FLORILEGIUM 11, 1992
ATTILA THE HUN AND KING ARTHUR:
A QUESTION OF AFFINITIES
Florence H. Ridley
My topic today is the influence of the character and career of Attila the
Hun upon those of King Arthur. The very suggestion of such influence
may be surprising, not to say startling, to most of my audience, to most
of whom Arthur is the Flower of Christian Kings. For if, in the minds and
hearts of Hungarians Attila is “Uncle Etzel,” a beneficent national hero,
to the English, Americans, and Canadians, he is something else again: an
embodiment of demonic darkness who laid waste the centres of civilization
in France, Germany, and Italy, and threatened to extinguish the light of
Christianity just as it was dawning.
To test my assumption that such is, indeed, the view of him in western eyes, recently I asked some of my students how they responded to the
term “Attila.” They were a varied group, with varied cultural, ethnic,
and religious backgrounds: Anglo-Saxon, Afro-American, Chicano, Native
American, Catholic, Protestant, Jew. But there was no variation in their response. “Attila the Hun,” said one, “he ravaged the Church.” “He ravaged
women,” said another. “He killed people,” said a third. “For fun,” said a
fourth. They knew next to nothing about his fidelity to his sworn word,
temperance, courteous treatment of and generous hospitality to emissaries
from Rome, the dates of his victories and defeats, or even of his birth and
death. Only bred in their bones was the conviction of his awesome savagery.
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It is a conviction which has evolved over the centuries in western minds,
from long before the eleventh century, when “Flagellum Dei,” the Scourge
of God, began to appear regularly as a sobriquet for Attila;1 to the midtwentieth century, when in novels such as those of Thomas Costain and
Louis de Wohl the leader of the Huns is a monster, an embodiment of
unmitigated evil.
What I propose to do in this paper is move back from the present, examining the changing conceptions of Attila, who has become so strikingly
different from Arthur, and yet at the same time from the beginning has
retained paradoxical traces of resemblance to that king. I want to suggest
some of the factors that have shaped these conceptions, and work back to
the original Attila depicted in Roman history, where he displays much more
obvious, indeed immediately apparent, similarities to the pseudo-historical
Arthur. I shall conclude by discussing the unexplained, if inescapable, resemblance between the Attila of early history, chronicle, legend, and myth,
and the protagonist of The Alliterative Morte Arthure.
Costain begins his 1959 novel, The Darkness and the Dawn, by referring
to “actual historical personages” who people its pages, and concludes with
the assertion, “I wish to make it clear that . . . I have adhered quite closely to
such facts as history supplies of that spectacular conqueror, Attila the Hun”
(pref. note, 445). But whoever the historians he consulted may have been,
Costain ignored the good in their accounts, took the bad, enhanced it, and
turned their “spectacular conqueror” into an object as much of contempt
as of terror. He is first an ugly, slow-witted boy, then a shrewd, deceitful
man, who will cheat and connive to achieve his ends. His epic lust, which
according to the historian Priscus produced sons amounting almost to a
nation (Blockley 321), is now amusing salaciousness. He struts before his
wives, puffing out his chest, pinching, patting, and telling dirty jokes. He
shows anything but the generosity characteristic of a Germanic ring-giver —
begrudges every penny, and has only one ancient, dirty tunic; not because
he is temperate, but because he is stingy.
The novelist emphasizes Attila’s bestiality: his little eyes are like a
pig’s; his nose like a snout, short, comically up-turned. He grunts, lying in a
subterranean lair where his eyes gleam like those of a wild beast. He has the
exquisite cruelty of a cat, with a decided flair for colourful torture, as when
he covers a man with honey and leaves him for ants to devour. This Attila is
a merciless, mighty conqueror. Beneath the marching feet of his hordes the
earth trembles, as they advance from city to city, butchering, mutilating,
smashing children’s heads against walls, in pursuit of their leader’s passion
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to put to the sword every man, woman, and child, with a ruthlessness never
before practised on the face of the earth; a passion to “burn the forests, to
poison the lands, to foul the rivers and lakes until the smoke of a dying land
will be seen from the highest walls” of Rome (301).
Costain lends the Huns and their leader a touch of the supernatural:
Attila’s eyes, lost in strange fanaticism, have a mystical light; his warriors
are “like wraiths come down from ghostly mists on mountain tops or like
half-men issuing from the gloom of malarial jungles” (433). This air of
mystery has surrounded the Huns from a very early period, and may go back
to myths regarding their origin in the coupling of demons and barbarians,
or to the earliest reports of Attila’s death, whose precise nature and place
remained as much of a puzzle as did Arthur’s.2
Some ten years before Costain wrote, Louis de Wohl in his novel, Throne
of the World , depicted a protagonist who has nothing about him of the
mysterious, comic, or contemptible. He is quick-witted, sharp in repartee,
wiry, sinewy, a good fighter. His bestiality is again stressed, but here to
suggest animal magnetism coupled with brute strength: his nostrils are
broad, moist, like a stallion’s; his eyes like those of a lynx, a wolf. He is
a firebrand, fierce, impetuous, violent, and cruel — just as is the king of
The Alliterative Morte Arthure. And like that figure, as his evil passions
expand, Attila takes on epic stature, although in a direction fortunately
never taken by Arthur. In de Wohl’s words, he comes to resemble more
and more Lucifer, who rebelled and cut himself “loose from the source of
all goodness and beauty” to become the great Satan (276). Like Costain,
de Wohl begins his novel with a disclaimer. His work is based on historical
events alone; moreover, “the parallels to our own time are purely factual
and have not been stressed by artificial means” (Foreword).
