Clay copv of a Hunnic cauldron of the V er khnii K oncts ty pe (see above, fig. 46), from the “Big House,” Alty n- As ar, K azak hstan. (Heig ht 40 cm.) Fr om Le vina 1966, fig. 7:37-38.
57 Chinese mirr or of the Han period fo und in burial 19, on the Tor g un Rive r, Io\ ver V olga region. Fr om Eber t, R V,«Siidrussland, * pl. 40: c:b.
58 A S ar matia n bronze disc in the shape of a pendant- mirror , of a type found in the steppes betweenVolga and lower Danube,from the first century b . c . to the fourth century a . d . From Sinitsyn 1960, fig. 18:1.
59 Br onze mirr or of a type similar to that shown on fig. 58, but prov ided w it h a tang tha t was pr esuma bly fit te d into a handle. F rom Gush- ehina, 5/1, 2, 1962, fig. 2:5.
60 Br onze pendant- mirror from the cemetery at Susly, former German V olg a Republic. Froin Rau, Hiigclgrber, 9, fig. la.
61 Br onze pendant- mirror from the cemetery at Susly, former Ger man V olg a Republic . From Ry k ov 1925, 68.
62 Br onze pendant- mirror from Alt- \ Veimar, kurg an D12. From Ra u, A usg rabung en, 30, fig. 22b.
63 Br onze pendant- mirror from kurg an 40 in Be re zhnovk a, lo\ ver Erus- Ian, left tr ibutar y of the Volga. Fr om K haza nov 1963, fig. 4:9.
64 Br onze pendant- mirror from kurg an 23, in the “T ri B r ata ” cemetery, near Elista, K almuk A S SR . From K hazanov 1963, fig. 4:8.
65 Br onze pendant- mirror from the lower V olga region. Fr om K ha
zanov 1963, fig. 4:6. 66 Br onze pendant- mirror from a catacomb burial at Alkhas te, north-
vvestern Caucasus. Fr om V inog raov 1963, fig. 27. 67 A n imitation of a Chinese T L V mirror from Lou- lan. From Ume
hara, O bei, 39, fig. 7.
319
320
321
322
324
326
327
331
334
335
338
342
343
344
344
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68 Sm all bronze mirror w ith simplified decoration from Lo- yang.
From Lo~ifang ehing 1959, 80. 69 Sm all bronze mirr or w ith simplified decoration from Lo- yang.
From Lo- yang ehing 1959, 82.
70 Br onze mirror from Mozhary , V olgog rad reg ion, now in the Hermi- tage Museum, Leningrad, datable to about a . d . 200. (Diam. 7.4 cm.) From Umehara 1938, 55.
71 Br onze mirror from K osino in Slov akia. Fr om Eisner, Slovensko v praueku 1933, fig. 2:7.
72 Br onze pendant- mirrors from the Dnieper and V olga regions. From Solomonik 1959, fig. 6.
73 Sa rma tian imitat ion of a Chinese mirr or (cf. the ex ample from Lo- yang, above, fig. 69), from Norka , lower V olga region. Fr om Berkhin 1961, fig. 2:2.
74 S mal l bronze plaque show ing a horseman vvith pr omine nt cheekbones and full beard, from T roitskovav sk in T ransbaika lia. Fr om Petri, Dalekoe proshloe P riba ika V ia 1928, fig. 39.
75 Br onze plaque fr om the Ordos region, showing a man of Euro poid stock w ith svide open eves and moustache. Br itis h Museum. Photo G. Azarpav.
T H E W O R L D O F T H E H UN S
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Foreword
F e w s c h o l a r s would care to risk the ir reputation in taking on the monu-
mental task of straightening out misconceptions about the Huns, and inci-
dentally about the many peoples related to them, allied with them, or con-
fused w ith them. A t the fo undation there are philological problems of mind- boggling proportions in languages ranging from Greek to Chinese; above
that, an easy but s olidly professional familia rity w ith primary sources for the
history of both Eas tern and \ Vestern civ ilizations in ma ny periods is re-
quired; finally, a balanced imagination and a prudent sense of proportion
are needed to cope with the improbabiiities, contradictions, and prejudices
prev ailing in this field of study. T he late Professor Otto Maenchen- Helfen
worked on this immens e field of research for many years, and at his death
in 1969 lef t an unfinished manuscr ipt. T his is the source of the present book.
Maenchen- Helfen differed fr om other historians of Euras ia in his unique
competence in philology , archaeologv, and the history of art. T he range of
his interests is apparent from a glance at his publications, extending in sub-
je ct from “Das Marchen von der Schw ane njung frau in J apa n” to “L e Cicogne
di Aquileia,” and from “Manichaeans in Siberia” to “Germanic and Hunnic
Names of Iranian Orig in.” He did not need to guess the identities of tribes,
populations, or cities. He knew the prima ry texts, whether in Greek or
Russian or Pers ian or Chinese. T his linguistic ability is particular ly necessary
in the study of the Huns and their nomadic cognates, since the name “Hun”
has been applied to many peoples of different ethnic character, including
Ostrogoths, Magy ars, and Seljuks. Ev en ancient nomadic people nor th of China, the Hsiung- nu, not re lated to any of thesc, were called “H un” by their
Sog dian neighbors. Maenchen- Helfen knew the Chinese sources that teli of
the Hsiung- nu, and thus could ev aluate the r elat ionship of these sources to
European sources of Hunnic history.
His ex ceptional philological competence also enabled him to tr eat as human
beings the men whose lives underlie the dusty textual fragments that allude
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X V I T H E - VV ORLD O F T H E HU N S
to them, and to describe their economy, social stratifications, modes of trans
porta tion and \ varfare, religions, f olklore, and art. Me could create a reliable
account of the precursors of the Turks and Mongols, free of the usual Western prejudice and linguistic limitations.
A nother special competence was his ex pertise in the histor y of A sian art,
a subject tha t he taug ht for many years. He was fa miliar w ith the ne\ vest
archaeological discoveries and knew how to correlate them with the availabie
but often obscure philological evidence.
To define distinctive traits in the art of a people as elusive as the Huns
recjuires familiarity with the disjointed array of archaeological materials
from the Eurasian steppe and the abilitv to separate materials about the
Huns from a comparable array of materials from neighboring civilizations.
To cite only one example of his success in coping with such thornv problems,
Maenchen- IIelfen’s description of technical and sty list ic consistencies among
meta l articles from Hunnic tombs in \ videly separated localities dispels the
mv th of supposed Hunnic ig norance of metal- working skills.
Archaeolog ical evidence also plavs a critical role in the deterrnination of
the origin of the Huns and their geographical distribution in ancient and ear-
ly medieval times, as well as the extent of Hunnic penetration into eastern
Europe and their point of entrv into the Hungaria n plain. Maenchen- Helfen
saw clearlv ho\ v to interpre t the data from gr aves and garbage heaps to
yield hvpotheses about the mov ements of peoples. “He believed in the spade,
but his tool was the pen,” he once said about another s cholar — a charac-
terization tha t perfectly fits Maenchen- Helfen himself. Buria l practices of
the Huns and their associates indicate that Hunnic weapons generally orig-
inated in the east and \ vere tr ans mitte d westw ard, while the distr ibution of loop mirrors found in association with arlificially deformed skulls — a Hun
nic practice — gives proof of Hunnic penetration into Ilungarv from the
northeast. (A n unpublished find of a s\ vord of the A ltlussheim ty pe recently
discovered a tB a r na ul in the A lta i region, east K azak hstan SS R, now in the
Hermitag e Museum, is a forceful arg ument in fav or of Maenchen- Helfen’s
as sumption abo ut the eastern connections of this weapon. See A . Ur~
manskii, “Sovremennik groznogo Attily ” A l ta i 4 | 23], B ar naul 1962, pp. 79-
93.) 1Iis findings define and br ing to life the civ ilization of one of the most
shado\ vy peoples of ear ly medieval times.
Maenchen- Helfen’s account opens in mcdias rcs, with a tribute to that ad-
mirable Roman histor ian A mmianus Marcellinus, \ vhose view of the Hunnic
incursions was, despite his prejudices, in some respects clearer than that of
Western historians. A br upt as this beg inning may secm, the autho r per-
haps intended the final version of his book to begin with such a striking
ev aluation of a basic tex t. In so doing, he underlined the necessity for sharp
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F O R K W O R D • X V II
and well- reasoned eriticism of the sources of the historv of the Huns. From
the beginning these people were denigrated and “demonized” (to use his own
term) by European chroniclers and dismissed as avatars of the eternal but
facelcss barbarian hordes from the east, against whom vigilance was always
neccssarv, but whose precisc identit y was of litt le importance. T he bulk of
the book discusses the history and civilization of the “Huns proper,” those
so familia r — and y et so unfamiliar — to Europeans. (Here we use the
term “civilization” purposefully, since reports of this folk have tended to
treat them as mere barbaric destroying agents — “vandals” spilling blood
across the re mnants of the deelining Roman Empire. Maenchen- Helfen
saw them with a clearer vision.)
T he style is characteristically dense w ith realia. Maenchen- Helfen had no
need to indulg e in gener alizations (read “unfounded guesses”). B ut he was
not absorbed in details to the exclusion of a panora mic view. He saw, and
presents to us here, the epic character of the great drama that took place on
the Eurasian stage early in our era, the clash of armies and the interaction
of civilizations. T he book is a standar d treatise not likely to be superseded
in the predictable future.
G u it t y A z a r p a y
P e t e r A . B o o d b e r g
E d v v a r d H. S c h a f e r

