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. While there is no surviving first-person account of Attila's appearance, there is a possible second-hand source, provided by Jordanes, who cites a description given by Priscus. 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. The description suggest a person typical of Asian or Mongoloid features. Etymology The origin of Attila's name is unclear. Menander used the term Attila as the name of the Volga River. Pritsak considers it to mean "universal ruler" in a Turkic language related to Danube Bulgarian. The turkologist Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen rejects a Turkic etymology, and suggests an East Germanic origin: "Attila is formed from Gothic or Gepidic atta, "father", by means of the diminutive suffix -ila." He finds Pritsak's etymology "ingenious but for many reasons unacceptable". However, he suggests that these names were not the true names of the Hun princes and lords. What we have are Hunnic names in Germanic dress, modified to fit the Gothic tongue, or popular Gothic etymologies, or both. Mikkola thought Attila might go back to Turkish atlïg, "famous"; Poucha finds in it Tokharian atär, "hero." The first etymology is too farfetched to be taken seriously, the second is nonsense. The name of Attila's brother Bleda is also of Germanic origin. Judging by a hypothetical Germanic etymology of Attila's name and the status of Gothic and the lingua franca at his court, historian Peter Heather states that the possibility of Attila being of Germanic ancestry cannot be ruled out. The name has many variants in modern languages: Atli and Atle in Norse, Attila/Atilla/Etele in Hungarian (Attila is the most popular), Etzel in German Nibelungenlied, Attila, Atilla, Atilay or Atila in Turkish, and Adil and Edil in Kazakh or Adil ("same/similar") or Edil ("to use") in Mongolian. Historiography and sources 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 difficult to authenticate or distorted by years of hand-copying between the 6th and 17th centuries. The Hungarian writers of the 12th century, wishing to portray the Huns in a positive light as their glorious ancestors, repressed certain historical elements and added their own legends.

• published: 11 Apr 2014
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