Roman Debauchery Fun Fact Extra: The Murder of Attila the Hun

Attila, The Scourge of God

Pope Leo and Attila.

"So then it WASN'T good for you, honey?" Death of Attila on his wedding night, A.D. 453

Attila's killa?

Salvete, Amiculi!

I hope everyone has had a chance to check out Volume I on Amazon! If you've had a chance to read it, please take a moment to post your thoughts in the "Customer Review" section.

And, now, as promised in previous posts...

 ROMAN DEBAUCHERY FUN FACT* EXTRA: THE MURDER OF ATTILA THE HUN

*I should preface this by saying it's not entirely a "fact," per se. There are facts involved, and they are very interesting ones, but, ultimately, the final conclusions are left open to speculation. Still, that can be just as fun, if not more so!

Attila lives on 1500 years after his death in the world's imagination as an indomitable conqueror, and, to many, the poster-boy of barbarism. His reign saw the culmination of a vast Hunnic empire stretching from the Volga to the Rhine, which he expanded further, slaughtering and enslaving thousands of Germanic tribes and nations in the process and laying waste to the frontier regions of the Roman Empire. He held the Emperor Theodosius II practically in his thrall, extorting thousands of pounds of gold tribute from him yearly. When he invaded the West, it took a massive Romano-German alliance to defeat him at the Battle of the Catalunian Fields in Gaul. Even then, it did not stop his invasion, prompting him to change course and rampage into Italy instead. According to legend, only the negotiating tactics of Pope Leo the Great saved Rome from his depredations. (More likely, the threat of plague and famine dissuaded him.) For these and many other reasons, Attila earned the title Flagellum Dei, The Scourge of God.

Given his dramatic life, the nature of Attila's death might seem anticlimactic. According to the official account, Attila suffered a hemorrhage on his wedding night brought on by heavy drinking, and drowned in his own blood. However, other historians of the time suggested that he was murdered, possibly stabbed to death by his new bride. There was little corroborating evidence of this  and the theory of murder was ignored. But the modern historian Michael Babock has constructed a tantalizing theory in his book, The Night Attila Died, suggesting that the official account was an effort to conceal the real murderer, directed to strike at Attila by his nemesis, the Roman emperor Marcian.

So who was he? Babcock suggests that the hand that dealt the blow belonged to an insider, a trusted figure in Attila's court, one who had, ironically, inadvertently saved Attila from an earlier assassination attempt. 

Coincidentally, he is also a major character in Amiculus, and will tell his version of Attila's demise in  Volume II: Flagellum Dei.