Attila and the Huns in transition: No longer Nomads
Stevens, Keith
The Endnote, Vol. 1 (2004)
Abstract
In World and European history the Huns are presented as the ultimate in barbarians, more frightening than any Goth, more war savvy than any Vandal, and more senselessly cruel than any Gaul. They are depicted as the greatest unknown terror, riding from the East with strange tactics of warfare, their arrival heralded by a cloud of dust and a darkening of the sky by vicious barbed arrows. Above all these rises Attila, the so-called “Scourge of God”, who alternately wielded the sword of Mars, had horns, or even defeated a Burgundian army almost single-handedly. More monster than man, he is the only Hun whose name has remained in the common social conciousness as the centuries have worn on. Yet Priscus, who wrote the only first hand account of Attila to survive, depicts him as a generous and temperate, if steely, man showing the proper kindness to his guests. Modern Hungarians and some Germans still speak of him as a national hero and the Huns as a displaced people simply looking for land to call their own. Is it possible that Attila and his Huns were all ofthese things?
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