Editor’s Note
In e a r l y J anua ry 1969 Professor Otto Maenchen- Helfen br oug hta beauti-
fully typed manuscr ipt from the Central Stenographic Bureau of the univer-
sity to the Univer sity of Califomia Press. It seemed to represcnt the final
result of his monumental study of the Huns, to which he had devoted many
years of research and trav el. A few day s later, on J anuary 29, he died. In
the memorial speeches at the Facultv Club in Berkeley, several friends men-
tioned that he had truly completed his lifework, and that his manuscript
was ready to go to press.
The impression that the delivered manuscript pages constituted the com-
plete manus cript turne d out to be erroneous. Mr. Maenchen had broug ht
only the first of presumably tw o batches of manuscr ipt. T he chapters re-
presenting that second batch were not in final form at the time of his death,
the bibliography was missing, footnotes were indicated but the sources not
stated, an introduction and a complete preface were lacking, the illustrations
were scattered in boxes and desk draw ers and not identified. T here was no
table of contents, and the chapters were not numbered; although some group-
ings of chapters are suggested in the extant part of the author’s preface, it
was not clear in w hat order he intended to arrange his work.
On Mrs. Maenchen’s suggestion I searched the author’s study and even-
tually found a tentativ e dr af t of a contents page. It was of unknow n age,
and contained revisions and emendations tha t required interpretation. On
the basis of this precious page, the “Rosetta Stone of the manuscript,” the
work was organized. S e v e r a l c h a pt e r s m e n t io n e d i n t h is p a g e w e r e n o t in f i n a l f o r m . B u t t hr ee -
ring folders in the author’s study, neatly filed on shelves, bore the names of
most missing ehapter headings. T he contents of these folders were in various
stages of completion. T hose that appeared to be more or less finished ex cept
for final editing were ineorporated into the manuscript; also sections which,
although not representing complete chapters but apparently in final form,
X IX

were included and placed wher e they seemed to f it mos tly logically . In sev-
eral instances, different drafts of the same subject were found, and it was
necessary to decide which was the most recent one. OccasionalIy , also, only
carbon copies of apparently finished sections were in the folders.
Errors in judgment in these editorial and compiling activities cannot be
ruled out, but wherever doubts existed about the preferred version or the
placement of a fr ag ment the mate ria l was ex cluded. Many notes, isolated
pages, and draf ts (frequently writte n by hand, w ith var ious kinds of emenda-
tions) remain in the author’s study, including undoubtedly valuable research
results.
In retyping the parts of the manuscript that existed only in draft form
w ith ma ny emendations and hand- written corr ections, every effort was made
not to introduce errors, such as misspellings of foreign words, especially in
the notes and bibliogr aphy. For errors tha t undoubtedly slipped in never-
theless, the author is not responsible.
A lthoug h the work addresses its elf to specialis ts, it is of intere st to a broader range of educated readers who cannot, however, be expected to be
famil iar w ith some of the events, persons, inst itutions, and sources the author
takes for granted. For these readers Professor Pa ul Alex ander has prov ided
an introduction; in deference to the author it was placed as “background”
at the end of the book, but it may usefully be read first, as a preparation
for the text.
The editorial preparation of the manuscript required the help of an un- usually large number of persons, reflecting the wide range of the author’s
competence. T he Russian references were checked by the author’s fr iend, the
late Professor Peter A. Boodberg, who delivered the corrected pages just a
few days before his death in the summer of 1972. T he Chinese references
were checked or supplie d by Prof essor Edw ard H. Schafer, also a friend of
the author. T he L at in and Greek passages were translated by Professor J . K .
Ander son and Dr. Emmy Sachs; Mr. A nderson also faithf ully filled lacunae
in the footnotes and unscrambled mixups resulting from duplicated or
omitted footnote numbers. Professors T alat T ekin and Ham id Alg ar checked
and interpreted T urkis h references. Professor J oa chim \ Verner of Munich
counseled on the Al tlussheim sword. Questions about Gothic, Ira nian, Hun-
garian, Japanese, and Ukrainian references or about historical (ancient and
medieva l) and many other aspects of the tex t tha t needed interpre tation were
answered by a long list of scholars contributing their services to the cause.
Miss Guitty Azarpay (to whom the author used to refer fondly as his fa
vor ite student) selected and painstaking ly identified the illustrations. She
also verified references with angelic patience.
X X • e d i t o r 's n o t e

T H E \ V ORL D O F T H E H U N S * X X I
The formidable task of compiling a bibliographv on the basis of an in-
eomplete set of cards and of the text itself was pcrformed by Mrs. Jane
Fontenrose Cajina. T he author ’s working cards, assembled over many years,
were not y et ty ped in unifor m stvle, ma ny entries were miss ing, and ma nv
lacked essential information. For Russian transcriptions in the bibliogr aphv
and bibliographical footnotes (but not in the text), the Librarv of Congress
system was used.
T he map \ vas draw n by Mrs. V irg inia Herrick under the superv ision of
Professor J . K . Anderson. T he index was prepared by Mrs. Gladys Castor.
The editor is indebted to ali these many competent and svmpathetic
helpers; clearly, without their evotion the conversion of the Maenchen pa-
pers into the prescnt volume would not have been possible.
M a x K n i g i i t
Materialcudreptdeaut

Fragments from the
Author’s Preface
[ A mong the author ’s papers ivere several frag ments, partlg ivritten in pencil,
bearing the notation “for the prefa ce ” and eoidenthj intended to be worked into
a fi n a l dra ft. He moy have tvished to sag more; a li we found is presented
below. — Ed.]
T he a ut ho r of the present volume, in his early seventies, mav make use
of the privilege, usuallv granted to men in the prime of their senility, to say
a few words about himself, in this case the sources of his interest in the
Huns. A li my life I have been fas cinated by the problems of the frontier.
As a boy I dug Roma n copper coins along the remnants of the earthen
walls tha t, as late as the sev enteenth centurv, protecte V ienna, my nativ e
town, from the Eas t. T wo blocks from the house in w hich I was born there
still stood in my vouth a house above whose gate a Turkish stone cannon
bali from the siege of 1529 was immured. My g randfather spent a year in
ja il for fig hting in 1848 w ith the rev olutionaries ag ainst the Croatian merce-
naries of the Habsburg s. My doctoral dissertation dealt w ith the “barbaria n”
elements in Ha n lore. In 1929 I lived for months in the tents of T urkish-
speaking nomads in northwester n Mongolia, where the clash between "higher
civilization,” represented by Tibetan Lamaism, and the “primitive” beliefs
of the Turks was str ikingly visible. In Ka shmir, at Harw an, I marveled at
the artificiallv deformed skulls on t h e stamped tiles of Kushan times, those s k u l l s that had im p r e s s e d m c s o m u c h w h c n I f i r s t s a w t h e m i n t h e m u s e u m
in Vienna and tha t I had measured as a student. In Nepal I had another
chance to s e e t h e merging of diffe rent civilizations in a borerland. I spent
many days in the museum at Minusinsk in S o u t h e r n Siberia studying t h e
“S cv thian” bronze plaques and cauldrons. In K ab ul I stood in awe before t h e inscription from Surkh Kotal: it brought back to me the problems of
X X I I I

