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Ruling as Augusta and regent, educated and haughty, she built her own palace and chapel in Ravenna while she played off barbarian kings and her own half-barbarian generals. Her chief commander was a half-Goth called Flavius Aetius who had spent his youth as a hostage at the Hunnish court, where he had befriended the Hunnish warlord Rugila. When Aetius threatened her, she dismissed him. Aetius fled to Rugila, who lent him an army which he used as leverage against Empress Placidia. In 432, she appointed him her military supremo, magister utriusque militiae. Placidia and Aetius managed the transformation of the empire, settling their allies the Franks and Goths in the west, but losing Africa to the Vandals.

To the east, Aetius’ friend Rugila was expanding into central Europe and menacing Theodosius in Constantinople, who paid him with 350 pounds of gold and prayed for his death. In 435, Rugila was struck by a thunderbolt, more likely smallpox, leaving the confederacy to his nephews, Bleda and Attila. The brothers forced Theodosius to double his tribute to 700 pounds of gold, open markets with the Huns and return two cousins who had defected. When the latter were handed over, Attila immediately had them impaled as the Romans watched.

Although Attila and Bleda blackmailed Theodosius, they helped Empress Placidia and Aetius defeat an invasion of another Germanic tribe, the Burgundians. But they wanted more gold. In 440, they crossed the Danube to plunder Roman cities, stopping only when paid yet more. Bleda was then killed by Attila, who, wielding the sacred sword of world rulership, united ‘Scythia and Germania’ from the Caspian to the Danube. He held court at his capital of wooden houses built around a huge wooden palace with all the Roman comforts – wine, carpets, couches and a bathhouse. An African jester named Zercon^* performed for the frequent Roman envoys, who were offered ‘attractive women for intercourse, a mark of honour among the Huns’, recalled the Roman diplomat Priscus, before adding primly, ‘We plied the women with foods but refused intercourse.’ He was fascinated by Attila, remarking that he was ‘short of stature, broad-chested with a large head, small eyes, thin beard flecked with grey, snub nose’, and that he moved with ‘haughty gait, eyes darting, his power and pride apparent’. Attila was illiterate, so his Roman secretary Orestes handled his correspondence. While a ‘lover of war, he knew restraint, excellent in council, sympathetic to supplicants, gracious to those under his protection’. But he was lethal too – ‘I’ll have you impaled and fed to the birds,’ he would say – and Attila’s capital usually featured a ‘spy’ or two impaled on stakes.

Theodosius II, after completing new walls that would make Constantinople near impregnable for almost a thousand years, stopped paying Attila – and ordered his assassination, suborning a Skirian ally, Edika, to do the job. But the plot was exposed, and Attila relished the revelation of Roman duplicity. ‘Theodosius’s father was royal; I’m Attila son of Mundzuk,’ said Attila. ‘I’ve preserved my nobility, Theodosius has not. Now who’s the barbarian; who’s civilized?’ But Constantinople was unconquerable and Attila needed loot for his voracious chieftains: should he conquer Persia or go west? As the Vandals settled in Africa, with Goths, Franks and Burgundians in Spain, France and the Low Countries, Attila received a surprising invitation:^* a royal proposal of marriage.

ATTILA’S BLOODY WEDDING – AND JUSTINIAN’S BRIDE

In Ravenna, the sexagenarian Empress Placidia was retired; her son Valentinian III ruled, but her reckless, restless daughter Honoria, aged around thirty, bored by the dreary existence of an Augusta, craved adventure and started an affair with her chamberlain Eugenius. When it was discovered by her mother and brother, they had the paramour executed and betrothed her to an antique senator, at which the Augusta wrote a letter to Attila. A fragrantly named eunuch, Hyacinthus, secretly carried it with her ring to the Hun.

Attila accepted her indecent proposal, suggesting she deliver half the western empire as dowry. Placidia was outraged. Valentinian beheaded Hyacinthus and ordered Honoria’s execution, but their mother interceded. Honoria was swiftly married to the old senator. ‘Honoria shouldn’t be wronged,’ wrote Attila when he heard that his fiancée was under arrest. If she didn’t receive the sceptre of sovereignty, he continued, he would avenge her. Perhaps the longueurs of marriage killed Honoria; perhaps the drama killed Placidia; but both died as Attila and his horde of Huns, Goths, Burgundians, Gepids, Alans and Lombards crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul, while Aetius mustered his equally barbarian coalition of Romans, Franks, Burgundians and Visigoths. At Troyes, Attila was confronted by its bishop, who demanded mercy as a man of God.