Customer Reviews

Attila: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In this biography of the infamous Hun leader, little time is given to conjecture or speculative history. Just a solid, simple, traditional, and well-written biogrpahy is here. The author is an experienced communicator making the flow very pleasant. The history student interested more in the military aspects such as battle descriptions will wish for more maps of the individual battles and perhaps more detailed descriptions. But, for general history coverage and an enjoyable biographical sketch of a rather inigmatic character, this one would be hard to beat. A solid biography and great addition to the ancient history libary.

Although it is highly informative and an enjoyable read, this work on Attila does not quite succeed in making history come alive. The author is obviously enthusiastic about his subject but the narrative is somewhat scattered, digressing into various detours and much intent on mythbusting.

Part One: The Menace, describes the world of that time, when Europe was in disarray with the various movements of tribes into and within the Roman Empire. It also explores the origins of the Huns. They were most likely descended from what the Chinese called the Xiongnu of Mongolia and it seems fairly certain that they were a Turkish tribe, judging by the linguistic evidence. Ptolemy called them the Khoinoi. Part of this section is devoted to mounted archery with reference to the Hungarian Lajos Kassai who has revived the art.

Part Two: Rivals, discusses their settlement on the Hungarian plain amidst the political and religious rivalry of the Western and Eastern Empires of which the northern borders were in constant upheaval. The author draws on the acount of St Jerome of a Hunnish incursion into Anatolia and on the Byzantine History of Priscus. The Hunnish hordes consisted of a great alliance of Huns, Ostrogoths and Alans and was thus a confederation of Turkic, Germanic and Iranian tribes.

Part Three: Death and Transfiguration examines the great battle on the Plain of Mery where the general Aetius and his Visigothic allies defeated the combined forces of Huns, Ostrogoths and Gepids. It also deals with the later Hunnish incusion into Italy, with reference to various legends and myths like the omen of the stork and Pope Leo's encounter with Attila. The case of Honoria and the rivalries within the Roman Empire are discussed as well.

The following maps enhance the text: Distant Roots of the Huns, Coming Of The Huns, The Hun Heartland in the Balkans 435 - 451, The Huns Strike West and Attila's Empire 445 - 453. There are colour plates that include Hun artefacts, objects from Mongolia, a view of the Dnieper, a Hun cauldron, various imperial coins, a painting by Raphael and the aforementioned Lajos Kassai in action. The book concludes with a bibliography and index.

With little information available, Man gives as informative a book as might be expected. Maybe 1/3 of it is about Attila, including what is known of his family, his headquarters, his entertainments and of course his battles.

While the history of Huns and the rise and fall of Attila are the themes of the book, the author presents this period of the Roman Empire in a very readable way. Last year I had read the Peter Heather book on Rome and the barbarians, and for description of Rome in this period, these two books complement each other nicely.

Rome, overly large and waning in ability to defend itself, hires Huns, pays ransom $ to Huns, bribes Huns and fights Huns. There are diplomats, an assassination attempt, competition and integration of other peoples and tribes and turning points. There are marriages, hostages and proposals. There scorched earth seizures and battles.

Man has interesting friends who share his passion for Hun history. The run museums from Mongolia to Hungary, dig up artifacts and study mounted bow hunting. He introduces us to them in diversionary parts of the narrative.

The best part for me, aside from the description of the Hun compound, was the summation at the end. Unlike Ghengis Khan, Attila had no long term vision and built no adminstrative structure. Nothing much really followed him. Man has some interesting phrases for experssing the ephemeral nature of it all. Attila created a bunch of "speed bumps" in the building of Europe and that his life was "a perfect balance of pluses and minuses, signifying nothing."

A chapter called "Aftermath" citing the numerous poems, paintings and songs that celebrate his image, however misinformed, has the best epiteph of all. Due to these cultural creations from the middle ages to Kipling and Wagner, his name resounds as an "archetype of a certain sort of power." Its really apt... "a certain sort of power."