X X IV ' T H E W O R L D O F T H E H U N S
the barbarians at China’s border about which I had written a good deal in
previous years. A ttila and his avatars have been haunting me as fa r back
as I can recall.
In the history of the Western wor!d the eighty years of Hun power were
an episode. T he Fathers assembled in council at Chalcedon showed a sub-
Iime indifference to the barbarian horsemen who, on!y a hundred miles
away , were rav ag ing Thrace. T hey were rig ht. A few years later, the head
of A tt ila’s son was carried in tr iumphal procession through the main Street
of Constantinople.
Some authors have felt that thev had to justifv their studies of the Huns
by s peculating on their role in the trans ition from late antiquit y to the Middle
Ages. W it ho ut the Huns , it has been maintaine d, Gaul , Spain, and A frica
would not, or not so soon, have fal len to the Germans. T he mere ex istence of
the Huns in eastern Central Europe is said to have retarded the feudaliza-
tion of B y zantium. T his may or may not be true. B ut if a historical pheno-
menon were wor th our atte ntion only if it s haped w hat ame after it, the
Mayans and Aztecs, the Vandals in Africa, the Burgundians, the Albigenses,
and the crusaders’ king doms in Greece and Sy ria \ vould have to be wiped
off the table of Clio. It is doubtful tha t A ttila “made history .” T he Huns
“perished like the Avars” — “sginuli kak obry,” as the old Russian chroniclers
used to say when they wrote about a people that had disappeared forever.
It seems strange, therefore, that the Huns, even after fifteen hundred
vears, can stir up so much emotion. Pious souls still shudder when they think of Attila, the Scourge of God; and in their daydreams German university
professors trot behind Hegel’s Welig eist zu Pferde. T hey can be passed over.
But some Turks and Hungarians are still singing loud paeans in praise of
their gre at ancestor, pacifier of the world, and Ga ndhia ll in one. T he most
passionate Hun fig hters, however, are the Soviet historians. T hev curse the
Huns as if they had ridden, looting and killing, through the Ukraine only the
other day; some scholars in Kiev cannot get over the brutal destruetion of
the “first flowering of Slavic civilization.”
T he same fierce hatred burned in A mmianus Marcellinus. He and the
other writers of the fourth and fifth centuries depieted the Huns as the
savage monsters 'vvhich we still see today . Hatr ed and fear distor ted the
picture of the Huns from the moment they appeared on the lower Danube.
Unless this tendentiousness is fully understood — and it rarely is — the
litera ry evidence is bound to be misread. T he present study begins, there
fore, with its reexamination.
The following ehapters, dealing with the political historv of the Huns,
are not a narrative. T he story of A tt ila ’s raids into Gaul and It al y need not
be told once more; it can be found in any standard history of the deelining

F R A G M E N T S F R O M T H E A U T H O R ’S P R E F A C E * X X V
Roman Empire, kno\ vledge of which, a t least in its outlines, is here taken for
granted. However, many problems were not even touched on and many
mistakes were made by Bury , Sceck, and Stein. T his sta teme nt does not
reflect on the stature of these eminent scholars, for the Huns were on the
periphery of their interests . B ut such deficiencies are true also for books
w hich give the Huns more room, and even for monog raphs. T he first forty
or fi f ty vears of Hun historv are treated in a cursorv manner. T he sources
are certainlv scanty though not as scantv as one might believe; for the
invasion of Asia in 395, for instance, the Syriac sources flow copiously.
Some of the questions tha t the reign of A tt ila poses w ill forever remain
unanswered. Others, however, are answered by the sources, prov ided one
looks, as I have, for sources outside the literature that has been the stock of
Hunnic studies since Gibbon and L e Nain de T illemont. T he discussions of
chronology may at times tax the patience of the reader, but that cannot be
helped. Eunapius, who in his Historical Notes also wrote about the Huns,
once asked w hat bear ing on the true subject of histor v inheres in the know-
ledge that the battle of Salamis was won by the Hellenes at the rising of the
Dog S tar. Eunapius has his disciples in our days also, and perhaps more of
them than ever. One can only hope tha t \ ve w ill be spared a historian who
does not care whether Pearl Harbor carne before or after the invasion of
Normandy because “in a higher sense” it does not matter.
T he second part of the present book consists if monographs on the econo-
my , societv, \ varfare, art, and religion of the Huns. W ha t distinguishes these
studies from previous treatments is the extensive use of archaeological
mater ial. In his A ttila and the Huns Thompson refuses to take cognizance
of it, and the little to which Altheim refers in Geschichle der Hunnen he
knows at second hand. T he mater ial, scattered through Russ ian, Uk ra inian,
Ruma nian, Hunga rian, Chinese, Japanese, and latte rl v also Mongolian pub-
lications, is enormous. In recent years archaeological research has been pro-
gressing at such speed that I had to modifv my views repeatedly while I
was working on these s tudies. \ Verner’s monumental book on the archaeolog y
of A tt ila ’s empire, published in 1956, is alr eadv obsolete in some parts . I
expect, and hope, that the same will be true of my own studies ten years
from now.
A l t h o u g h n w a r e o f t h e d a n g e r s in l o o k in g f o r p a r a l lc ls b e t w e e n t h e H u n s
and former and later nomads of the Eura sia n steppes, I confess tha t my views
are to a certain, 1 hope not undue, degree influenced b v my experiences with
the Tuvans in northwestern Mongolia, among whom I spent the summer of
1929. T hey are, or were a t tha t time, the most primitive T urkish- speaking
people at the borders of the Gobi.

X X V I • T H E W O R L D O F T H E H U N S
I possiblv will be criticized for paying too little attention to what Robert
Gobi calls the Iranian Huns: Kidara, White Huns, Hepthalites, and Hunas.
In discussing the name “Hun” I could not help speculatingon their names.
B ut this was as far as I dared go. T he liter ature on these tribes or peoples is
enormous. T hey štand in the center of A ltheim’s Geschichte der Hunnen,
althoug h he practically ignores the numismatic and Chinese evidence, on
w hich Enoki has been wor king for so ma ny vears. Gobl’s Dokumente zur
Geschichte der iranischen Hunnen in Baktrien und Indien is the most thorough
study of their coins and seals and, on this basis, of their political history.
A nd yet, there remain problems to whose solution I could not make a mean-
ingf ul contribution. I have neither the linguistic nor the paleographic know-
ledge to judge the correctness of the v arious, often entirely different, read-
ings of the coin legends. B ut even if somedav scholars wr estling w ith this
recalcitrant material do come to an agreement, the result v/ill be relatively
modest. T he Huna Mihirak ula and T oramana w ill remain mere names. No
settlement, no grave, not so much as a dagger or a piece of metal exists that
could be ascribe to them or anv other Ir anian Huns. Until the scanty and
contradictory descriptions of their life can be substantially supplemented
by finds, the student of the Attilanic Huns will thankfully take cognizance
of wha t the students of the so- called Ira nian Huns can offer him; b ut there
is little he can use for his research. A recentlv iscovered wall painting in
A frosiab, the ancient Samar kand, seems to show the first lig ht in the dark-
ness. T he future of the He phthalite s tudies lies in the hands of the Soviet a n d , i t i s ho p e d , t h e C h in e s e a r c h a e o l o g i s t s . yE v fiuOo> yctQ i) & X rfOe ta .
I am aware tha t some ehapters are not easy reading. For ex ample, the
one on the Huns after A tt ila ’s death draws attention to events seeminglv
not w orth kno\ ving, to men \ vho weremere shado\ vs; i t jumps fr om G ermanic
sagas to ecclesiastical troubles in Alexandria, from the Iranian names of ob-
scure chieftains to an earthquake in Hungarv, from priests of Isis in Nubia
to Middle Street in Constantinople. I w ill not apologize. Some readers surely
w il l f ind the put ting tog ether of the scattered pieces as fas cinating as I did,
and I f riv olously confess to an artis tic hedonism \ vhich to meis not the least
stimulus f or my preoccupation w ith the Dar k Ages. On a higher level, to
pacify those who, with a bad conscience, justify what they are doing — His-
torical Research with Capital letters — may I point out that I fail to see why
the historv of, say, Baja California is more respectable than, say, that of the
Huns in the Balkans in the 460’s. Sub specie aelernilatis , both dwindle into
nothingness.
A natole Fr ance, in his Opinions of J e r ome Coig nard, once told the woner-
ful story of the young Persian prince Zemire, who ordered his scholars to
/laterialcudreptdeautor

