READING HALL

BIOGRAPHY UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS, AND HIS PREDECESSORS

Chapter II.

The Kings of the Huns before the coming of Attila

7. Nations bordering on the Huns before they entered Europe.

Ammianus Marcellinus, who died soon after the Huns entered Europe, states that the Alans occupied in his time the immeasurable and uncultivated wastes of the Scythians beyond the Tanais, taking their name from that of a mountain. The Neuri inhabited the midland parts near some abrupt hills, which were exposed to the north wind and severe frost. Next to them dwelt, the Budini, and the Geloni, a warlike people who flayed their slain enemies and made coverings of the human skins for themselves and their horses.

The Agathyrsi bordered on them, who dyed both their bodies and their hair with blue spots; the lower classes with few and small marks, the nobles with thicker spots more deeply stained.

The Melanchaenae and Anthropophagi were said to wander on the skirts of these nations, devouring their captives, and a large tract reaching to the north­east towards the Chinese was understood to be left unoccupied by the withdrawal of various tribes from the vicinity of those ferocious marauders.

The Alans had spread themselves very widely towards the east, where they had many populous tribes, who reached even to the banks of the Ganges. Like the Huns they had neither plough, nor cottage; they lived on flesh and milk, in wagons with curved coverings of bark. When they arrived at a grassy district, they arranged their wagons in a circle, and as soon as the grass was consumed, they shifted their quarters. The plains which they frequented were very productive of grass, and interspersed with tracts that bore apples or other fruit, which they consumed when occasion required. Their tender years were passed in the wagons, but they were early habituated to ride, and esteemed it disgraceful to walk, and were all by instruction skilful and expert warriors.

They were universally tall and well made, with yellowish hair, and remarkable by their eyes, in which ferocity was tempered with a more pleasing expression; swift in their movements, lightly armed, and much like the Huns in everything, but more polished in their dress and mode of living, making inroads both to hunt and plunder, as far as the Cimmerian Bosporus, and into Armenia and Media. Perils and warfare were their delight; the slaughter of a man their highest boast; and they reviled with bitterness those who lived to old age or died by accidents, esteeming it blessed to fall in battle. They fastened the hairy scalps of their enemies to their horses for trappings and ornament. They erected no temples, but planted a naked sword with barbarous rites in the ground and worshipped it as the protector of the district round which they had arranged their wagons. They had a singular mode of divining by collecting together a number of straight twigs, and after a time separating them again with some sort of incantation. Slavery was unknown amongst them; and the whole nation was considered to be of noble blood. Their judges were chosen on account of the prowess they had shown in warfare.

8. Entrance of the Huns into Europe. Reign of Balamer. King Box.

Upon these nations the Huns were driven by the inroads of the Tartars, who continued to force them towards the west. In the interval between the years 318 and 374, advancing northward of the Caspian, they subdued the Alans, associating numbers of them with themselves, and forcing the rest to take refuge in Europe.

In 374 they crossed the Maeotian swamp, or at least the river Tanais, into Europe. They had long considered the marshes to be an impenetrable girdle, till one of their nation, named Baudetes, having adventured more than usual in pursuit of a stag, succeeded in penetrating through them, and on his return communicated the important intelligence to his countrymen. Bishop Jornandes says that the stag led on the hunters by occasionally stopping to entice them, till it had conducted them into European Scythia, which he verily believes the foul spirits from whom they were descended devised out of enmity to its inhabitants.

The Huns profited immediately by the discovery of this passage, which opened to them a new world, and, whether they really crossed the Maeotis stagnant and choked with reeds or the Tanais higher up, they soon pushed their victorious arms to the banks of the Danube. They immediately attacked and reduced the Alipzuri and several other tribes, not omitting to sacrifice a due proportion of the first captives they made, according to the Scythian custom, to the Sword-God whom they worshipped. The hideous appearance of their swarthy and cicatrized faces, their short, stout, and erect figures, the swiftness of their steeds, and the skill of their archers, spread dismay on all sides, and they came like a hurricane upon the several nations who were peaceably depasturing the European banks of the Tanais.

