remarkable man I ever knew. Or rather, the life and times of Aetius and Attila. For you cannot write about one without the other. They were sun and moon, they were night and day, they were as destined and inseparable as lovers, as Troilus and Cressida, as Dido and Aeneas. Nothing could separate them, yet nothing in the end could bring them together, either: for the great tide of history, or perhaps the will of the unknown gods, was set against them.
And a more tragic tale of two great men I do not think there has ever been.
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL PLACE NAMES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT, WITH THEIR MODERN EQUIVALENTS
Modern equivalents marked with an asterisk* are approximations only
Aquileia – a little town still bears the name, on the Laguna di Grado. No Roman remains are visible.
Aquincum – Budapest
Argentoratum – Strasbourg
Augusta Vindelicorum – Augsburg
Baiae – Baia
Balaton, L – Lake Balaton
Beneventum – Benevento
Bononia – Bologna
Britain – England and Wales
Caledonia – Scotland
Campania – the countryside around Capua, known to the Romans as Campania Felix – Happy Campania, on account of its natural beauty, gentle climate and extraordinary fertility, which often allowed three crops a year.
Cannae – Canne della Battaglia
Cappadocia – Central Turkey
Capua – Capua Vetere
Carnuntum – Hainburg*
Caudium – San Martino*
Chersonesus – Sebastopol
Cisalpine Gaul – Lombardy*
Colonia Agrippina – Cologne
Consentia – Cosenza
Cumae – Cuma
Dacia – Romania*
Dubris – Dover
Dumnonia – Devon
Durostorum – Silistra, Romanian-Bulgarian border
Epidaurus – Dubrovnik
Euboea – Evvoia
Euxine Sea – the Black Sea
Falerii – Civita Castellana
Falernus Ager – a district of northern Campania, and origin of the magnificent Falernian wine
Florentia – Florence
Gades – Cadiz
Gallia Narbonensis – that quarter of Gaul commanded from Narbo Martis, or modern Narbonne. Roughly, the Languedoc/Roussillon area.
Gaul – France
Gessoriacum – Boulogne
Harvatha Mountains – the Gothic name for the Carpathians (see ‘Kharvad’)
Illyria – Bosnia/Serbia*
Isca Dumnoniorum – Isca of the Dumnonii, i.e. Exeter
Isca Silurum – Isca of the Silures, i.e. Caerleon
Isle of Mon – Anglesey
Kernow – Cornwall
Kharvad Mountains – the Hun name for the Carpathians (see ‘Harvatha’)
Lauriacum – Enns*
Londinium – London
Lucrine Lake – near Baia. Oysters were first farmed here, by the enterprising Sergius Orata, in the 1 ^ st century BC. He had already made a fortune inventing the domestic shower. See Pliny, Natural History.
Lugdunum Batavorum – Lugdunum of the Batavians, i.e. Leiden
Lutetia – Paris
Margus – Pozarevac, Serbia
Mauritania – Morocco and Northern Algeria*. Not to be confused with present-day Mauritania to the south, virtually unknown to the Roman world.
Mediolanum – Milan
Neapolis – Naples
Noricum – Austria*
Noviomagnus – Chichester
Numidia – Tunisia*
Ophiusa – a Greek name meaning ‘abounding in snakes,’ common throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes and Cyprus were each known colloquially as ‘Ophiusa’ – ‘Snake Island.’ Scythian Ophiusa, a Greek trading station on the Euxine, is today’s Odessa, in the Ukraine.
Panium – a humble and unremarked little town in Thrace
Pannonia – Hungary*
Patavium – Padua
Portus Lemanis – Port Lympne, Kent. One of the haunting lost cities of Roman Britain; once a bustling international port with a huge natural harbour, now no more than a few broken walls on a green hillside.
Puteoli – Pozzuoli
Sarmatia – see Scythia
Sarmatian Jazyges – the flat, rich, much-coveted pastureland of the Hungarian Plain, that lies between the Danube and the Tisza.
Scythia – Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and all points east*
Silestria – Northern Bulgaria*
Siluria – South Wales
Sirmium – Sremska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia
Tanais, R – the River Don, in the Ukraine
Tergestus – Trieste
Teutoberg Forest – Much of present-day Germany. Scholarly consensus now is that the legions of Varus were destroyed near to Osnabruck, north west of the hills still called the Teutoburger Wald.
Tibur – Tivoli
Toletum – Toledo
Trasimene, L – Trasimeno, Lago. The massacre took place between the two villages known to this day as Ossaia and Sanguineto – ‘the place of bones’ and ‘the place of blood.’ Any visitor there will soon understand the brilliance of Hannibal’s huge-scale ambush and use of landscape.
Vangiones – Worms
Vindobona – Vienna
