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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ian Myles Slater: Another Old Stand-by,
By
This review is from: The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (Paperback)
Now into its fourth decade, C.D. Gordon's collection of translations from ancient sources concerning the Huns in Europe, interspersed with modern narrative and interpretation, remains an almost indispensable introduction to its subject. The limits of "The Age of Attila" (1960) become clearer with repeated use, but it was never intended as a profound contribution to historical literature. It covers one of the more dramatic aspects of the "Barbarian Invasions" that marked the final stages of the Roman Empire in the West, and the final shift of imperial power to Constantinople (Byzantium) in the East, offering a good selection of the surviving narratives of the events.
Although "The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians" does not contain all of the relevant ancient sources (mostly fragments surviving in later works), it has most of them, gathered in one place, and set in context with each other and with relatively recent ideas about the period. For one major source, Priscus' narrative of an embassy to the Huns, it gave the first complete English translation of all of the surviving fragments. Such direct translations are offered in italics, often mixed with Gordon's own observations in roman type, or, in the case of brief fragments, dropped into his narrative as illustrations and examples. This provides a unified reading experience, instead of a mere collection of disjointed extracts. (Appendix A gives the dates and sources of fragments, and the pages where the translations appear, and Appendix B describes the Historians themselves.) Technical problems with texts are confined to the Notes, and the glossary of "Geographical Names" deals with the special problems they present. The coverage is selective, since the focus is kept on the Huns, not the Roman Empire, or the other "Barbarian" tribes, during Attila's lifetime; however, as pointed out in the Foreword by Arthur E.R. Boak, it does cover the major political events of the period, as the Huns were involved with most of them, one way or another. I was delighted to find a copy of the 1966 Ann Arbor paperback reprint shortly after discovering the book, and there have been later reprintings in hard cover, some fairly recent. Although there is a huge literature on the subject, surprisingly few books in English deal with the Huns as their primary focus. A more up-to-date work of similar scope is certainly desirable; but Gordon's work can't be faulted for it. And in that light the lack of a detailed, but ever-more-obsolete, bibliography is less important. The narrative is sometimes confusing, because the sources are less than reliable, and the events chaotic, but Gordon manages to keep the main lines clear, while indicating some of the problems. Beyond the matter of the collapse of Rome, and the rise of the Barbarian kingdoms, is the long after-life of these events in song and story. Those interested in the Nibelungs and the Volsungs, and the Dietrich von Bern cycle, prominent in medieval German and Scandinavian literatures, will find here many of the original events and personages, among the Burgundians, Goths, and Huns, and some less familiar peoples. (Dietrich is based mainly on the later Theodoric the Great "of Verona", but in medieval legend his story has been confused with that of his father Theudomir, an actual contemporary of Attila, among other anachronisms.) I read Gordon's treatment with pleasure, and considerable profit, in about 1970. At that date, as when it appeared, E.A. Thompson's "A History of Attila and the Huns" (1948) was the main alternative, and it often gave quotations in the original Greek and Latin, so Gordon was at minimum an essential aide for most readers. (In its 1996 revised incarnation as "The Huns" in the "Peoples of Europe" Series, with an interesting Afterword by Peter Heather, such passages are translated, following Thompson's [d. 1994] instructions.) Thompson tended to favor materialist views of history, which sometimes fits a little oddly with how little we actually know of the economy of the Huns. Indeed, he presented them as almost entirely predatory, lacking such skills as metal-working, and even weaving, although it is hard to imagine Eurasian nomads without cloth. Gordon doesn't address such issues, beyond the goods the Huns demanded as tribute. The serious student of the nomadic peoples will want to go on to the material, literary, and linguistic evidence painstakingly assessed in "The World of the Huns: Studies in their History and Culture" (1973) by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen (1894-1969). This somewhat ponderous work had to be edited from the author's unfinished manuscript, despite his assurances to the publisher, shortly before his death, that it was all but completed. It is filled with otherwise difficult-to-find information, has a copious bibliography, and 75 illustrations. Many common identifications of the Huns with other peoples are mentioned