Attic Muse
a name given by the Greeks to the historian Xenophon, whose style was regarded as a model of elegance. See Xenophon
Attila (406-453 A. D.), the famous king of the Huns. He is termed "The Fear of the World," "The Scourge of God." He is described as a strongly built man with a large head, flat, wide nostrils, and small, glittering eyes. He is reputed to have had arms so long that he could almost catch up stones without stooping. He was a man of imposing and even ferocious aspect and was followed by his soldiers with implicit confidence. So complete was the devastation caused by his army, that it was his constant boast that grass never grew where the hoof of his horse had trod.
The Huns were an Asiatic people of Tartar affinity, entirely distinct from the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Romans. They appeared in Europe about 400 A. D. The nations of Europe made common cause against them. Attila led a force estimated at 700,000, though this is probably an exaggeration, westward through Germany, crossed the Rhine, and drove the Burgundians before him as far as Chalons, where he was opposed by the united military forces of western Europe. Burgundians, Franks, Romans, and Goths united to fight the battle of Europe against Asia. A million men, if we may believe such a battle possible, are said to have engaged in a hand to hand conflict. Bowmen, spearmen, and swordsmen, horse and foot, fell in battle. Theodoric, the Goth, fell. European chroniclers claim that 300,000 Huns were left on the field of battle. The Hunnic tide was rolled backward. Aetius, "the last of the Romans," followed the sullen horde of the Huns as they retired slowly toward the east. Subsequent attempts at invading Italy proved a failure; partly, as has been suggested, on account of pestilence and fever, which broke out in the camp of Attila. Attila is said to have died through the bursting of a blood vessel. He was buried with great ceremony and pomp by his followers. The empire of Attila was broken into fragments after his death and ceased to be a menace to European civilization.
Happily the peoples of the West realized their danger and laid aside all small rivalries to meet it. Theodoric, the hero-king of the Visigoths, brought up his hosts from Spain to fight under the Roman banner. Burgundian and Frank rallied from the corners of Gaul and Aetius, "the last of the Romans," marshaled all these allies and the last great Roman army of the West against the countless Hunnish swarms reenforced by Tartar, Slav, Finn and even by tributary German peoples. The fate of the world hung trembling in the balance, while the great "battle of the nations" was fought at Chalons. United though they were, the forces of civilization seemed insignificant before the innumerable hosts of the Asiatics.--West, The Ancient World.
That is the Hunnenschlacht; "a battle," as Jornandes calls it, "atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax." Antiquity, he says, tells of nothing like it. No man who had lost that sight could say that he had seen aught worth seeing. A fight gigantic, supernatural in vastness and horror, and in the legends which still hang about the place. You may see one of them in Von Kaulbach's immortal design--the ghosts of the Huns and the ghosts of the Germans rising from their graves on the battle-night in every year, to fight it over again in the clouds, while the country far and wide trembles at their ghostly hurrah.--Kingsley, Roman and Teuton.
It was the perpetual question of history, the struggle told long ago by Herodotus, the struggle between Europe and Asia, the struggle between cosmos and chaos--the struggle between Aetius and Attila. For Aetius was the man who now stood in the breach, and sounded the Roman trumpet to call the nations to do battle for the hopes of humanity and defend the cause of reason against the champions of brute force. The menace of that monstrous host which was preparing to pass the Rhine was to exterminate the civilization that had grown up for centuries...and to paralyze the beginnings of Teutonic life...But the interests of the Teutons were more vitally concerned at this crisis than the interests of the empire...Their nascent civilization would have been crushed under the yoke of that servitude which blights, and they would not have been able to learn longer at the feet of Rome the arts of peace and culture.--Bury, Later Roman Empire.