write the histor y of ma nk ind, so tha t he w ould make fewererror s as a mon-
arch enlightened by past experience. A ft er tw enty years, the wise men ap-
peared before the prince, king by then, fo!lowed by a caravan composed of
twelv e camels each bearing 500 volumes. T he king asked them for a shorter
version, and they returned after another twenty years with three camel
loads, and, when again rejected by the king, after ten more years with a
single elephant load. A fte r y et five further years a scholar appeared with
a single big book carried by a donkey. T he king was on his death bed and
sighed, “ I shall die w ithout know ing the history of mank ind. A bridge , ab-
ridge l” “Sire,” replied the scholar, “ I will sum it up for y ou in three words:
They ivere born, they suffered, theij died 1”
In his way, the king, who did not w ant to hear it ali, was rig ht. B ut as
long as men, stupidly perhaps, want to know “how it was,” there may be a
place for studies like the present one. D ix i et salvavi animam meam . . . .
0 . M.- H.
F R A G M E N T S F R O M T H E A U T H O R ’S P R E F A C E * X X V II

(Fragments)
[The author left some pencil jotlings of names on several slips of paper under
headings indicating that he ivished to acknoivledge them in the preface. Some
are not legible, others lack initia ls . Theij are Consolidated herc, initials added
ivhen knoum, and the spelling of unidenlified names as close as the handivriting
permitted. \ Vithin the various countries, the order is random; the lis t of
country names includes France, Rum ania t T aiivan, and Korea, but the names
of the scholars whom the author undoubtedlg intended to acknowledge under
these headings are lacking. The fragments include acknoiuledgments of help
received from the E as t A siatic L ibra nj and the Inter librar g Borroiving Service
of the Univers ity o f Ca lifor nia. The notes must have been ivritten at various
times throughout the ijears, and it is obvious that the list is not complete.—E d.]
In A ustr ia: R . Gobi, Hanar.
In England: Sir Ellis Minns, E. G. Pulleyblank.
In Germanv: J . \ Verner, K . Je ttmar , T auslin. In Hungar y : Z. T akats, L . Lig eti, D. Czallanv , Gv . Moravcik, K . Csgledy,
E. Liptak.
In Japan: Namio Egami, Enoki, Ushida.
In Soviet Union: K . V . Golenko, V . V . Ginsburg , E. Lubo- Lesnichenko,
C. Trever, A. Mantsevich, M. P. Griaznov, L. P. Kyzlasov, I. A.
Zadneprovskv, I. Kozhomberiev, M. Soratov, A. P. Oklanikov, S. S.
Sorokin, B. A. Litvinsky, I. V. Sinitsvn, Gumilev, Belenitsky, Stavisky.
In Sweden: B. Karlgren.
In Switzerlan: K. Gerhart, I. Hubschmid.
In United States: P. Boodberg, E. Schafer, R. Henning, A. Alfoldi, R. N.
Frye, E. K antorow icz, L . Ols chki, K . H. Menges, N. Poppe, I. Ševenko.
X X IX

T H E W O R L D O F T H E
J W i r \ &

I. The Literary Evidence
T h e c h a p t e r on the Huns written by the Roman historian Ammianus
Marcellinus (330-400 a . d .) is an inv aluable document.* Corning from
the pen of “the greatest literarv genius which the world has seen be-
tween Tacitus and Da nte ,”1 it is also a stylistic masterpiece. A mmianus*
superioritv over the other writers of his time who could not help mentioning
the Huns becomes ev ident from their s tatements about the firs t appear-
ance of the savage hordes in the norlhern B alka n provinces. T hey teli
us in a few s cantv words tha t the Goths \ vere driven fr om their sites by
the Huns ; some add the storv of a doe which led the Huns across the Cim-
meria n Bosporus. A nd this is ali. T hey did not care to explore the causes
of the catastrophe of Adrianople, that lerrible afternoon of August 9, 378,
vvhen the Goths annihila le d two- thirds of the Roman army , else they would
have found that “the seed and origin of ali the ruin and various disasters”2
were the ev ents that had taken place in the tr ans danubian barbaricum
vears before the Goths \ vere admitte d to the empire. T hev did not even
try to learn who the Huns \ vere and how they lived and fought.
It is instructive to compare the just quoted words of Ammianus with
the f ollowing passage by the historian- theologian Paulus Orosius (fl. -115
a . d ) , St. Augustine’s disciple:
In the thirteenth vear of the reign of Valens, that is, in the short in
terval of time that folIowed the wrecking of the churches by Valens
and the slaughtering of the saints throughout the East, that root of o u r i ni s cr i e s s i r n u lt a n c o u s lv s c n l u p a v c r y g r c a t n u m b e r o f s h oo ts .
The race of t h e Huns, long shut off bv inaccessiblc mountains, broke
* For historical and cultura l backg round sce Chapter X II by P aul Alex ander.
1 Stein 1059, 331.
2 A m m ia n us X X X I , 2 , 1.

2 T H E W O R L D O F T H E HU N S
out in a sudden rage against the Goths and drove them in widespread
panic from their old homes.”3
If the Arian heresy of Valens was the root of ali evils and the attack of
the Huns on the Goths only a shoot, then it was clearly a waste of time
and eff ort to occupy oneself w ith the Huns. T here was even the dange r
that by looking too closely at gesta diaboli per Hunnos one might lose
sig ht of the devil himself . Orosius pays attention only to s upernatural
agents, God or the demons. Unconcerned about the antecedents of a
happening or its consequences unless they could be used for theological
lessons, Orosius, and with him ali the Christian authors in the West, showed
no interes t in the Huns. A mmianus called the battle of A drianople another
Cannae.4 He never doubted, even when ali seemed lost, tha t every Han-
nibal would find his Scipio, convinced that the empire would last to the
end of the wor ld:5 “T o these I set no boundarv in space or time; unlimite d
power I have given them.” (His ego nec meias rerum nex tempora pono:
imperium sine fine dedi.6) A mong the Christians, Ruf inus was the only
one who could say that the defeat of Adrianople was “the beginning of
the evil for the Rom an Empire , then and fr om then on.”7 T he others
saw in it only the triumph of orthodoxy, indulging in lurid descriptions
of the wa y in which the accursed heretic V alens perished. Orosius adduced
the death of the unfortunate emperor as proof for the oneness of God.
D e m o n i z a t i o n
Possibly the lack of interest in the Huns had still another reason: the
Huns were demonized early . \ Vhen in 364 Hila ry of Poitiers predicted
the coming of the Antichrist within one generation,8 he repeated what
during the tw o vears of J uli a n’s reign many must have thought. B ut
since then Christ had conquered, and only an obdurate fanatic like Hilary
could see in the emperor’s refusal to unseat an Arian bishop the sign
of the approaching end of the world. Ev en those who st ill adhered to
the chiliasm of the pre- Constantine church, a nd took the highly respected
Divinae institutiones of Lactantius as their guide to the future, did not
ex pect to hear themselves the sound of Gabrie l’s tr umpet. “T he fali and
ruin of the worId will soon take place, but it seems that nothing of the
kind is to be feared as long as the city of Rome stands intact.”9
3 Hist. ado. Pagan. V II , 33, 9- 10.
* X X X I , 13, 19.
5 Chri st 1938, 68-71.
6 Virgil, A en. I, 278.
7 Hist. eccles. X I , 13.
8 Contra Arianos V , P L 10, 611.
9 Div. Inst. V I I , 25 .
Materialcudreptde