The Alcidzuri, Itamari, Tuncassi, and Boisci, were subdued on the first inroad; and the following season was fatal to the liberty of the European Alans, excepting such as preferred to migrate westward, and seek the protection or extort the toleration of the Romans. Every conflict was a source of increased power to the Huns, who compelled the nations they subdued to join with them in further invasions, and with the sword of the Alans, united to their own, they now attacked the Goths.

Ermanric was at that time sovereign of the Goths, a man of very advanced years, who was then lingering under the effects of a wound received from Sarus and Animius, brothers of Sanielh or Sanilda, whom he had caused to be torn asunder by wild horses, to avenge himself on her husband, a chieftain of the Roxolani, who had revolted from him. The conjuncture was favorable to the invaders, and their king Balamer attacked the broad and fertile lands of Ermanric, who after vainly attempting to defend them, put an end to his own life. The Ostrogoths were subdued, having been previously weakened by the secession of the Visigoths, who had applied to the Roman emperor Valens to give them a part of Thrace or Moesia, south of the Danube, preferring a nominal dependance on the Romans, to the heavier yoke of the Hunnish invaders. The request was granted, and they were baptized into the creed of Valens, who was an Arian. Ermanric having perished, the Ostrogoths remained subject to the Huns, under the administration of Winithar or Withimir of the family of the Amali, who retained the insignia of royalty.

The Gepidae were reduced under subjection to the Huns at the same period, and so rapid was their progress, that, within two years after crossing the Moeotis, they wrested the Pannonias from the Romans, either by force of arms, or by negotiation. In 378 Fritigern, king of those Goths, who had inundated Thrace, being irritated by Lupicinus and Maximus, and pressed by famine, made war upon the Romans. He was assisted by the Huns and Alans whom he subsidized, and many actions took place with various success. Valens, alarmed at their progress, made a hasty peace with the Persians, and returned suddenly from Antioch to Constantinople. Gratian advanced with a considerable force to form a junction with the army of Valens, but the latter, confident of victory, and fearful of losing, or of sharing with Gratian, the luster of that success which he anticipated, rashly attacked the Goths and their allies at the twelfth milestone from Adrianople near Perinthus. 

The Armenian cavalry were routed by the first charge of the Goths, and left the infantry completely exposed to the enemy. The attack of the horse was supported by a shower of arrows, in the use of which the Huns were particularly skilful, and the Roman infantry was completely routed and cut to pieces by the swords and billhooks of the barbarians.

Valens took refuge in a house, where he was burnt alive by his pursuers, a practice not uncommon amongst the Scandinavian nations.

Gratian, receiving intelligence of this disaster, immediately recalled from Spain Theodosius, who in the following year repaired the falling fortunes of Rome, and, both by successful conflicts and by conciliatory offers and presents, put an end to the war. The pacification was however of short duration, and in 380 Gratian, being molested by the Huns, obtained the assistance of the Goths whom he took into his service.

It was probably at this time, that Balamer king of the Huns violated the treaties be had made with the Romans, and laid waste many towns and much of their territory with his armies, stating that his subjects were in want of the necessaries of life. The Romans sent an embassy to him, and promised to pay him nineteen pounds weight of gold annually, on condition of his abstaining from a renewal of such incursions. Whether the Ostrogoths had taken part with the Romans or not in 380, Winithar soon after attempted to throw off the Hunnish yoke, and his efforts were eminently successful. In the first encounter he captured a Hunnish king called Box, together with his sons, and seventy men of distinction, all of whom he crucified, to terrify the rest of their countrymen. Nothing else is known concerning this Hunnish prince, but it seems that from the time of the invasion of Europe in 374 till the murder of Bleda by his brother Attila, the Huns were never governed by a sole king.

