Night Attila Died [Hardcover]

The classic story of Attila's death was handed down by the historian Jordanes in his "Gothic History," written in Constantinople about 100 years after Attila died. According to this narrative, Attila married a Germanic princess, Ildico, enjoyed a wild night of drunken revelry, and retired to his bed with his new bride. The next day, his guards found him dead with Ildico weeping by his side--he had evidently drowned from a nosebleed during his drunken stupor.

Not a very flattering ending for the Scourge of God--and that, according to Babcock, is exactly the point. The author uses his skills as a philologist to explore the ancient texts and what they have to say about Attila's life and, ultimately, his death. It turns out there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that Jordanes wasn't telling the truth. Babcock theorizes that Attila was murdered, possibly in revenge for the death of Bleda (the Hun's elder brother) and almost certainly with the complicity of the eastern and western Roman empires. And once Attila was gotten rid of, the historians and their powerful patrons conspired to make sure that his death would be remembered as a humiliating one, the better to discourage those who would attack the divinely protected Roman world.

The conclusion that Attila was murdered is not all that surprising--he was a violent man in a violent time, and the traditional story of his demise sounds too much like a fable with a moral attached. After all, if you're a powerful, warlike Hun, what could be worse than to die in the comfort of your bed rather than on the battlefield?

But it doesn't matter whether you ultimately agree with Babcock that Attila was murdered--what's enjoyable about "The Night Attila Died" is the journey through ancient texts and Wagnerian operas, through half-remembered legends and and the detritus of time. From the standpoint of his prospective victims, the method of Attila's death was less important than the critical fact that "Attila died." For the rest of us, there's an intriguing murder mystery here with lots of clues--shifty suspects, questionable motives, lots of people with opportunity, and plenty of self-serving testimony. Attila's death was and is a great story, and Babcock has done a nice job of telling it.

For further reading about the Huns and their depradations, consider Patrick Howarth's "Attila, King of the Huns: The Man and the Myth" (short and readable) and Hugh Kennedy's "Mongols, Huns and Vikings," which does a great job of explaining why nomads like the Huns were such effective warriors--and how and why civilized societies were ultimately able to defeat them.

Dr. Michael Babcock makes a compelling case that Attila the Hun did not die of natural causes - a nosebleed - but instead was murdered. Given the lifestyle Attila led, the liklihood of murder is a much higher probability in any case, than natural causes ... Like a modern detective the author examines the key players who had something to gain by Attila's death. He discovers the clues obtained from historical documents, some of which were altered in an attempt to mislead anyone who was looking for evidence, but just enough detail is left that points to an assasination plot which succeeded.

The author suspected something was amiss in the generally accepted explanations for Attila's death when he was a student of philology (the study of reconstructing the past from words, taking into consideratin culture, history, phonetics and graphics). The author read the detailed account of Attila's death initially in the book "Gothic History" by Jordanes which included a tightly constructed explanation filled with precise details ... however the account was written a hundred years after Attila's death. It was written based on a historical document left by Priscus, a Fifth Century historian and diplomat. Priscus had attended Attila's court in 449 A.D. and a detailed description of this event survived in his autobiography. Unfortunately, Priscus's account of Attila's death did not survive, the only thing which remained was the second hand version written by Jordanes ...

The most fascinating information contained within this book is how the politics of the past are revealed. At the time, the Roman Empire was separated into East and West: Marcinion was Emperor in the East and Valintinian III ruled as Emperor of Rome. Rome was losing some of its provinces as new nations in Europe were born from their ashes. Each of the two Empires had reasons to see Attila dead ... The book captures the imagination of the reader taking one back to ancient times. The reader's eyes are openedas to how different factions influenced and swayed each Empire and how power was wielded behind the scenes by those who could manipulate events to their own advantage. Whether or not the author is correct can not be factually proven but he provides enough information to make a great case for his side. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

Here is the tale of Attila's death in the year 453 as told by Edward Gibbon in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire": "Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria[*], were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by the treaty. Yet, in the mean while, Attila relieved his tender anxiety by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour from the banquet to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures or his repose the greater part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger, as well as the death of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst: and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. His body was solemnly exposed in the midst of the plain under a silken pavilion and the chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions, chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world."