T H E L IT E R A R Y E V ID E N C E • 3
T he change set in early in 387. Ita ly had not been inva ded by bar
barians since Emper or A urel ian’s time (270- 275). Now it s uddenly was
threate ned by an “impure and cruel enemy .” Panic spread throug h the
cities; fortifications were hastily improv ised.10 A mbrose, who s hortly be-
fore had lost his brother Saturus, found consolation in the thought that
he \ vas "take n away that he mig ht not fali in the hands of the bar bar ians .. . .
that he might not see the ruin of the whole earth, the end of the world,
the burial of relatives, the death of fello\ v- citizens.” It was the time \ vhich
the prophets had foreseen, “when they felicitated the dead and lamented
the living” (gralulabanlur mortuis et vivos plangent).u A fter A drianople,
A mbrose felt tha t “the end of the world is coming upon us.” W ar, pesti-
lence, famine eveiysvhere. T he final period of the world’s history was
draw ing to its close. “W e are in the wane of the age.”12
In the last decade of the fourth centurv, an eschatological wave swept
over the Wes t fr om A frica to Gaul. T he Antichris t alre ady was born,
soon he w ould come to the throne of the empire.13 T hree more generations,
and the millennium would be ushered in, but not before untold numbers
would hav e perished in the horrors w hich preceded it; the hour of judg ment
drew nearer, the signs pointing to i t became clearer every day .14
Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38:1-39:20) were storming down from the
nor th. T he initial letters suggested to some people, said Augus tine, \ vho
himself rejected such equations, identification with the Getae (Goths)
and Massagetae.15 Ambrose took the Goths to be Gog.16 T he A frican bi-
10 Ambrose, De excessu fratris I, 1, 31. T he date, F ebr uary 378 , has been definite-
]y cstablished by O. Faller, ed., C S E L 73, *81-*89.
11 Lactantius, jDiv. Inst. V I I , 16 ; Epitome 66.
12 Ambrose, Ez pos itio evange lii sec. L ucam X , 10-14, C S E L 32, 458. Composed
at the end of 378 (Rauschen 1897, 494; Pa lanque 1935, 534, 535 : Duden 1925, 693).
13 “T here is no doubt tha t the Antic hris t has already been born; fir mly es tablished
already in his early years, he will, after reachlng maturity, achieve supreme power.”
(No n est dabium , quin a ntichris tus ma lo špir itu conceplus iam natus essct, et iam in a n -
nis paeritibiis constitutus, aelate legitima sampturus imperium.)
St. Mart in apud Sulpicius Severus, Dialogus I (II), 14, 4, C S E L 1, 197.
14 Q. Julius Hilarianus, De cursu temporum (\ vritten in 397), P L 13, 1097- 1106;
Paulinus of xNola, E p. X X X V I II , 7, C S E L 2 9, 330 \ vritten in 397 (Re ine lt 1 903, 59).
In the Ea st such fears (and hopes) rarely wcre expressed. Cf. J oh n Chrysos tom, In
loanneni homil. X X X I V , P G 59, 197- 198, delivere d in A ntioch a bout 390 a .d . 15 Augustine, De cio. Dei X X , 11. “ Of coursc those people, w hom he calls Gog
and Magog, are not to be understood as if thev were barbarians scttled in some part
of the earth or Getae and Massagetae as some prcsume because of the initial letters of
their name s...” (Gentes quippe istae, quas appcllat Gog et Magog, non sic sunt accipiendae,
lamquam sint aliqui in a!iqua parte terrarum barbari constituti, siue quos guidam sus-
picaniur Getas et Massagetas propter litteras horum nominum primas, etc.)
16 Ambrose, De fide II, 16.

4 T H E W O R L D O F T H E HU N S
shop Quodvultdeus could not make up his mind whether he should identify
Magog wit h the Moors or the Massagetac.17 \ Vhy the Massag etae? T here
were no Massagetae in the f if th century . B ut consider ing tha t T hemistius,
Claudian, and later Procopius called the Huns Massagetae,18 it seems
probable tha t those who identified Magog w ith the Massagetae thought
of the Huns. In the T almud, where the Goths are Gog ,19 Magog is “the
country of the kanths” (Sogdian kant), that is, the king dom of the w hite
Huns.20
Jerome did not share the chiliastic fears and expectations of his con-
temporaries . In reshaping V ictorinus of Poe tov io’s Commentary on the
Revelalion he substituted for the last part, full of chiliastic ideas, sections
fr om T yconius.21 B ut w hen in 395 the Huns broke into the eastern pro-
vinces, he, too, feared that “ the Rom an \ vorld was fal ling ,”22 and the end
of Rome meant the end of the \ vorld.23 Four years later, still under the
impression of the catastrophe, he saw in the Huns the savage peoples kept
behind the Caucasus by the iron gates of AleK ander.*4 T he ferae gentes
\ vere Gog and Magog of the A lex ander legend. Flav ius J osephus (37/8-
100 a.d.), the first to speak of Alexander’s gates,25 equated the Scvthians
and Magog .26 Je rome, who followed him,27 identified Herodotus’ Scy thians
w ith the Huns ,28 in this oblique way equating the Huns and Magog. Orosius
did the same; his “inaceessible mountains” behind which the Huns had
been shut off \ vere those where Alex ander had built the w all to hold back
17 Libe r de promissionibus et praedicalionibus De i, P L 51, 848.
18 See foo tnote s 40, 5 1, 52.
19 L . Ginz burg 1899, 58, 468.
20 O. K lim a, A r chiv Or ie nt dl nl 24, 1956, 596-597.
21 C S E L 49, 138- 153. W itho ut naming A mbrose— he spoke only of him as “ a
distinguished contemporary” (vir nostrae aetatis haud ignobilis )—Jerome rejected
his idenlification of Gog and Magog (Hebraicae quaestiones in libro geneseos 10, 21).
22 Bomanus orbis ruit. (See E p. L X , 6 . )
23 “A t the e nd of the \ vorld, when the e mpire of t heRomans must be destroyed”
(In consummalione mundi, quando regnum destruendum est Romanorum). See Comm.
in Danielcm V I I , 8, P L 25, 531.
24 E p. L X X V U , 8. For Syriac versions of the legend, see F. Pfister, A bh. B e r lin
3, 1956, 30-31, 36-39; N. V. Pigulevskaia, Orbeli Anniversary Volume, 423-426.
25 B J V I I , 7 , 4.
26 A J I, 6, 123.
27 Hebraicae guaesliones in libro geneseos X , 21, w ritte n in 391. Cf. Cavallera 1922,
1, 146-147; 2, 28.
28 E p. L X X V II, 8-9. In quoting Herodotus I, 104-106, Jer ome made two mistakes:
Cyax ares instead of Darius, and t\ venty instead of twenty- eight years. His knowledge
of ethnog raphic litera ture was poor. Cf. Luebeck 1872, 21. Isidorus (E i y m . IX , 2, 66)
copied Jerome.

