Attila the Hun (25 page)

Well, really. Have you ever heard anything so unlikely? This unnamed man, who had had a wife, a business, a home, and lost the lot and lived through four wars and started again in a foreign land and rebuilt himself from scratch – he hears prim and pious phrases that come straight from some civil service handbook on how to sound like Socrates, and
he weeps
?

Many have remarked on Priscus’ presumed deficiencies here. A feeble and prolix declamation, says Gibbon. Indefensible . . . throws a sinister light on his recording abilities, says Thompson. But I think he knows exactly what he’s up to. It’s a common device of the scholar or civil servant who wishes to criticize: This is just a hypothesis or the opinion of others, which of course I
do not support, so it’s not my fault if my readers take it seriously. Galileo later used this ploy in his
Dialogue
proposing a sun-centred solar-system; so did Luther in his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ condemning the pope and setting off the Reformation. In a minor way, this is what Priscus is doing – using a chance meeting to sneak in a sharp critique of Roman society, then making it even more persuasive by countering it with no more than tight-lipped and tedious pedantry. This is why the man remains anonymous: Priscus blows the incident up out of proportion, and would not wish either to embarrass his source or to risk a rebuttal. His protest is to be taken not with tears, but with a knowing nod and many grains of salt.

T
he doors open. A message is passed, and answered. Onegesius emerges, receives gifts, and comes to see Maximinus, who urges him to visit Rome as an ambassador and work out a new peace treaty. Onegesius is aloof. He will do only what Attila wants – ‘or do the Romans think that they will bring so much pressure on me that I will betray my master?’ Service to Attila, he says, is better than wealth among the Romans! Better for him to stay at home.

Next day, it falls to Priscus as go-between to make direct contact with Attila. He approaches the palace’s wooden wall, and is let in. Now he sees the true size of Attila’s compound, which contains a palace, a separate dining-hall and a large cluster of other buildings, some of planks ornamented with carvings, others of planks merely stripped of bark, planed and fitted,
some – belonging to Attila’s senior wife, Erekan – of planks rising from stone foundations. Now known to Hun officials, Priscus makes his way through a milling crowd of guards, servants, envoys from other barbarian tribes and ordinary Huns anxious to have Attila judge their complaints. Voices babble in Hunnish, Gothic, and Latin. Somewhere in the crowd are the members of the other Roman embassy, the ones who have come to settle the dispute of the golden bowls. Priscus enters the queen’s house, probably removing his sandals to walk over the felt rugs, and finds the queen reclining on a couch, Roman-style, surrounded by servant girls embroidering linen cloaks. There’s no interpreter to hand, so Priscus presents gifts, and takes his leave again.

He is in the crowd outside Attila’s palace when Attila and Onegesius come out. Attila has a habit of glancing around him (a trick of leadership taught to politicians and public speakers nowadays to help them grasp the attention of all and give an impression of authority). As petitioners make their appeals and receive judgement, members of the other Roman embassy come up to find out what’s going on. Priscus asks about the golden bowls affair. It’s not good news. Attila is adamant: it’s the bowls, or war. One of the team, Romulus, with long experience as an envoy, explains why. No previous ruler has ever achieved so much in so short a time. Power has made him arrogant. He’s ambitious for more, too. Wants to attack Persia.
Persia?
comes an astonished voice from the crowd, which prompts Romulus to tell the story of the war of 395, when the Huns raided
through the Caucasus and returned past the flaming rocks of the Caspian shore. Yes, it would soon be the Persians’ turn again.

‘Better the Persians than us.’

‘Yes, but what then?’ This is one of the senior western officials, from the bit of Pannonia now under Hun rule. Attila will return as master, he says. Now we call him an honorary general, so that our tributes look like regular payments. But if he defeats the Persians he won’t be interested in Roman gold. He’ll want to be addressed as king and make the Romans his servants. Already, he says, Hun generals are as good as Roman ones, and—

At this point Onegesius comes out. A flurry of questions ends with Maximinus being summoned to see Attila.