Gibbon was paraphrasing a surviving fragment written by a Sixth Century Byzantine historian named Jordanes, who got his information from an earlier Sixth Century post-imperial Roman historian named Cassiodorus (whose works are now entirely lost), who almost certainly was following a now-lost portion of the work of the Fifth Century historian Priscus, a resident of Constantinople who had actually met Attila and had narrowly escaped being crucified by him.

Michael A. Babcock, the author of this book, thinks it's all a pack of lies and he sets out to prove it. This is a formidable task, for there are no other original sources about the death of Attila. Oh, a few religious writers removed by more than a century in time and half a continent in distance made brief, offhand comments to the effect that Attila had indeed died--no details provided. And some Germanic poets remembered a mighty king, Etzel or maybe Atli, who had come to an unpleasant end in his great hall.

Undismayed by a total lack of anything solid upon which to build, Babcock begins by speaking warmly of an early Twentieth Century scholar, a philologist who "viewed the past as a palimpsest that can only be read once the layers are painstakingly scraped away." Despite the surely depressing fact that the scholar had "concluded that the 'official' historical record was indeed correct," Babcock soldiers on, saying, "Through the same methodology I have reached a very different conclusion: the official account of Attila's death is an elaborate cover story. How can a 'science' yield such different answers? ... We've entered into one of those murky areas, like psychology, where 'expert testimony' must be relied on." Babcock, of course, is the expert and his is the testimony.

Murky areas indeed.

Babcock's version of the "true story" is this: Following the death of the utterly useless Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II, the elderly but vigorous soldier-emperor Marcian took command at Constantinople. Theodosius had bumbled an attempt to assassinate Attila--a scheme in which poor unwitting Priscus had been offered up as a sacrificial pawn. The competent Marcian tried again, successfully this time and ordered Priscus, now his court historian, to cover up the murder by attributing the death of Attila to his own bad habits--and the hand of God, of course. Or maybe it was Aetius, the last really competent soldier in the history of the Western Empire, who put the hit on Attila. And maybe Aetius cozied up to Marcian, who then told Priscus to tidy up a cover story.

And this is the domus that Jack built.

Babcock reached his alternative truth by a process of what he called slow and careful reading. His reading applies to texts in late imperial Latin, post-classical Greek, medieval German and Old Icelandic. It is, however, his reading of a text in English that throws up serious doubts about his abilities in general. Let us return to Edward Gibbon and his statement that while waiting for Princess Honoria,* "Attila relieved his tender anxiety by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives." Babcock goes on at some length about a failed love affair in the life of Edward Gibbon to explain why the Englishman chose the words "tender anxiety." The separation of two lovers, you see, had struck a personal chord, and Babcock's philological science had dredged up a fragment of autobiography in "The Decline and Fall." To that discovery, I can only say horse...ahem...puckey! If a philologist of Babcock's supposed expert standing can't recognize a perfectly obvious piece of irony in his own living language, how can we possibly accept his judgements about dead ones?

Babcock also suffers from a common sort of linguistic shift often found in books about Area 51, UFOs, and the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays: every "may" and "might" transforms itself into a "must." Here is an example of that shift. Priscus was in Egypt on a diplomatic mission to Alexandria when Attila died. Babcock writes: "Then one day an ordinary ship from Constantinople arrived in the harbor.... In a scene that was reenacted dozens of times across the Empire, the crew disembarked and the news spilled out onto the dock and into the streets. Attila is dead. [Italicized in the original.] Priscus must have rushed down to the dock when he heard the news." It might have happened just that way, but there is not a single shred of evidence to support this neat little picture of the seaborne spread of the news or of Priscus rushing anywhere at all.

This is a book that is convincing to the author and to true believers. I am not among their number. I am giving it three stars because the author presents the gross facts of Fifth Century Roman history in a generally reliable and sometimes entertaining manner. As to his conclusions, while it's conceivable he might be right, he certainly hasn't convinced me.
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*Justa Grata Honoria was the sister of the Western emperor, Valentinian III, a monarch who--incredibly!--managed to be even less effective than Theodosius II. It seems that Honoria had offered herself in marriage to Attila, whom even Valentinian could recognize as a very dangerous sort of brother-in-law. Honoria disappears from the fragmented historical record of the time. She is not present in the list of booty carried off by the Vandals when they sacked Rome a few years later. There are hints that Valentinian locked her up in a tower or maybe executed her for treason or maybe both.

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