T H E L IT E R A R Y E V ID E N C E • 5
Gog and Magog. In the six th century, A ndreas of Caesarea in Cappadocia
still held the view t hat Gog and Magog \ vere those Scy thians in the north
“called Hunnica by us” dneg xa^ov(xev Ovvvina,29 If even the sober Jer ome
was inclined, for a time , to see in the Huns the companions of the apo-
calyptic horsemen, one can easily imagine how the superstitious masses
felt.30
A fter 400, the chiliastic fears \ vcre somewhat abated.31 B ut behind
the Huns the devil still was lurking. T he curious story in Jordanes38 about
their origin almost certainly is patterned on the Christian legend of the
fal len angels:33 The unclean spirits “bestowed their embraces on the sor-
ceresses and begot this savage race.” T he Huns \ vere not a people like
other peoples. These fiendish ogres,34 roa ming over the desolate plains
beyond the borders of the Christian oecumene, from which they set out
time and again to bring death and destr uction to the fa ithful, \ vere the
offspring of daemonia irnmunda. Eve n after the fali of A ttila's kingdom,
the peoples who were believed to have descended from the Huns were
in alliance with the devil. T hey enveloped their enemies in darkness v t io
rtvag fiay eia .Zb The Avars, whom Gregory of Tours called Chuni, “skilled
in magic tricks, they made them, that is, the Fr anks, see illusionar v im-
ages and defeated them thoroughly” (magicis arlibus inslrucli, diversas
fanlasias eis, i.e., Francis ostendunt et eos valde superant).w
To be sure, this demonization of the Huns alone \ vould not have pre-
vented the Latin historians and ecclesiastic writers from exploring the
past of the Huns and describing them as A mmianus did. B ut the smeli
of sulphur and the heat of the hellish flames that enveloped the Huns
were not conducive to historical researeh.
E q u a t io n s
How did the Easter n writers sce the Huns ? One should ex pect the
Greek historians to have preserved at least some of the ethnographic cu-
riosity of Herodotus and Strabo. B ut w hat \ve have is disappointing.
29 Commentarius in apocahjpsin ch. L X I I I , P G 106, 416c.
30 T he tendency to ide ntify the enemies of the Christians wit h Gog or Magog led
sometimes to strange results. V incent of Be auvais turned Qag han into Gog Chan (Rock- hJlI J900, 21, n. 1, and 108, n. 1).
81 E. Ch. Bahut, Reoue d’hist. et de lift. religicuses, N. S. 1, 1920, 532.
32 Getica 121-122.
34 “Ogr e” <Hong re , Hungar ian.
35 J oh n of A ntioch, fr. 151, E I 145.
M Hist. Franc. IV , 29.

6 T H E W O R L D O F T H E H U N S
Instead of facts they serve us with equations. T he Lat in chroniclers of
the fifth century, in calling the Huns by their proper name, were less guided
by the intention to be precise than forced to be factual by their ignorance
of literature. T hey knew nex t to nothing about the Scy thians, Cimmerians,
and Massagetae, whose names the Greek authors constantly interchanged
w ith tha t of the Huns . Howev er , even at a time when there stil l ex isted
a Latin literature worthy of its illustrious past, the Latin writers, both
prosiasts and poets, shunned the circumlocutions and equations in which
the Greeks indulged. A usonius rarely missed an opportunity to show
how well read he was, yet he refrained from replacing the real names of
the barbarians with whom Gratian fought by those he knew from Livy
and Ov id.37 Ambrose, too, avoided the use of archaic or learned words.
The Huns, not the Massagetae, attacked the Alans, who threw themselves
upon the Goths, not the Scy thians.38 In Ambrose, the former consularis,
Roman soberness and aversion to speculation were as much alive as in
A usonius, the rhetor from Bordeaux . A comparison of Pacatus’ panegyric
on Theodosius with the orations of Themistius is revealing: The Gaul called
the Huns by their name;39 the Greek called them Massagetae.40
As in the West, ma ny wr iters in the Eas t lacked interest in the invader s.
They looked on them as “bandits and deserters,”41 or they called them
Scythians, a name which in the fourth and fifth centuries had long lost
its specific meaning. It was widely applied to ali northern barbarians,
whether they were nomads or peasants, spoke Germanic, Iranian, or any
other t o n g u e . N e v e r t h e l e s s , in t h e v o c a b u l a r y of t h e c d u c a t c d t h e w o r d
retained, however attenuate d, some of its original sig nificance. T he as-
sociations it called forth were bound to shape the way in which the bar
barians were seen. T hat makes it a t times dif ficult to decide whom an
author means. Ar e Priscus’ “Roy al Scy thians” the dominating tr ibe as
in Herodotus, or are they the members of the royal elan, or simply noblemen ?
37 Praecatio consulis designati pridie K al . la n. f uscibus sumptis 31-35; Epigr. X X V I ,
8-10; Ephemeris 7 (8), 18.
38 E zpo s ilio euangelii se cundum L aam X , 10.
39 X I, 4.
40 Or. X V , ll ar duin 1684, 20 7c : “The stubbomness of the Scythians, the reckless-
ness of the Alans, the madness of the Massagetae.” Exccpt Or. IX , 121b, and Or. X IV ,
181b, where “Scythians” means ali transdanubian barbarians, the Scythians are the
G o ths Or . V I I I , 1 1 4c; X ; X V I , 2 1 0d, 2 1 1 b; X V I I I , 2 1 9 b; X I X , 2 29 b, c).
In Or. X I, 146b, Athanaric is called Zx vOr jg i] rx rj<;. T he Alans are called by
their proper name in Or. X X X IV , 8. The Massagetae, the third of the peoples who
in the 380's devas tatcd the northern Balkans, must, therefore, be the Huns. In Or.
X X X I V , 24, T he mis tius mak es a shar p dis ti ne ti on betw ee n S cy thia ns and Massa getae.
41 For instance, Basil the Great, E p. 268.
Material cu dre

T H E L I T E R A R Y E V ID E N C E * 7
It is not enough to say that the phrase is merely one of the sevcral instances
of Priscus’ literar y debt to Herodotus. It certainly is. B ut it would be
strange if the man who used this and other expressions of the great his-
torian would not, here and there, have succumbed to the temptation to
see the Huns as the ancients had seen the Scythians.
The Greek historians equated the Huns and the Cimmerians, Scythians,
and other peoples of old not just to display their knowledge of the classics
or to embellish their accounts,42 but f irs t of ali because they were con-
vinced tha t there \ vere no peoples which the wise men of the pas t had not
know n. A nd this, in turn, was not so much narrow- minded traditional-
ism—it was that, too—as, to use a psychologieal term, a defense mechanism.
Synesius of Cyrene (ca. 370—412), in his “Address on Kingship,” explained
w hy there could not be new barbarians :
Now it was not by \ valling off their own house that the former rulers
prevented the barbarians either of Asia or Europe from entering it.
Rather by their own acts did thev admonish these men to wall off
their own by Crossing the Euphrates in pursuit of the Parthians, and
the Danube. in purs uit of the Goths and Massagetae. B ut now these nations spread terror ainongst us, Crossing over in their turn, assuming
other names, and some of them falsifying by art even their countenances,
so that another race new and foreign may appear to have sprung from
the soil.43
This is carrying the thesis of the identity of the old and new barbarians
to absurdity. B ut it is, after ali, \ vhat so many Rom an g enerals said so
many times on the eve of a battle: our fathers conquered them, we shall
conquer them again. T he ever recurring oi naAcu serves the same pur-
pose. It deprives the unknow n attacker of his most fr ightening feature:
he is known and, therefore, needs not be fcared.
In the equation of the Huns and the peoples of former times both mo-
tives, the emotionallv conditioned reduclio ad notum and the intention
jpf the learned historian to show his er udition, play their role, whereby
the former, I believe, is more often in the Service of the latter t han is usual-
ly assumed. W ith which of the kno\ vn peoples an author identif ied the
Huns depended on his information, the circumstances under which he
wrote, and the alleged or real similarity bet\ veen the kno\ vn and the barely know n. T he result was inv ar iably the same. A li speculations about
the origiri of the Huns ended in an equation.
42 See Agathias III, 5, ed. Uonn 147, on his reasons for calling the fortmss St. Stephen
by its former name Onoguris.
43 De regno X I; Fitzgerald 1930, 1, 27.

