Ian Hughes - Aetius: Attila’s Nemesis

Historians of the fourth and fifth centuries have a particularly difficult life. Those used to the relative certainties of the late republic and early empire can only look on with admiration at those brave souls who plunge into the mess that is late antiquity.

Mess is not putting it too strongly. Firstly, the Roman Empire itself was in a mess, and particularly so the western empire. A series of barbarian invasions not only tore through the countryside, but also through the social and economic fabric of the affected provinces. The empire was bankrupt, the peasantry surly and mutinous (and often likely to side with the invaders) and the soldiers too few and of dubious loyalty.

Secondly, the evidence is in a mess. Barbarian invasions and civil wars tend to be confusing events even at the time, let alone 1,500 years later, when the historian has to make sense of the fragmentary writings of people who themselves had little idea of what was actually going on. Furthermore, the motives of the main protagonists are often obscure. And that is even if we assume that the actions of the protagonists are accurately reported and dated an assumption any chronicler of late antiquity is likely to greet with sardonic laughter. Documents are scanty and tend to refer even to major events in oblique terms. Entire battles have gone missing. To give but one example, early in the period Britain drifted out of imperial control. One might think this would be significant enough to warrant a detailed description in the primary sources, and perhaps even an analysis of the causes. In reality, the historian of late antiquity settles gratefully for any passing mention.

Thirdly, and most importantly, almost everyone writing in this period had an agenda in which the accurate reporting of events was either irrelevant at best, or at worst something to be avoided at all costs. The sources for this period seldom say what they mean, or mean what they say. Sometimes the motive is political, as when a writer is attempting to praise one emperor at the cost of a rival, or trying to obfuscate his own involvement with that rival. At other times the issue is religious. The fourth and early fifth centuries saw the triumph of Christianity over paganism and much, in fact most, of what we know of the history in that period is seen through the lens of that process.

One consequence of such ideological involvement is that battles are seen as tests of the religious convictions of the generals involved. Writers such as Jerome are apparently convinced that a prayer at the right moment affected events more powerfully than a well-deployed legion. And since Jerome seldom takes interest in the actual deployment of the armies, there is no telling whether he was right. What we do know is that his reports, like those of his contemporaries, must be filtered for bias, poetic exaggeration, hyperbole and plain ignorance.

Furthermore, the religious struggle of the period was a complex affair in which the pagans were sometimes mere interested spectators to vicious in-fighting between catholic Christians, Arians, Monophysites, Donatists and others. It would be fair to say that most historians of the period would gladly sacrifice, say, the minutiae of the struggle against the Pelagian heresy for a proper description of a secular event or two for example, the invasion of Italy by Radagaisus.