Attila:The Scourge of God

fixed days dividing the Roman month: Kalends, the first day of the month, the Nones on the 5th or 7th, and the Ides on the 13th or 15th. (In March, May, July, and October, the Nones fell on the 7th and the Ides on the 15th, in the remaining months on the 5th and 13th respectively.) Thus, the Ides of January happening on the 13th of that month, the next day would be termed by a Roman not the 14th, but the 19th before the Kalends of February, reckoning inclusively, i.e., taking in both the 14th of January and the 1st of February; and so on to the last day of the month which was termed pridie Kalendas.

Chapter 2

19 ‘ridge helmets’. These had replaced the classic ‘Attic’ helmet (familiar to all from every Hollywood Roman epic ever made) in about 300, except in the Eastern, more Hellenic half of the Empire where (from representational evidence) Attic-style helmets continued to be worn until at least the time of Justinian (527-65). For convenience, and speed of construction, the bowl was made in two sections, joined by a central strip or ‘ridge’. The vastly increased army under Diocletian must have called for ‘assembly-line’ techniques in the state arms factories (fabricae) in order to meet production targets.

Chapter 3

23 ‘Jordanes, Gothic History’. The Gothic History was a summary of a much fuller work (unfortunately lost), De rebus Geticis, by a Roman, Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, 468-c. 568 (sic). Cassiodorus — historian, statesman, and adviser to Theoderic, the Ostrogothic king of Italy — whose very long life encompassed both the fall of the Western Empire in 476 and its partial recovery by Justinian — may in his youth have consulted veterans of the Catalaunian Plains. If so, he would have incorporated the knowledge gained into his great work. In 551 he commissioned Jordanes, a Romanized Goth, to make a summary version of his work: Gothic History.

Chapter 4

30 ‘Augustine, the saintly Bishop of Hippo’. The influence of Augustine (354–430) on Western thought has been profound, especially regarding Catholic belief, from late Roman times to the present. His doctrine of predestination (with its corollary of ‘the Elect’) has helped to shape the mindset of many, from Calvin and Wittgenstein to the ‘acid murderer’ Haig. It was mined, to brilliant effect, by James Hogg in his seminal novel The Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

32 ‘ludus latrunculorum’. A board game not dissimilar to chess, in which one piece was taken by being trapped by two enemy pieces. The player who captured most opposing pieces won.

34 ‘the chain of forts established by Diocletian’. Their well-preserved remains can still be seen today.

35 ‘seen service at the Milvian Bridge’. The Milvian Bridge outside Rome was the scene of Constantine’s victory over his rival Maxentius in 312, and of his vision which brought about his conversion to Christianity. The bridge is still in use.

36 ‘drawers’. It used to be thought that Roman soldiers — like men in Highland regiments, did not wear underpants. However, the recently discovered ‘Vindolanda tablets’ at Hadrian’s Wall, contain evidence that they sometimes did.

38 ‘a Blemmye, judging by his tribal markings’. The Blemmyes’ homeland was Nubia, to the south of Egypt. They were a part-Semitic, part-African people.

44 ‘The cursus velox’. The Cursus Publicus, or Imperial Post, covering some 54,000 miles of road, was an amazing feat of organization and efficiency. While its primary function was the delivery of government and military dispatches, it also catered for the transport of imperial freight and the conveyance of official personnel. If the news was urgent, it could reach its destination very rapidly, by means of a special dispensation within the system — the cursus velox or express post. Changing horses every 8-12 miles, a good rider could cover 240 miles in one day. The system reached its peak in the fourth century, but began to break down in the fifth with the disruption caused by barbarian invasions.

44 ‘it was all built underground’. The well-preserved remains of this villa, known today as ‘Maison d’Amphitrite’, can still be seen — as can those of several more of these remarkable underground buildings.

46 ‘who might almost have stepped down from the Arch of Constantine’. As an artistic convention, representations of soldiers on the Arch are mostly shown wearing classical armour and helmets (obsolete by this time in the West, though retained in the East for many more years). Some of the panels on the Arch were filched from Trajanic monuments.

