Attila the Hun (21 page)

In fact, it wasn’t that bad. In 408, Alaric was paid off with 9,000 pounds (4,000 from Constantinople, 5,000 from Rome). Other enemy leaders were bribed with annual subsidies of 1,000–3,000 pounds. In 540–61 the Persians received four payments amounting to 12,600 pounds, or just over 1,000 pounds per year. These were sums matched occasionally by a ransom paid for an eminent captive or an emperor’s celebratory games or the building of a church. According to one estimate, the revenue of the eastern empire averaged 270,000 pounds of gold annually. So Attila managed to extort about 2.2 per cent of the treasury’s income as a down-payment, with less than 1 per cent per year thereafter: well within the amount a prudent chancellor would allow in his budget under the heading of ‘bribes and miscellaneous’. Anyway, it lasted at most for three years. Attila guessed that there was more to be had, and must surely have been planning his next move.

The key element in his strategy was his acquisition of the huge swathe of land south of the Danube, stretching 500 kilometres west to east from Pannonia to Novae (today’s Šistova), and ‘five days’ journey’ – say, 160 kilometres – north to south: 80,000 square kilometres, an area the size of Scotland or Maine. Now there were no walled cities and campsites for Roman troops, no Danube fleet, and the way through the Balkans to Constantinople was wide open. The site of the annual trade fair shifted south, from the banks of the Danube to ruined Naissus, which would henceforth be the main frontier town. Thrace was at Attila’s mercy. When the campaign opened, his
authority over outlying areas had been shaky. Now, with all the cash he needed, his people well heeled with loot and ransom-money, all the Hun clans brought to heel, and his authority imposed over those who had fled, he was perfectly positioned to set his bounds yet wider.

A
ttila’s empire was already something that this part of Europe had never seen before, something Europe as a whole had not seen since the growth of Rome. There had once been a kingdom centred on Dacia, built by a certain Burebesta in 60
BC
, which stretched from the Black Sea west to Hungary and north into Slovakia, but it had lasted only ten years, then vanished almost without trace. Attila already exercised influence over a much larger area, across to the Caspian in the east, to the Baltic in the north-east, northwards to the North Sea. The evidence for a Hunnish presence comes from scattered references across this area. As we have seen, the two princes handed over for impaling after the Treaty of Margus were delivered at Carsium, today’s Hâr
ova, on the Danube only 60 kilometres from the Black Sea. Archaeologists have found hundreds of Hun objects from Austria (bits of a recurved bow and a deformed skull in Vienna) to the Volga (pots and swords in Ukraine). Priscus makes a vague reference to Hun rule over the ‘islands in the ocean’, which most scholars understand to be islands in the Baltic, off the coast of Denmark and Germany (a much debated point, this; but it makes sense, because Attila had inherited control of Ermanaric’s Ostrogothic federation,
which had fallen to the Huns in the 370s). This huge estate embraced all of central and eastern Europe from the Rhine eastwards, including a dozen of today’s nations, together with bits of southern Russia, the Balkans and Bulgaria – some 5 million square kilo-metres, an area almost half the size of the United States. Not that it was a unified empire, all under Attila’s direct control; not that every tribe would do as he said; but at least none would march against him, and most would back him with troops if asked. By the late 440s he was the
barbaricum’s
top Alpha Male, who could virtually guarantee the booty that justified an offensive war.

It was an empire largely hidden from those who might have recorded it, since it reached eastwards and northwards, and did not therefore seem to leaders in Constantinople and Rome to be an imminent threat to all Christendom (not yet; not for another year or so). As a result its nature is unclear. Different experts have different views, and argue mightily, sometimes quite rudely. ‘Thompson views the Huns as a howling mass of savages,’ writes Maenchen-Helfen. ‘He even mistranslates the text.’ Marxists have seen Attila as the epitome of the last stage of barbarism, on the verge of a military democracy, destined in the Marxist scheme of things to break down the slave-owning society of Rome in preparation for feudalism, capitalism, socialism and heaven on earth. None of this can be supported by facts, because so little is known about how the new society worked.

What, for example, was Attila’s position? All sorts of
terms have been bandied about –
basileus
(the term for the Roman emperors),
rex
,
monarchos
,
hegemon
,
archon
,
phylarchos
. All of these terms are Greek or Roman, and all are ambiguous. Was he, perhaps, more – a god to his people? It has been suggested, and it sounds plausible, given that Roman emperors were accorded divine status, as Augustus deified Caesar and Caligula deified himself and Constantine graciously allowed a hint of deification to attach to himself. But this madness was never part of nomadic culture. A ruler might at best claim to be chosen by Heaven, as Genghis later felt himself to be selected for world dominion by the Blue or Eternal Sky, and as Chinese emperors claimed the Mandate of Heaven. But this was not the same as claiming divinity. It was apparently OK to flatter by mentioning the Leader in the same breath as Heaven, God or a god. That was what sparked a row on Priscus’ journey (as we shall see in the next chapter), and that was the basis of the Akatziri chief’s specious excuse for not coming to kow-tow to Attila in person. But he didn’t really mean it. Attila was no Sun King, whose every expression was a command. Respect was given to the man, not to a god.

T
he Huns were now on their way up, with growing wealth, an expanded territory, and a multi-ethnic elite eager for more of both. Hard evidence for all this emerged in 1979 in northern Hungary, as I learned on a visit to Gy
r.