only to be dismissed; in the 1940s Maenchen-Helfen had already disproved the accepted equation with the Hsiung-nu, enemies of Han Dynasty China when the Roman Empire was young. (Their name was probably pronounced something like "Hong" at the time, so the equation looks plausible, but has other difficulties.) Although out of print, "World of the Huns" was a book club selection, and used copies seem to be readily available. It is a marked contrast to Gordon's more novice-friendly approach, but Maenchen-Helfen briefly mentions Gordon's book with respect, if not always agreement, unlike any number of more ambitious works which he is at pains to refute. Frankly, given the limitations on languages I can read, I can't imagine understanding Maenchen-Helfen's references to the sources *without* Gordon. Those who find Thompson's interpretation of the decline of Rome and the nature of Barbarian economies too Marxist may enjoy Maenchen-Helfen's sniping at his, and Soviet (mainly Stalinist-era), readings of their history. In Eastern Bloc histories, as in older Slavophile views, the Huns were generally rather identified with the image of the Mongols, monsters to be hated for oppressing the Slavs -- except in Hungary, of course, where there was a tradition (not linguistically sound) of ethnic identification, or the rare instances when the Huns were allowed to be freedom-loving opponents of the wicked Imperialists ... . A more general difficulty in assimilating pastoral nomads to Soviet versions of Marxist ideology was also involved. But the Huns have had a variety of modern political "meanings" (see Maenchen-Helfen's "Fragments from the Author's Preface"). A comparison of Gordon, or any of these modern versions, with the comparable chapters of Gibbon's eighteenth-century vision of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" may be left as an exercise for the curious. And if you are still confused by the USA Network's 2001 cable television movie "Attila," it is likely that any of these books will help replace its fictional problems with genuine historical ones. [Addendum: Those seriously interested in the history of the Roman Empire during this period, beyond the Huns and other "barbarian" peoples, or those who need to consult the actual texts, will find all the extant fragments of Gordon's major sources in R. C. Blockley, "Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus" (volumes one and two; Francis Cairns, Liverpool 1981 and 1983). This includes notes and a new translation. Unfortunately, the material assigned to an important compiler, John of Antioch, also used by Gordon, is not available in complete form in English, and excerpts like his are based on an edition about 150 years old. However, a new critical edition, with an Italian translation, has recently appeared, edited by Umberto Roberto, "Ioannis Antiocheni Fragmenta Ex Historia Chronica" (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2005). Between them, they cover almost all of the classical texts translated in "The Age of Attila." (Both books are listed by Amazon.)] [With thanks to Alan Cameron's review in the on-line 'Bryn Mawr Classical Review," July 2006 [BMCR 2006.07.37], for information on Roberto's edition, and reminding me of Blockley's volumes, which I haven't seen in at least ten years, and couldn't identify by memory.]
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Age of Attila? Maybe around 50.,
By
This review is from: The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (Paperback)
The fifth-century barbarian migrations, as recorded by five contemporary Byzantine historians. Gordon has translated the fragments, organized them into thematic chapters, and provided a bit of interstitial narrative, but far and away the bulk of the writing is by Olympiodorus, Priscus, et al. This has the advantage of being relatively pure "story" history, nothin' but narrative, none of the tedious analysis of administrative documents and tax records that historians like Thompson and Goffart have to sift through looking for actual hard data; also, provides the original source of so many of the incidents and anecdotes from which Wolfram and Burns extrapolate their generalizations about social structures without telling us the actual incidents themselves, grrr.
Against this, the disadvantages are many: the narrative gets very hard to follow sometimes, when patched together out of many fragments by several different historians (although Priscus' embassy to Attila stands out as one sustained and coherent story); the exclusive focus on Byzantine historians means that events in the West are given very skimpy and confused coverage, while conspiracies and coups in the East (particularly during Zeno's reign) take up much more of Chapter 5 than you'd have expected from the title; and ultimately, the exclusive focus on contemporary historians, with never a glimpse at other sources like chronicles, archæology, or those tedious tax records, leaves us with pretty much no understanding of the Huns themselves. Final verdict: like Wikipedia, a great place to start your reading but a terrible place to stop.
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