8 T H E W O R L D O F T H E H U N S
Philostorgius, in his Ecclcsiaslical Hisiory written between 425 and
433, “recognized” in them the Neuri.44 A well- read man, he may have
come across a now lost description of the Neuri which reminded him of
w ha t he had heard of the Huns . One could think tha t Philostor gius, less
critical than Herodotus, believe the werewolf stories told about the Neuri.45
Svnesius46 and J erome47 were probably not the onlv ones to compare the
Iluns \ vith \ volves. It \ vas not beyond Philostorgius to identif y the “wolf-
ish” Huns w ith the were\ volves of Scy thia. B ut the most likely expla-
nation of his belief is the location of the Neuri: T hey \ vere the northern-
most people, the Il uns ame fr om the ex treme Nor th —ergo the Huns were
the Neuri. T o say tha t they lived along the Rhipaean Mountains, as Phil
ostorgius did, was merely another \ vay of placing them as far north as
possible; since the legendarv A risteas48 the Rhipaean Mountains were
regarded as the region of the eternal sno\ v, the home of the icy Boreas.
Procopius’ Identification of the Huns w ith the Cimmerians49 is neither
better nor \ vorsc than his assertion that the Goths, V andals, and Gepids
were in former times called Sauromatae.50 As a rule Procopius, like T he
mistius and Claudian,51 equated the Huns and the Massagetae.52 T he
later Bv zant ine writers repeated monotonously the for mula: the former
x , the present y. T here is finally the histor ian Eunapius of Sardes (ca. 345— 420). The
follo\ ving fra gment fr om him shows (in Vasil iev’s opinion) what a conscien-
tious historian Eunapius was:
A lthoug h no one has told anv thing plainlv of \ vhence the Il uns ame
and by \ vhich way they invaded the whole of Europe and drove out
the Scythian people, at the beginning of my work, after collecting
the accounts of ancient writers, I have told the facts as seemed to me
reliable; I have considered the accounts from the point of view of their
exactness, so that my writing should not depend merelv on probable
statement and my \ vork should not deviate from the truth. \ Ve do
44 Hist. eccles. I X , 17, Biez 1960, 123.
15 He ro dotus IV , 107.
46 The “w o ir in the Eggplian Tule is “ the H un .” Cf. Grtttzmacher 1913, 59 ;
Ch. Lacombrade R f l A 48, 1946 , 260- 266.
47 E p. L X , 16.
4ft According to MOllenhoff, D A 3, 24, the source of Damaste s, quoted by Stepha-
nus Byzantinus 630, 6; doubted by Rostovtsev 1913, 24, n.2.
49 V III , 5, 1.
50 III, 22, 2.
61 The Massagetae in In Ruf. I, 310, correspond to the Chuni in Cons. Stil. I, iii.
52 The passages are listed in Moravcsik, R T 2, 183 ; Ev ag rius II I, 2 ; B idcz 1960,
100 9-11.

T H E L I T E R A R Y E V ID E N C E * 9
not rescmble those who from their childhood live in a small and poor
liouse, and late in time, by a s troke of good for lune, acq uire vast and
magnificent buildings, and none the less bv custom love the old things
and lake care of them. . . . B ut \ ve rather rescmble those who first using
one medicine for the tr eatme nt of their bodv, in the hope of help,
and then through their experience finding a better medicine, turn
and ineline towards the latter, not in order to neutralize the effect
of the first one bv the second but in order to introduce the truth into
erroneous judgment, and, so to speak, to destroy and enfeeble the light
of a lam p bv a ray of the sun. In like manner we will add the more
correct evidence to the aforesaid, considering it possible to keep the
former material as an historical point of view, and using and adding
the latter material for the establis hment of the trut h.53
A li this ta lk about medicines and building s, the pompous announ-
cement of what he is going to wr ite on the Huns, is emptv . Eunapius ’
description of the Huns is preserved in Zosimus.54 It shows what a \ vind-
bag the allegedly conscientious histor ian \ vas. One half of it Eunapius
cribbe from A mmia nus Marcellinus;55 the other half, where he “collected
the accounts of the ancient \ vriters,” is a preposterous hodgepodge. Euna
pius calls the Huns ‘‘a people formerly unknovvn,”56 only to suggest in
the nex t line their identitv w ith Herodotus* R oy al Scythians. As an al
ternative he referred to the “snub- nosed and weak people who, as Hero-
dotus says, dwell near the Ister [Danube] .” W ha t he had in mind was
Herodotus V , 9, 56, but he ehanged the horses of the Sig vnnae, “snub-
nosed and incapable of carr ving men,” into “snub- nosed and weak people”
(aifiovg nai ddvvarov$ tivdoaz (peoeiv into aif iov ; x at daOeveas dvOoco-
7COVC) 57
A m m i a n u s M a h c k i . i . i n u s
Seen against this background of indifference, superstition, and ar-
bitrarv equations, Ammianus’ description of the Huns cannot be praised
too highlv. B ut it is not eine ganz realistisehe Sittcnschilderung , as Rostov-
tsev called it.5* For its proprer ev aluation one has to take into account
53 E S 84-85, Iranslated by Vasiliev 1936, 24-25. 54 Moravcstk, B T 1, 577.
55 Maenchcn- Mclfcn 19551), 302. I have not been conv ince d by A . 1*\ Nor niaii (C Q
7, 1957, 133, n. 1) tl>at E unapi us an d A mm ian us used the same sources.
5« Zosimus IV , 20, 3.
57 T his has Ion** bccn recognized by Sa tte rc r 1798 , 4. T hompson (1918 , 17, n. 2)
erroneously refers to Her odotus IV , 23.
58 Hostovtsev 1931, 103.

1 0 • T H E W O R L D O F T H E H U N S
the circumstances under w hich it was \ vritten, A mmianus ’ sources of in-
formation, and his admiration for the styli veteres.
He most probably finished his work in the winter 392/3,59 tha t is, at
a time when the danger of a war betvveen the two partes of the empire
was steadilv mounting . In A ugust 392, the powerf ul general A rbog as t
proclaimed Eugenius emperor of the West. For some time T heodosius
apparently was undecided what to do; he may have thought it advisable
to come to an ag reement w ith the usurper \ vho was “superior in every
point of militarv equipment.”60 B ut when he nominated not Eugenius
but one of his generals to hold the consulship with him, and on January
23, 393, proclaimed his son Honorius as Augustus, it became clear that
he would go to war against Eugenius as he had against Maximus in 388.
There can be little doubt that the svmpathies of Ammianus, the admirer
of Julian, lay from the beginning not with the fanatic Christian Theodosius
but w ith the learned pagan Euge nius.61 A mmianus must have looked
w ith horror at T heodosius’ army , vvhich \ vas Ro ma n in name only . A lthoug h
it cannot be provcd that the emperor owed his victory over Maximus to his dare- devil Hun cav alr v,62 they certainly plaved a decisive role in the
campaign. T heodosius’ horsemen were “carried through the air by P eg asi” ;63
thev did not ride, they f Iew.M No other troops but the Hun auxiliaries
could have covered the six ty miles fr om Emona to A quileia in one day.65
A mmianus had ali reasons to fear tha t in the apparently inevitable war
a large contingent of the Eas tern ar my would again consist of Huns. It
did.66 A mmia nus hated al i barbar ians, even those who disting uished them-
selves in the service of Rome:87 He called the Gall ic soldiers, \ vho so gal-
lantly fought the Persians at Amida, dcntatac besliae;68 he concluded his
work w ith an encomium for J ulius , magisler m ililiae trans T aurum, who,
on learning of the Gothic victorv at Adrianople, had ali Goths in his ter-
ritory massacied. B ut the Huns were the worst. Both Claudian69 and
59 Maenchen- Helfe n 1 055a, 399.
60 Orosius, Hist. ado. Pagan. V II, 35, 2.
01 Ens sl in 1923, 9.
62 A s ass umed by G ibbon 3, 165, follo\ ved by Seeck, Geschichle 5, 213-21 .
63 P ac at us X X X I X , 5 .
64 Non citrsus est, sed volatus (ibid. X X X I X , 1).
65 Ibid. X X X IX , 2. Only cabinet scholars reject the “ hyperboles ” of the orator
(Galletier 1949, 57 n. 6).
M John of Antioch, fr. 187, E I 119.
67 Ensslin 1923, 31-32.

