Attila: The Barbarian King who Challenged Rome

Written by John Man

Narrated by James Adams

In the years AD 434–454, the fate of Europe hung upon the actions of one man: Attila, king of the Huns. The decaying Roman Empire still stood astride the Western World, but it was threatened by a new force, the much-feared barbarian hordes. Attila was the one-man wrecking ball that helped put the final boot into Rome’s decaying splendor.

Today, Attila remains the most enduring bogeyman in history, his name a byword for barbarism, savagery, and violence. Masterful storyteller John Man brings to life this marauding figure of the battlefield. His descriptions of the Huns’ grotesque techniques of impaling enemies and unruly family members will leave you with curled toes and crossed legs. Packed with many new insights, Attila is a riveting work of historical scholarship that reads like an adventure story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781481515511

John Man

John Man is the author of Attila, Genghis Khan, The Great Wall, Gobi: Tracking the Desert, Ninja, Samurai, and other works. Educated at Oxford and the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, he was awarded Mongolia’s Friendship Medal in 2007.

Reviews for Attila

[le.vert.galant · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The name of Attila the Hun still resonates in western culture as "The Scourge of God" and the embodiment of barbaric mayhem. Reliable source material on Attila is scanty. His posthumous reputation was created by Christian hagiographers who magnified his accomplishments with tales of virgins, saints, and martyrs. The reality is that he was an ambitious leader who raided a vast range of territory including Syria, Thrace, the Loire valley, northern Italy, and as far north as the Baltic Sea. He held only a portion and his empire dissolved upon his death.

John Man does a good job outlining Attila's biography, fleshing out his book with chapters on the Hun's probably beginnings as the Xiongnu people in Mongolia, the rediscovery of rapid mounted archery by Lajos Kassai, the turmoil of the late western Roman empire, and finally a fascinating chapter on Attila's afterlife in Medieval literature. It's a mix of travelogue and history, with some imaginative reconstructions of life in Attila's court that would embarrass a university historian but make for an enjoyable book.

[marysgirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book gave me fits. I bought it because Attila is a minor character in a couple of my books set in 5C Imperial Rome and I wanted more information on his background--just for my personal education. The author has a degree in history and has written several other "narrative histories" which I take as writing for a general audience (very few footnotes and more conversational style). In that he succeeded. However he made lots of minor mistakes in his Roman history. Easily checked things such reversing the birth order of Empress Placidia's children (actually daughter Honoria the oldest, son Theodosius second), General Aetius led regular Roman troops in his rebellion (Mann said it was the Huns), and several others. If he got so many Roman facts wrong, how accurate was he with the Hunnish history? I don't know and that's what troubles me. I would have given this book a single star, but it was written for a general audience and such small things as birth order wouldn't detract from a normal reader's enjoyment of the book, but researchers should look elsewhere.

[nielsengw_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We learn from early history classes in school that Attila the Hun was a brutish, savage leader, bent on beating down the mighty Roman empire. Attila sprang from the dark recesses of northern Europe to lay siege to the civilized people of the Mediterranean. But this story is decidedly one-sided and lacking in nuance. In John Man’s Attila, he tries to gives flesh and blood to the skeleton of the tale. Man attempts to give this historical ghost a context and finds much more than we expected.

While Attila’s birthdate is unknown, by about 434 CE he had become the leader of the Huns and an empire that stretched from the Ural Sea to the Baltic, and from the Rhine River to the Danube. Man’s history gives a fair amount of space to the pre-Attila relationships between the Roman Empire, the Goths, and the Huns. This is necessary because of the intricate and delicate political bonds throughout Europe at the time. From then until his death in 453, Attila cements his place in history by gaining the loyalty of millions and repeatedly challenging the might of the Roman Empire. Apparently, the only thing that could stop Attila was his rather anti-climactic death (from possibly a peptic ulcer that drowned his lungs in blood).

Man relies heavily on Mierow’s 1915 translation of Jordanes’ 6th century History of the Goths. He couples this with both the histories of Procopius and the contemporaneous writings of Priscus. These works have their flaws and biases, but it’s really all we have to work with. New archaeological finds and secondary sources also help to flesh out the tale. I did find the lack of direct footnotes a bit worrying, but the biography is about as detailed and intriguing as it can get. While scholars will look elsewhere, the casual enthusiast of ancient European history or the Roman Empire will find a lot to enjoy here. A rich and adventurous read.

[meggo_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not as enjoyable a book as Man's book on Genghis Khan, this book was a curious mix of modern tales and history, of fact and conjecture. The mix made me doubt the truth of the tale. Not recommended for serious historians of the period, as it reads more like a travelogue.

[woodpigeon01 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting book. John Man provides a portrait of a barbarian lord who never quite lived up to his modern day persona. Attila failed to conquer Rome, or Constantinople, or Gaul: and yet the name Attila conjures up a half-demon in contemporary minds. He seems to have been a man of his time, where brutality and plunder were the commerce of the day. John Man's hero worship of the Hungarian horse-archer goes a bit over the top, however he does provide a fascinating picture of a Roman Empire undergoing slow, relentless collapse.