Chapter 5

54 ‘He had failed’. It is recorded that Augustine spoke for over two and a half hours at Carthage, against the Feast of the Kalends — in vain. The Feast continued in the West as long as urban life survived; when the Arabs conquered Roman Africa in the seventh century, they found the Kalends still celebrated.

Chapter 8

66 ‘scale armour or chain mail’. Most book illustrations (and, unfortunately, films and TV programmes) depicting Roman soldiers of any period from 200 BC to AD 400, show them wearing ubiquitous ‘hoop armour’, lorica segmentata, along with (naturally) classical helmets and curved rectangular shields. This efficient type of body-armour was in use by the early first century (specimens have recently been discovered at Kalkriese, the probable site of Varus’ military disaster in 9 AD) and is last seen (in a carving) c. AD 230 in the time of Alexander Severus — a good run, but of only perhaps 250 years as opposed to 600. It was superseded by scale armour (lorica squamata), chain mail (lorica hamata), and lamellar armour (small vertical iron plates) — possibly because of its weight, and the fact that its complex construction made it relatively slow and expensive to produce.

Chapter 10

74 ‘the German’s bid for power’. Germans were never acceptable as Roman emperors and could only rule indirectly through puppets of their choice. This despite the fact that Spaniards, Africans, Illyrians, and an Arab had all at various times donned the purple — without anyone objecting on ethnic or cultural grounds.

74 ‘the great Anician family of Rome’. The Anicii were, like the Symmachi, one of those great Roman families whose influence was felt in the corridors of power at the highest level. They were connected by blood to, among others, Eparchius Avitus (Emperor, 455-6), and in marriage to Emperor Theodosius I, to Petronius Maximus (Emperor, 455), to Eudocia, widow of Valentinian III, and perhaps to the Spanish usurper Magnus Maximus.

75 ‘Gaius Valerius acquired an unofficial agnomen’. The Romans were sometimes referred to as ‘the people with three names’. From an early period they adopted the Sabine practice of using a praenomen or personal name (chosen from an extremely limited stock — Titus, Quintus, Marcus, etc., usually abbreviated to T., Q., M., etc.) — followed by a gentile or tribal name ending in ‘ius’, such as Julius, Claudius, or Tullius. This, in the case of patricians, was followed by a family name or cognomen, often originally deriving from a personal peculiarity: Caesar (having a full head of hair), Cicero, Naso, etc. Occasionally, as a mark of distinction, a second cognomen or honorific agnomen such as ‘Africanus’ or ‘Germanicus’ was added. By the fifth century, the system had loosened up a little, to the extent of widening the choice of personal names, and occasionally the affecting of more than one family name. In general, however, naming practice remained remarkably conservative and consistent throughout the whole Roman period. Incidentally the style ‘Julius Caesar’, referring to Caius Julius Caesar, is a modern adoption and wouldn’t have been used by the Romans themselves. They would have called him Caius (interchangeable with Gaius), or Caesar, or Caius Julius, or Caius Caesar; never by a combination of the gentile and family names.

76 ‘the Altar of Victory removed from the Senate’. This was bitterly opposed by Symmachus, city prefect of Rome, consul, orator, man of letters, and distinguished member of one of the great influential Roman families, the Symmachi.

76 ‘the pursuit of otium’. Leisured scholarship was the preserve of the senatorial aristocracy and country gentlemen in Rome and the Latin provinces, as well as in the Eastern Empire. This created a remarkably uniform, if sterile, classical culture which survived in the Western Empire right up to the end in 476, and even beyond.

77 ‘Many of their leaders copy Roman dress and manners’. Sidonius Apollinaris, who visited the Visigoth court of Theoderic II, draws a flattering pen-portrait of the monarch, and describes Gallo-Roman aristocrats being sumptuously entertained by Visigoth courtiers displaying the courteous manners and wit of Roman gentlemen.

Chapter 11