I was there to meet Peter Tomka, Hun expert, one of
Hungary’s top archaeologists, and head of the János Xánthus museum. I was new to my subject and would have been a little nervous, except that it was a glorious summer’s day, the town’s eighteenth-century centre was pastel-pretty, I had Andi Szegedi to interpret and I knew I had a little something in common with Tomka. We both knew Mongolia. People who know Mongolia are a freemasonry. It would help break the ice, and I was glad of it, for this was to be an important interview. Tomka had supervised the recovery of one of the greatest of Hun treasures. I would like to say Mongolia did the trick, but actually there was no ice to break. Tomka was every child’s idea of a big, friendly bear. Solidly built, white-bearded, tousled, clad in baggy shorts, Tomka welcomed me to his den of books, papers and iron shelves with a Mongolian greeting, ‘Sain bain uu!’, a huge, infectious laugh, and a story.

It starts in mid-May 1979, in a field in the lee of the massive, white hilltop monastery of Pannonhalma. Farm workers were making a new vineyard. One of them was digging the footing for a concrete post in the soft, sandy soil when, almost a metre down, his spade struck something hard. It was iron – a long piece of iron. He dug, and found more iron, and levered, and up came two swords. By the time his supervisor had managed to get through to the museum, the labourer had found more objects, mostly little flakes of gold. Hours later, safely boxed, they were all driven to the museum. That was when Tomka first saw the Pannonhalma Treasure.

‘Oh yes, it was very exciting. The experience of a lifetime!’ He threw back his head and roared with laughter at the memory. ‘They were typical Hun things, with shell-shaped ornaments, a horse decoration the shape of an omega, the bits of gold foil which had been on the swords’ wooden scabbards. So I went out to the field, and did some more digging and hunting around with my metal detector, but found nothing but a few flecks of gold. There was no sign of a grave, no ashes, no bones. So I was very certain that this was an
Opferfund
[sacrificial trove].’ He spoke excellent German, which made things easier, because Hungarian was Greek to me.

The site lies off a farm track in the middle of a maize field. When I went there, I stood amid silent fields and scattered trees, the scene made significant not by the long-gone treasure but by the mass of the 1,000-yearold monastery presiding over the surrounding farmland from its hill a couple of kilometres to the south. The same hills would have been there 1,500 years ago. This was Hun land, just, but right on the edge of the Roman territory, because the Romans never left Aquincum, the town on which Budapest now stands, 100 kilometres to the east. And this part of Pannonia was under Hun rule for only 20 years, from 433 to 454. What were they doing, these rich Huns, burying these valuables in an unmarked hole?

These were things valued by those who hid them: iron horse-bits, two-edged swords about a metre long and a bow, both weapons adapted for decorative or ritual purposes with little 3- or 4-centimetre rectangles
and clover-shaped pieces of wafer-thin gold foil, worked with circular and oval patterns. Similar gold pieces were also used to decorate reins. They were attached with bronze tacks, the points of which were neatly folded over. In his paper on the finds, published in 1986, Tomka pointed out that some of these are stylistically identical to others found in the Rhineland and near the Sea of Azov, which for Tomka is proof of the extent of the Hun empire. ‘The two groups, separated by many thousands of kilometres [about 2,000], are linked geographically and chronologically by the Pannonhalma find.’

There is meaning, too, in what was not there. No arrowheads; no coins; no buckles (such as are common in other finds). So this is neither a time capsule of everyday objects nor a proper treasure trove of real wealth or loot. They were things loaded with emotional significance, but useless in any practical sense.

‘The really exciting things were the bow-decorations,’ Tomka said, leaning forward urgently. Other finds contained similar horn ears, but not little bits of gold like this, with net-like and fir-tree-like patterning. ‘No parallels! Unique! The golden bow of the Huns!’ He gave another delighted laugh.

‘A bow that was actually used?’

‘Good question. There was no bow, of course, just the decorations. After all, these things were just lying in the earth. There must have been a wooden box once, because the nails were there, but all the wood had rotted away, like the sword-scabbards. I believe that with such a bow, decorated with very fine gold leaf,
you would not be able to shoot, because the decorations would fall off. It must have been a symbol of power, a status symbol. I like to joke – but also I’m serious – that it must have been the status symbol of Attila himself. Perhaps the original had the fingerprints of Attila.’

Well, the likely location of Attila’s HQ was almost 200 kilometres to the south-east. But a status symbol makes sense. Tomka speaks of a ceremony, recorded during Hun times and extremely widespread among steppe people, in which the funeral involved a feast, during which special items like horse harnesses and weapons would be placed on show. The dead man’s soul would not yet have risen to Heaven, and he would need his familiar objects around him on earth – not his real wealth, of course, because that would be shared among his heirs, but his cult objects. Then, when the time came for the final farewell, which might be months or even a year later, an effigy of the departed would be burned, along with – often, but not always – his cult objects, the remains of which were then buried nearby. Over 100 such sacrificial repositories have been found, and in none were there any human bones. ‘And so’, concludes Tomka, ‘we can no longer doubt that the Pannonhalma find is the buried remains of a funeral sacrifice.’

But Pannonhalma is 100 kilometres west of Aquincum, Roman Budapest. Some important Hun had established himself well inside what had until recently been Roman territory, up in rolling hills and woodlands which are not as well suited to herds as the open
puszta
.
Attila’s new empire is reaching westwards and northwards; and men like this and his surviving family would need slaves, and possessions, and cash, and land if their way of life were to be maintained, and their loyalty assured.