For a short time Winithar the Goth reigned independent; Balamer, with the assistance of Sigismund the son of Hunnimund the Ostrogoth, who continued faithful to the Huns, attacked him, but was discomfited in two successive engagements. In the third battle on the banks of the river Erac, Balamer killed him, having wounded him surreptitiously in the head with an arrow, as they were approaching to each other. The defeat of his partisans was complete. Balamer married his grand­daughter Waladamarea, and possessed the whole empire, a Gothic prince however ruling over the Ostrogoths under the authority of the Huns.

Hunnimund the son of Ermanric succeeded to Winithar, and fought successfully against the Suevi. His son Thorismond reigned after him, and in the second year after his accession gained a great victory over the Gepidae, but was killed by the fall of his horse. The Goths greatly lamented him, and remained forty years after his death without a king, Berismund his son having followed the Visigoths into the west to avoid the Hunnish ascendancy. Balamer died in 386, soon after his marriage, probably leaving no children, and it is not known who immediately succeeded him.

9. Bela, Cheve, Cadica, kings of the Huns.

The first king mentioned by the Roman writers after this period is Huldin, but nothing is detailed concerning him before the year 400.

It seems probable that the three kings Bela, Cheve, and Cadica, named by the Hungarians as having reigned simultaneously, belong to the reign of Balamer, and perhaps Bela was the real name of the king who was styled by the Romans Balamerus. Under them was said to have been fought a great battle at a place called Potentiana, which from its circumstances seems referable to the period when the Huns first occupied Pannonia, seven or eight years before the death of Balamer.

Bela, Cheve, and Cadica, pitched their camp upon the Teiss. Maternus, being at that time praefect of Pannonia, administered the affairs of Dalmatia, Mysia, Achaea, Thrace, and Macedonia. He solicited the aid of Detricus (Dietric or Theodoric), who then ruled over a part of Germany, and having collected a great miscellaneous force to resist the common enemy, they encamped at Zaazhalon in Pannonia, not far from the southern bank of the Danube, and remained posted near Potentiana and Thethis.

The Huns crossed the Danube below the site of Buda, surprised the allied army in the night, and routed them with great slaughter, and encamped in the vale of Tharnok. There the Huns were attacked in their turn, when the allies had rallied their scattered forces, and after a severe contest the Huns were compelled in the evening to recross the Danube and return to their former position, but the victorious army was too much weakened to pursue them, and, fearful of a fresh attack, retired to Tulna, a town of Austria in the neighborhood of Vienna.

It seems extremely improbable that a narrative so circumstantial and apparently impartial, though discredited by some modern writers, should be entirely fabulous, and the persons mentioned in it fictitious. It is evident, that it must be referred to the period when the Goths and Romans were acting together, that is the year 380, when, according to the Latin writers, the Goths asked the assistance of Gratian against the Huns, and when, according to Priscus, Balamer violated the treaties and laid waste much of the Roman territory; Balamer (perhaps identical with Bela) being the chief sovereign, Box, Cheve, and Cadica, inferior kings over portions of the Huns.

10. Mundiuc. Huldin. Radagais.

To Balamer probably succeeded immediately Mundiuc, the father of Attila, but nothing is known of the particular actions of his life, and he is never named as concerned either with or against the Romans, in any military operations. In 388 the Huns were employed by Gratian against the Juthungi in Bavaria, and destined to act against Maximus in Gaul. In 394 they sent auxiliaries to Theodosius mixed with Alans and Goths under Gaines, Sanies, and Bacurius. In 397 it seems that Theotimus, bishop of Tomi or Tomiswar in Bulgaria, converted some Huns to Christianity, and it is not improbable that these converts were the persons whom Rhuas and Attila redemanded and crucified. From about the year 400 till 411 Huldin commanded the Huns in immediate contact with the empire, but we have no reason for supposing him to have been sole monarch of the Hunnish nation.

In 400 he killed Gaines, and sent his head to Arcadius. In conjunction with Sarus who was king over a portion of the Goths, Huldin and his Huns afforded assistance to Rome in 406, when Radagais had invaded Italy. Radagais is said to have been the most savage of all the barbarian monarchs. So strangely were the various nations blended, who were set in motion by the irruption of the Huns, and the pressure of the Asiatic Alans and other tribes upon the pastoral nations of Europe, that it is not known of what people this mighty commander was originally the ruler. Probably he was king of the Obotritae, or some other nation in the neighborhood of Mecklenberg, where he was worshipped as a God after his death.