Inside, as he reports later, he gets short shrift. Attila wants ambassadors he knows, high-rankers like Nomus, Anatolius or Senator, men who have been before. When Maximinus says it might make the emperor suspect treachery if Attila prefers them, Attila says: Do as I say, unless you want war.

Back at the tent, as he is pondering what to do, a dinner invitation arrives for the Romans. This is their first opportunity to see Attila relaxing, if he ever does. When the time comes, the Romans walk up to the dining-hall, where waiters offer a cup of wine so that guests can make a prayer before being seated.

Note the wine. Traditionally the Huns drank
kumiss
, fermented mare’s milk, and barley beer. Wine was a new addition to the Hun diet, an important trade
item, and a welcome part of formal feasts like this one.

There’s Attila, in everyday clothing, even his bootlaces free of the usual Hun adornments, sword at his side, sitting on a Roman-style couch, with young Ellac sitting deferentially on the end, his broken right arm presumably bound up. He’s a king in his own right now, but he doesn’t look like it, his eyes downcast in awe of his father. His brother Ernak, Attila’s favourite, sits on a chair beside him. Actually, Priscus now sees, this dining-hall is also Attila’s official bedroom. Behind Attila is a second couch, and behind that a few steps lead up to a bed screened off by ornate and colourful hangings of linen and silk.

The chairs line the walls, each chair with its waiter. Priscus does not count the number, but I imagine 30 or 40, as befits a state banquet with Roman embassies from both eastern and western capitals. Onegesius is on Attila’s right, the side of honour, with other Hun notables ranging away along the same wall. The Romans are seated on the left. Waiters offer gold and silver goblets. A waiter gives Attila wine in a wooden cup. The king formally greets everyone in turn, his cup being passed to each guest, who takes a sip and returns it, at which point everyone sips from his own cup. Priscus has a hard time explaining exactly how this long introduction is done, but it sounds like a cross between a Roman drinking session and a Christian communion service. Then tables are carried in, one for each group of three or four, so that everyone can eat without leaving his place. Now comes the food: meat of various kinds and bread, on silver platters – for
everyone except Attila, who makes a show of his simple, honest nomad roots by using a wooden plate and his wooden cup.

The first course ends, and all must stand, drain their cups, toast Attila and wish him good health. Now comes another course. Priscus does not record what exactly is served: he is not interested in food, and besides, his gaze is getting blurry, the impressions running together. It’s just a different lot of cooked dishes. End of second course. Everyone stands. Another toast, once again the whole cup to be drained. It’s got dark. Here come pine torches, and it’s time for entertainment. Two bards chant songs of their own composition in praise of Attila’s victories and his courage. This is very affecting. Around the hall young men recall the battles with nods and smiles, old men become tearful. Now it’s the turn of a comedian. For a Roman, it is hard to imagine anything worse than a Hunnish comedian, and of course his act goes entirely over Roman heads. Priscus dismisses the man as deranged,
uttering outlandish, unintelligible and altogether crazy words
. But to the Huns he is a hoot. They fall about with laughter.

And the best is still to come. This is the moment they’ve all been waiting for. It’s Zercon, the hobbling, noseless, hunchback dwarf captured in Libya who had been Bleda’s jester. Everyone knows the story of how he ran away, was recaptured and received a wife from among his master’s entourage. When a year or two later Bleda was murdered, Attila parted Zercon from his wife and gave him to Aetius, who gave him back to Aspar, his original master. What a strange life Zercon
has had, snatched from beggary in Libya and then passed between patricians, generals and chiefs from Romans to Huns to Romans, and now back at last to the Huns. It was the Skirian chief, Edika, with his international contacts, who had somehow brought him back to Attila’s court, having persuaded him that he had a right to reclaim his lost wife. Attila was not happy to see this reminder of Bleda, and the lost wife remained lost.