T H E L I T E H A R Y E V ID E N C E * 11
Jordanes70 echoed A mmianus w hen thcy called the Huns "the most in- famous offspring of the north,” “fiercer than ferocitv itsclf.” Ev en the
headhunting Alans were “in their manner of life and their habits less
sav age” than the Huns .71 T hrough long intercourse with the Romans,
some Germans had acquired a modicum of civilization. B ut the Huns
\ vere st ill primev al savages.
Besides, Ammianus’ account is colored by the bias of his informants.
He \ vent to Rome s ometime before 378 where, ex cept for a short while
in 383, he spent the rest of his life. T he poss ibilitv tha t he met there some
Hun or other cannot be entirelv ruled out,72 but i t is inconceivable
tha t a Hun \ vho at best unerstood a few L at in orers could have told
A mmianus how his people liv ed and ho\ v they foug ht the Goths. T he
account of the war in South Russia and Rumania is based largelv on re-
ports which A mmianus received from Goths. Munderich, who had fought
against the Huns, later dux limilis per Arabias ,73 may have been one of
his infor mants. One could almost sav th at A mmianus \ vrote his account
from a Gothic point of view. For ex ample, he descrihed Er manar ic as
a most \ varlike king , dreaded by the neighboring nations because of manv
and varied deeds of valor;74 forliter is a praise which Ammianus did not
easily bestow on a barbarian. A latheus and Saphrax were “ experienced
lcaders known f or their courag e.”75 A mmianus names no less than eleven
leaders of the Goths,76 but not one of the Huns. T hey were a faceless mass,
terrible and subhuman.
A mmianus ' description is distorted by hatr ed and fear. T hompson,
\ vho believes almos t every \ vord of it, accordinglv places the Huns of the
later half of the fourth century in the “lower stage of pastoralism.”77 T hey
lived, he says, in conditions of desperate harship, moving incessantly
from pasture to pasture, utterly absorbed by the day- long task of looking
after the herds. T heir iron swords must have been obtained bv barter or V
capture, “for nomads do not work metal.” Thompson asscrts that even after
eighty years of contact with the Romans the produetive power of the
70 Gctica 12.
71 A mmianus X X X I, 2, 21.
72 In De Tobia I, 39, C S E L 32, 540 (written about 389: Palanquc 1935, 528; Dudden
1925, 696, suggests probably later than 385 ; cf. also Rauschcn 1897, 132, n. 2), Ambrose
mentlons a H un ** who \ vas know n to the K oma n emper or."
73 X X X I , 3 , 5.
74 Ibid., 3, 1.
78 Ibid., 3, 3.
76 Er manar ic, V ithimir , V iderich, Alatheus, Saphrax , A thanaric , Munderich, La-
garimanus, Alaviv, Fritigern, and Farnobius.
77 T hompson 1948, 41-43.

Huns was so small that they could not make tables, chairs, and couches.
“The productive methods available to the Huns were primitive beyond
w hat is now easy to imag ine .” T o this almos t unimag ina ble primitiv e
economv corresponds an equally primitive social structure, a societv without
classes, without a hereditary aristocracv; the Huns were amorphous bands
of marauders . Ev en the Soviet scholars, who still hate the Huns as the
murderers of their Slavic ancestors, reject the notion that the economy
and society were in any way primitiv e.78
Ha d the Huns been unable to forge their svvords and east their arrow-
heads, thev never could have crossed the Don. T he idea that the H un
horsemen fought their \ vay to the walls of Constantinople and to the Marne
\ vith bartered and captured s\ vords is absurd. Hun \ varfare presupposed
a far- reaching division of labor in peacetime. A mmianus emphasizes so
strongly the absence of any buildings in the country of the Huns that
the reader must think they slept the vear round under the open sky; only
in passing does Ammianus mentions their tents and \ vagons. Manv may
have been able to make tents, but only a few could have been cartwrights.
T he passage \ vhich, more than any other, shows that A mmia nus ’ descrip
tion must not be accepted as it stands is the follovving, often quoted and
commented 011: A g un tur aulem null a severitate reg ali; sed tum ulluar io
primatum duelu contcntif perrumpunl quidquid incident.™ In Rolf e’s trans-
lation, “Thev are subject to no royal constraint, but they are content
\ vith the isorderly g over nment of their importa nt men, and led by them
thev force their way through e v e r y o bs t a e l e . ” I t is n o t vcry important
tha t this statement is at var iance with Cassiodorus- Jordanes’ account
of the \ var between the Goths and Balamber, king of the Huns, w ho late r
married Vadamerca, the granddaughter of the Gothic ruler Vinilharius;80
whoever Balambe r was, Cassiodorus \ vould not have admitted tha t a Gothic
princess could have become the wife of a man \ vho was not some sort of
a king. More impor tant is the discrepancy between A mmianus’ statement
and w hat he himself tells about the deeds of the Huns. A ltoug h the cul-
tural level of Ermanaric’s Ostrogoths and the cohesion of his kingom
must not be overrated, its sudden collapse under the onslaught of the
Huns would be inexplicable if the latter were nothing but an anarchic
mass of howling savages. T hompson calls the Huns mere marauders and
plunderers. In a way, he is rig ht. B ut to plunder on the scale the Huns
did \ vas impossible \ vithout a milita ry org anization, commanders who
planned a campaig n and coor dinated the att acking forces, men \ vho gave
1 2 • T H E "VV ORLD O F T H E H UN S
78 See, for example, Pletneva, S A 3, 1964, 343.
7» X X X I , 2 , 7.
00 Gclica 130, 248, 249.

T 1IE L IT E K A R V E V ID E N C E * 1 3
orers and men who obeyed them. A lthe im defines lumultarius ductus
as eine aus dan A uge nblick eriuachsene, improv isierte F iihr ung ,81 \ vhich
renders Ammianus’ words better than Rolfe’s “disorderly government.”
However, the warfare of the Huns reveals at no time anything that could
be called improvised leadership.92
For some time the misunderstanding of the Hunnic offensive tactics—
sudden, feigned flig ht and renewed atta ck —\ vas, perhaps, inevitable.83 B ut
A mmianus \ vrote the las t books fourteen vears after A drianople. He must
by then have kno\ vn or, at least, suspected tha t the early reports on the
Huns ’ improv ised leadership were not true. Y et he stuck to them, for
those biped beasts had only “the f orm of men.”84 He maintained that
their missiles were provided w ith sharp bone points.85 He mav not have
been entirelv wrong. B ut the tanged Hun arrowheads of which \ ve know
are ali made of iron. A mmianus made the ex ception the rule.
In describing the Huns, Ammianus used too manv phrases from earlier
authors . Because the Huns \ vere northern barbarians like the Scy thians
of old and because. the styli veteres wrote so well about the earlier bar
barians, Ammianus, the Greek from Antioch, thought it besi to paraplirase
them. One of the authors he imita ted \ vas the histor ian T rogus Pompeius,
a contemporary of the emperor A ugustus. A mmianus \ vrotc: “None of
them ever ploughs or touches a colter. W ithout permanent seats, w ithout
a home, \ vithout fix ed laws or rites, thve ali roam about, always l ike fu-
gitiv es. . . restless rov ing over mountains and through woods. T hey cover
themselves \ vith clothes sewed together from the skins of forest rodents.”
(Nerno apud cos arat nec stivarn aliquando contingit. Omnes sine sedibus
f ix is , absgue lare vel lege aut ritu stabili dispalanlur, semper fugientium
similes. . . vagi montes peragranles et silvas. Indum e nlis ope riunlur ex
pellibus siluestrium murum consarcinatis.)m This clearly is patterned on
81 A ltheim and S tiehl 1954, 259.
82 lt is not quite impossible that Ammianus concluded from the iui]>etuosity of
H un \ varfare tha t the savages aguntur nulla severilate regali. He may have thought
of what Hippocrates said about the courage of the Europeans, who were more Nvarlike

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the World of the Huns Studies in Their History and Culture