He has been styled by most writers king of the Goths, because a great part of his force was Gothic, but there is no reason to suppose he was a Visigoth, and he certainly was not an Ostrogoth. Orosius calls him a pagan and Scythian, which conveys no distinct information, and it is even not unlikely that he may have been a Slavonian. Whatever was his own nation, he had been a most successful adventurer, swelling his army with the fighting men of the tribes which he successively overthrew, and drawing others to his camp by the renown of his name, till he had collected an immense confederated army of Vandals, Sueves, Burgundians, Alans, and Goths. With this force he entered Italy, and laying waste the whole country north of the Po, he prepared to besiege Florence at the head of 200,000 soldiers; threatening that he would raze the fortifications of Rome, and burn her palaces; that he would sacrifice the most distinguished patricians to his Gods, and compel the rest to adopt the mastruca, or garment of skin dressed with the hair on, that was worn by some of the barbarous nations.

The approach of this formidable enemy filled the Roman capital with dismay: the pagans thought that under the protection and with the assistance of the Gods, whom he was said to conciliate by daily immolations of human victims, it was impossible for him to be overcome, because the Romans neither offered to the Gods any such sacrifices, nor permitted them to be offered by any one. There was a concourse of heathens in the town, all believing that they were visited with this scourge, because the sacred rites of the great Gods had been neglected. Loud complaints were made, and it was proposed to resume immediately the celebration of the ancient worship, and throughout the whole city the name of Christ was loaded with blasphemies; but the degenerate Romans were more disposed to curse and offer up sacrifice, than to fight in defence of the empire. A very small force was collected under Stilicho, and the defence of Italy was entrusted to Huldin with a Hunnish, Sarus with a Gothic, and Goar with an Alan, force of hired auxiliaries.

The prudent measures of Stilicho ensured their success. The invading army was camped on the arid ridge above Faesulae, ill furnished with water and provisions. Stilicho conducted his approaches with such skill, that he blocked up all the avenues, and rendered it impossible for the enemy to draw out his army in line against him. Without the uncertainty of a hazardous conflict, without any loss to be compensated by victory, the army defending Rome ate, drank, and were merry, while the invaders hungered, and thirsted, and pined away without hope of extricating themselves from their calamitous situation. Radagais despairing abandoned his army, fled, and was intercepted.

The conqueror has been accused of sullying the glory of this achievement, by the deliberate murder or execution of his prisoner. A third part of the army surrendered, and the captives were so numerous, that herds of them were sold for single pieces of gold, and such was their misery, that the greater part of them perished after having been purchased. The entire credit of the discomfiture of the invaders, is given by the writers of that age to the troops of Huldin and Sarus, and the Roman forces are not mentioned.

There were twelve thousand noble Goths whom the Latins called optimati in the army of Radagais, and with these, after the disaster of their leader, Stilicho entered into confederacy. It appears by the chronicle of Prosper, that the army of Radagais was separated in three divisions under distinct chiefs; one division only perished at Faesulae; the other two were untouched, and his remaining Goths were afterwards diverted by Stilicho into Gaul. It seems that there must have been treachery in the invading army, which was not unlikely to occur, seeing that it consisted principally of Goths, and that he was besieged by Goths under Sarus.

Supposing the two other divisions of the army of Radagais to have been faithful to him, it could scarcely be doubted that, when he quitted the troops who were surrounded at Faesulae, he was attempting to rejoin them, for the purpose of leading them on to raise the blockade, and was intercepted in that undertaking: but a due consideration of the subject will lead us to suspect that the account given by Aventinus is correct, that Huldin and Sarus had entered Italy in concert with Radagais, but were seduced from his authority by Stilicho. Their force must have been part of the two divisions which remained uncaptured, and the Goths of Sarus a portion of the very troops which Stilicho afterwards persuaded to remove their quarters into Gaul; for it is impossible otherwise to explain how a sufficient power of Huns and Goths could be at hand to oppose an army of 200,000 men, which had already overrun and laid waste all the north of Italy, and had placed itself between Stilicho and the dominions of the Huns. The probability is therefore strong, that Stilicho discomfited Radagais by means of his own auxiliaries, having by negotiation drawn off from him two-thirds of his army, and surrounded the remainder, which might have consisted of sixty or seventy thousand men nominally, but probably was already reduced by the rude invasion of a hostile country.