Attila the scourge of western civilization and icon for the barbarians is given a thoroughly enjoyable story as written by John Man. What we are told is palatable compared to the outragous legends and Christian dogma written about Attila. Attila did not have the vision of Ghengis Kahn and left his vast empire with no clear mandate after his sudden death. This books gives fascinating details on the probale origin of the Huns, the going ons of the Roman Empire at the time and the eventual decline of both the Huns and the Roman Empire. Also I found the explicit details on how the Huns fought to be fascinating.

In this volume, Man explores both the biography of Attila- 'the scourge of G-D', who carved out a massive Hunnish Empire strching from the Caspian Sea to the Rhine, with it's headquarters in what is today's Hungary.
At the same time. he threatened the very foundations of the Roman Empire.

The book traces the origins of the Huns, from the area around what is today Mongolia, and their migration across Siberia and modern Russia into Europe.
Man attempts to sort myth and legend from fact, and also deals with the differing imagery of Attila, from bloodthirsty monster, in Western Europe, to a national hero in Hungary.
He covers much of the literature and myhtology of Attila, and explains why the Germans during the First World War, were reffered to by the British as 'Huns'.
The peoples of Hungary and Bulgaria claim descent from the Huns, but the author does not deal in real depth with the question of Hunnic descent.

Man explains the decline of the Roman Empire, and explores the wars and interactions of the Huns with the Roman Empire, and such peoples as the Franks, Burgundians, Allemani, Alans, Visigoths and Ostrogoths.

Biography? Try Again!

This is a book by a dilettante -- in the worst possible sense of the word.

The author has produced not a biography, but a sophomoric mish-mash of travelogue, second-rate journalism, and biography, dealing with a subject he clearly does not master in depth -- if at all.

Man has apparently studied tribes of Amazonia and he is an enthusiast of Mongolia and the Mongols. Unfortunately, that is hardly conducive to a thorough understanding of the issues of 4th to 6th century Europe and the Mediterranean world. Furthermore, Man does not seem to have mastered the (vast amount of) scholarly literature on the subject, substituting for it breathless accounts of the New-Age-ish musings of some Hungarian eccentric. Instead of a review of contemporary knowledge of Attila and the Huns (and the many controversies surrounding them), he provides a discussion of the respective article in the 1911 edition of the Britannica! At a half-decent university, even an undergraduate couldn't get away with something like that.

So much for the book. But what truly baffles me are its reviews by Amazon users. "A solid biography"?! "Extensive research"?! I wonder if we have been reading the same book...

As someone said, a solid biography.Quite good on the aftermath of the Huns. But did anyone notice that this book has a list of illustrations but no actual illustrations?

Part one is interesting to the extent that the author gives an account of the Xiongnu Mongolian tribe which occupied the Gobi Desert and surrounding areas in the 1st century b.c.e. What this tribe has to do with the Huns is unknown. The rest of this book is an almost word-for-word plagiarism of the 1901 Hungarian novel "Láthatatlan Ember" by Géza Gárdonyi, literally "Invisible Man", but translated into English as "Slave of the Huns". The plagiarism is from the English translation of 1969, Corvina Press, Budapest. The "author" of "Attila" admits no understanding of the Hungarian language and so has produced an almost perfect facsimile of "Slave of the Huns" with no attribution. "Attila" should be removed from publication and its purported author should be banned from publishing. This kind of theft is dealt with harshly in academia; therefore, it should be dealt with equally harshly in the world of commercial publishing. Plagiarism is theft; Mr. Man should be stripped of his ill-gotten royalties.

Attila provides an interesting look in on those dark times in history that have not been well documented. The book includes ideas on how the Huns used advanced bow technology and mounted archery to raise havoc. Great insight on who the Nibelungs of Wagner's ring cycle were. Good illustrations.

The book tell the story of Attila in an easy narrative tone. As I am no scholar of Attila, nor of his time period, I cannot judge the historic - scientific value of the book.
It is easy reading, and after I had finished it, I feel, I know a bit more about Attila and his time.

Somehow, one does not learn as much about Attila, as one might have wished, however -as the author stresses time and again- the huns did not write, and the contemporary historians who did might have had their own agenda....

So, all in all it is easy reading, but -at least in my feel- it leaves something to be desired.