Now Zercon enters. He is not a dimwit; he knows his fate depends on his entertainment value; so he probably has an act, a speech of some kind, uttered with his usual lisp, and a deliberate mixture of Hunnish, Gothic and Latin. To modern sensibilities, it is a dreadful idea. Unfortunately, sensibility to deformity is quite modern. Most audiences until the early twentieth century would have loved it, as they loved bearded ladies and midgets and the Elephant Man. To get an idea of just how low this act is, imagine a black dwarf with crippled feet performing a music-hall song in a pastiche Franco-German accent, and with a lisp and a stutter. The onlookers fall about, point, slap their thighs, and laugh until the tears run.

All except Attila, who sits stony-faced and unmoving. After all, he has had Zercon on and off for the last seven years. Enough is enough. He responds only when young Ernak comes and stands by him. Ernak is special. As a Latin-speaking Hun whispers to Priscus, the shamans had told Attila that the Huns would fall, but their fortunes would be restored by Ernak. Attila draws his son closer with a soft hand on his cheek, and
smiles gently, while Zercon brings his bizarre performance to a close.

O
fficial business takes another five days: letters written for the emperor, a Roman woman prisoner ransomed for 500
solidi
, another meal arranged by Attila’s senior wife Erekan; and a final supper with Attila. They will leave with one matter to be resolved, concerning Constantius, the secretary sent to Attila by Aetius. Aetius had promised Constantius a wealthy wife. The emperor had found just the woman, but the arrangement had been scuppered by court politics. As part of the Roman–Hun interplay of bellicosity and diplomacy, Attila insists that his secretary shall have the promised wife. That is what has been agreed. Let it be so!

Then the embassy sets out on its journey home. It is not a happy one. They see a spy impaled – a grim reminder of Attila’s ruthlessness and the awful skills of his executioners – and two slaves dying a slow death for murder, hanging by their necks from V-shaped branches. Their main Hun companion turns nasty halfway, reclaiming the horse he had given as a gift.

And on the road from Constantinople, for there is only one, they meet Vigilas, returning with his Hun minder, Eslas, and the (carefully concealed) 50 pounds of gold which he is planning to give to Edika to fund the assassination of Attila. Since he was sent off to discuss fugitives and prisoners, his return is no big secret. He has no Hun fugitives with him, but he does presumably carry another letter from the emperor on the
subject. He is at the head of a mini-embassy of slaves and horses, and blithely unaware that he is walking into a trap. He cannot, of course, learn the truth, because it is known only to Edika and Attila, and Edika has not been seen or heard of since his muttered briefing to Vigilas just after he spilled the beans to Attila. It does not seem to occur to him that one of the main struts of the plot – that there should be a high-level Roman delegation in Hun lands when Attila is assassinated, ostensibly by his own officers – has been cut away. So confident is Vigilas that he has brought along his son as a companion.

Priscus will learn later what happens. When Vigilas crosses into Hun lands, Attila’s men are waiting. An escort would be in order, a pleasant surprise. It turns into a nasty shock. He is arrested, searched, relieved of his bag of gold and dragged with his son before Attila.

So what exactly is all this gold for? asks Attila, as if he didn’t know.

For me, for the others – Attila allows Vigilas to stumble on, miring himself in a swamp of deceit and pompous words – so that we might not fail to achieve the object of the embassy through lack of supplies. Or, he struggles, or . . . through the inadequacy of the horses and baggage animals. In case they became exhausted on the long journey, and more had to be bought. (In which case, what need of the gold in Hun lands, now that the Romans have left?) And to purchase captives. So many in Roman territory had begged him to ransom their relatives.

What Vigilas might have done, had he been truly sure
of himself, was to come back at Attila with outrage at such treatment – an ambassador arrested and robbed! Unheard of! The emperor will hear of this, etc., etc. Instead, he stands condemned by his own mealy-mouthed words.

‘Worthless beast!’
yells Attila, who does anger very effectively. These are his words as Priscus reports them:
‘You will escape justice no longer with your tricks! Your excuses cannot save you from punishment!’
Vigilas is being treated as a mere criminal, and a Hun criminal at that, not the Roman that he is, let alone a diplomat. Attila is very sure of his ground, and rants on. The money is much more than any delegation needs for provisions, horses, baggage animals and captives. And, anyway, Vigilas must surely recall that Attila refused to ransom captives when he first came with Maximinus.