11. Charato.

From this period during some years the Huns do not appear to have manifested any decided hostility to the Romans. In 409 a small force of Hunnish auxiliaries assisted them to defeat Ataulfus, and in 410 Honorius appears to have hired a body of Huns to oppose the progress of Alaric, which is not surprising, as the Huns were certainly not united under any sole monarch, and both they and the Goths seem at that time to have been ready to assist the highest bidder. The peaceable demeanor of the Huns towards the empire is probably the reason that so little has reached us concerning their kings at this period.

No mention of Huldin occurs after the campaign against Radagais, and, although we are told that the Hunnish satellites or auxiliaries of Stilicho were destroyed when he himself was killed, we hear of no Hunnish king, till the brief mention which is made by Photius, in detailing the contents of the work of Olympiodorus, of Charato, chief of the Hunnish petty kings. The circumstances mentioned by him are certainly referable to the period between the usurpation of Jovinus in 411 and his death in 413.

Olympiodorus was sent on an embassy from Constantinople to Donatus and the Hunnish princes, whose marvelous skill in archery struck him with astonishment. Who Donatus was is not known, but he must have been either a Hunnish king, or a chieftain of some nation closely connected with them. Donatus was ensnared by an oath, probably of safe conduct, and unlawfully and treacherously put to death by the Romans. Charato the chief of the Hunnish kings was greatly exasperated, but the Romans contrived to appease his resentment by presents. Nothing further is known of Charato; he may have been the chief ruler of the Huns, or which is more probable, only the first of the petty kings under Mundiuc.

12. Aetius

From the year 413 no true historical competitor appears to contest the occupation of the Hunnish throne with Mundiuc, though a false king has been conjured up by Pray in his Hungarian annals, in the person of Rugas or Rhoilus. At this period the celebrated Roman Aetius was a hostage in the Hunnish court, having been previously three years a hostage to Alaric the Goth. It is most probable that he was given as surety to the Huns for the safe return of the auxiliary force which they sent in 410 against Alaric. He was the son of Gaudentius, by birth a Scythian or Goth, who had risen from the condition of a menial to the highest rank in the cavalry.

His mother was a noble and wealthy Italian, and at the time of his birth his father was a man of praetorian dignity. Aetius, having passed his youth as a hostage at the courts of Alaric and the Hunnish king, married the daughter of Carpileo, was made a count, and had the superintendence of the domestics and palace of Joannes. He was a man of middle size, of manly habits, well made, neither slight nor heavy, active in mind and limbs, a good horseman, a good archer and poleman, of consummate military skill, and equally adroit in the conduct of civil affairs; neither avaricious, nor covetous, endowed with great mental accomplishments, and never swerving from his purpose at the instigation of bad advisers; very patient of injuries, desirous at all times of laborious occupation, regardless of danger, bearing without inconvenience hunger, thirst, and watchfulness; to whom it is known to have been foretold in his early youth that he was destined to rise to great authority.

Such is the character given of him by a contemporary writer; to all which might have been added, that he was a consummate villain, a treacherous subject, a fake Christian, and a double dealer in every action of his life. In 423 his patron Joannes, known by the name of John the tyrant, (which title only implies that he possessed himself of unlawful authority) seized the opportunity of the death of Honorius to assume the sovereign power, and sent ambassadors to Theodosius, who threw them into prison. In order to strengthen himself against the attack which he had reason to expect, he dispatched Aetius, who was then superintendant of his palace, with a great weight of gold to the Huns, with many of whom he had become united by close ties of personal friendship, while he was a hostage at their court.

In 425 the Huns entered Italy under the guidance of Aetius. Their number has been estimated at 60,000. It is not known by whom they were commanded, though it has been asserted that Attila was then twenty-five years old and headed the expedition. At this critical moment Joannes was killed, and the subtle Aetius immediately made his peace with Valentinian, who was glad to receive the traitor into favor, on condition of his removing the formidable army of invaders from Italy. Having advanced in compliance with the request of Aetius, and already received the gold of Joannes, they were easily prevailed upon to withdraw by him who had conducted them, and they appear to have returned home without committing any outrages, which marks the great influence that Aetius had acquired over their leaders.

13. Rhuas.

It seems however most probable that they were commanded by Rhuas, who in the succeeding year threatened that he would destroy Constantinople, and probably made an incursion into the territory of the Eastern emperor, though the marvelous account which is given of the expedition by contemporary writers is a gross and palpable falsehood, which must be detailed only to be confuted.

Theodoret, who lived at the time when this event is said to have taken place, after speaking of the destruction of pagan temples and the general superintendence of Providence, says, “for indeed when Rhoilus the leader of the Nomad Scythians both crossed the Danube with an army of the greatest magnitude, and laid waste and plundered Thrace, and threatened that he would besiege the imperial city, and take it by main force, and utterly destroy it, God having struck him with lightning and bolts of fire from above, both destroyed him byfire, and extinguished the whole of his army”. 

Socrates, also cotemporaneous, writes to the following effect: “After the slaughter of John the tyrant, the barbarians, whom he had called to his assistance against the Romans, were prepared to overrun the Roman possessions. The emperor Theodosius, having heard this, according to his custom, left the care of these things to the Almighty; and, applying himself to prayer, not long after obtained the things which he desired; for what straightway befell the barbarians, it is good to hear. Their leader, whose name was Rugas, dies, having been struck by lightning, and a pestilence supervening consumed the greater part of the men who were with him; and this struck the barbarians with the greatest terror, not so much because they had dared to take up arms against the noble nation of the Romans, as because they found it assisted by the power of God”.

Well indeed might the Huns have trembled, and all Europe have quaked even to the present day at the recollection of such a manifest and terrible interposition of the Almighty, if the Hunnish king with an immense army had been so annihilated, and, as Socrates proceeds to say, in pursuance of an express prophecy: but it is easy to demonstrate the falsehood of the narrative.

Theodoret immediately subjoins to the passage cited from him, that the Lord did something of the same kind in the Persian war, when the Persians, having broken the existing treaty and attacked the Roman provinces, were overpowered by rain and hail; that in a former war, Gororanus having attacked a certain town, the archbishop alone broke his lofty towers and engines to pieces and saved the city; that on another occasion a city being beleaguered by a barbarian force, the bishop of the place put with his own hands an enormous stone on a balista or engine called the apostle Thomas, and firing it off in the name of the Lord knocked off the head of the king of the barbarians, and thereby raised the siege. The fellowship of such tales takes away all faith from that which concerns the Huns. But according to Socrates, the event was prophesied by Ezekiel, and the prophecy applied previously by the bishop of Constantinople; and here we arrive at the clue to explain how such a marvelous relation came to be credited.

“Archbishop Proclus (continues Socrates) preached on the prophecy of Ezekiel, and the prophecy was in these words—And thou, son of man, prophesy against Gog the ruler, Rosh Misoch, and Thobel; for I will judge him with death and blood, and overflowing rain and hailstones; for I will rain fire and brimstone upon him and all those with him, and on the many nations with him; and I will be magnified and glorified, and I will be known in the presence of many nations and they shall know that I am the Lord”. This prophecy is put together from the second verse of the 38th ch. of Ezekiel. “Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him”, and the 22d and 23d verses, “I will plead against him…” The word Rhos upon which the application of this prophecy to the Hunnish Rhuas rested, occurs in the Septuagint, though it is not in the Vulgate, the word having been rendered by St. Jerome head, and applied to the following word, signifying the head or chief prince of Meshech. The archbishop was wonderfully praised for this adaptation of the prophecy, and, according to Socrates, it was the universal topic of conversation in Constantinople; and doubtless this adaptation gave birth to the marvelous history.

Rhuas had threatened to destroy Constantinople; while the people were expecting his attack, the archbishop assures them that God had expressly denounced by his prophet that he would destroy Rhuas and his people with fire and brimstone from heaven. Rhuas never came near Constantinople; the archbishop’s prediction was confirmed in the important part that concerned the safety of its inhabitants, and the story became current that it had been entirely fulfilled, and that Rhuas and his army had perished accordingly. The story is confined to the Greek divines; not one of the Latin chronicles of that age mentions any expedition of the Huns under Rhuas against the Eastern empire. Bishops Idatius, Prosper, and Jornandes are silent; Cassiodorus and Marcellinus are silent; but if such a manifestation of the Almighty had occurred, or anything that could give color to such a belief had really taken place, Europe would have rung with the rumor of it to its very furthest extremities.

Procopius relates the death of John the tyrant, but nothing concerning Rhuas. To complete the refutation of the tale we learn from Priscus, who was sent on an embassy to the Huns from Constantinople, only twenty-two years after the date of the supposed catastrophe, that Rhuas was alive after the consulship of Dionysius which took place in 429, that is three years after the time when the divine vengeance is said to have overtaken him; and the chronicle of Prosper Tyro says that Rhuas died in 434. The Hungarian annalist, Pray, carrying absurdity to the highest pitch, and aware that Rhuas was alive in 429, asserts that there must have been two kings, one Rugas killed by fire from heaven, and another by name Rhuas his successor; and he accuses all foregoing writers of having confounded them, though there is not the slightest reason for imagining that there were two such kings, except the inconvenient circumstance of his being found alive long after the time when he should have been exterminated, to fulfill the prediction of the Byzantine prelate.

14. Rhuas and Octar. Obarses.

It is known from Jornandes (Jordanes) that Rhuas and Octar were brothers of Mundiuc and kings of the Huns before the reign of Attila, but that they had not the sovereign authority over all the Huns. The date of their accession is no more known than that of Mundiuc.

Pray, who is always expert in distorting the truth to support his own theory, assumes inaccurately from Jornandes that, on the death of Mundiuc, Attila his son was a minor, and that Octar and Rhuas his uncles had been appointed by his father to be his guardians. There is no authority for the supposition, excepting that Calanus says Mundiuc commended his sons with their portion of the kingdom to his brother Subthar.

Octar, otherwise called Subthar, and Rhuas were probably kings in conjunction with their brother. We do not know that Attila was not also a king during their life-time, which the expression of Calanus seems to imply, and even during his father’s reign, for his own son had regal authority during his life-time. Octar and Rhuas did not reign over all the Huns, yet after their death and the murder of his brother Bleda, Attila was sole monarch, which seems to imply that Attila and Bleda were the kings who had reigned over those not subject to their uncles. The very circumstance of the joint reign of Attila and Bleda, till the latter was removed by murder, shows that brothers had a concurrent right of sovereignty amongst the Huns, and would lead us to conclude that Octar and Rhuas were associated with Mundiuc, and Calanus expressly says that Subthar (otherwise called Octar) did reign in conjunction with Mundiuc. Pray argues that if they held the throne in their own right, and not as guardians, Obarses, who is mentioned by Priscus as another son of Mundiuc, should have been a king also, which he does not appear to have been; but this is quite erroneous, for Obarses is not said to have been by the same mother; and it is clear, that although the Hunnish kings were allowed to indulge in polygamy, there was one queen with superior rights, whose children alone were entitled to succeed. Attila had a legion of wives and a host of children, but Priscus only mentions by name three sons, who were children of Creca whom he calls especially his wife and not one of his wives, and they alone succeeded to his dignities, though the other sons wished the kingdom to foe equally divided amongst them.

CHAPTER III

Accession of Attila