Whether the means by which he did so were artificial or not, de Wohl
has certainly stressed aspects of the career of Attila that reflect the author’s
own time. Writing in the mid-nineteen-forties, in the shadow of World War
ii, he develops a consistent parallel between the Germans of the twentieth
century and the Huns of the fifth, both of whom devastated Belgium and
France, led respectively by Hitler, Der Fuehrer, and Attila, the Little Father.
In the novel, Attila, or Etzel as he is called here and in German poetry,
says to his people, “I will be your little father. . . . [God] himself has given
me his sword. . . . That is why I can do what I will. I shall give you the
world. . . . I have no use for sickly men.” He must have “a nation of ablebodied men. Let others be encumbered by their weaklings, their sick and
their helpless ones.” His words are a “death warrant for all weak or disabled
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men.” And his lieutenant voices excited admiration: “Little Father, never
has the world seen such an army . . . you will conquer both the Empires
at once!” (153–58). One of the “purely factual” parallels de Wohl stresses
between Attila’s time and his own is that between the Byzantine and Roman
empires of the fifth century and the Russian east, the French and British
west of the twentieth.
When de Wohl describes how agents of Attila are sent before his troops
to prepare the people, telling them how under the Little Father the poor
man is as good as the rich; how the first people to be executed under his
new rule will be the pot-bellied rich usurers, swollen with blood sucked
from their victims; then how the “Hunnica,” half a million men, attack and
destroy Metz, break into the Belgian provinces, ravage them, then pour into
Gaul proper — to those of us who lived through World War ii the parallels
with Hitler, his pogroms, and campaigns are clear enough.
Obviously this author’s depiction of Attila was shaped by the western propaganda of both World Wars, which equated Germans with Huns
and, first, Kaiser Wilhelm, then Hitler with Attila, despite the difference in
racial strain. Such equations in western eyes are easily explained; for since
the fifth century Huns had been lumped in the popular imagination with
German tribes, like the Goths and Alani, who threatened Rome. It is not,
therefore, too surprising that the Oxford English Dictionary should define
“hun” as “A reckless or wilful destroyer of the beauties of nature or art;
an uncultured devastator, comparable to ‘Goth,’ or ‘Vandal’ ”; and that in
1892 the Pall Mall Gazette should inveigh against “roughs” in Epping Forest as “marauding Huns whose delight it is to trample on flowers, burn the
underwood, and kill the birds and beasts.”3 With the outbreak of war, then,
what better appellation to assign your particular enemy who is trying to
destroy your country and kill you, than “hun”? Arthur Conan Doyle even
went so far as to declare that in light of the outrages perpetrated by Kaiser
Wilhelm’s “huns,” to compare him to Attila was a defamation of Attila’s
character.4
As we trace his development back over the centuries it becomes ever
clearer that even before the animus generated by wartime propaganda had
shaped Attila’s reputation, the Church’s animus had done so.5 In the sixth
century Gregory of Tours depicted him as an instrument of divine retribution, of punishment for sinful mankind. Ecclesiastical writers in Gaul used
him as a foil to Christian bishops, priests, and saints — who were always triumphant and often brought about Attila’s conversion to Christianity. The
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trend toward Church triumphant, Hun vanquished, may be said to have begun in the eighth century with an encounter between him and Lupus, Bishop
of Troyes. It seems to have culminated in Raphael’s fresco of a meeting between Pope Leo i and the Hun leader painted in the sixteenth century, more
than a thousand years after the event.6 In this picture the Pope advances
with great ceremony, accompanied by two cardinals, preceded by a cross
held aloft. He extends his right hand calmly, in blessing and in defense.
Before him, Attila reels back in his saddle, dropping his reins, his eyes fixed
in terror on the threatening figures of Saints Peter and Paul, hovering like
avenging angels in the sky above. But over Attila’s head a blood-red banner
streams in the wind; behind him smoke fills the air, and a burning village
flames on a hillside. Already in western eyes the great king of the Huns
had become what he is today: an embodiment of the wanton destruction of
civilization.
And yet, in the earlier Byzantine, Italic, and Gallic histories and chronicles, Attila was by no means a totally negative figure. He was in contact
with the imperial court at Constantinople from 435, when he concluded the
treaty of Margos, until his death in 452 or 453. There is only one eye-witness
account of him, written by Priscus of Panium (410/420–c. 472), but there
are at least two others written by his contemporaries, Prosper of Aquitaine
(c. 390–c. 455) and Apollinaris Sidonius (c. 432–480), and several written
during the fifth or sixth centuries, most notably the De Origine Actibusque
Getarum of Jordanes (A.D. 551). From these and other early records there
emerges a consistently drawn character, one which in a number of particulars resembles the archetypal King Arthur.
Historians tell of a proud, awe-inspiring ruler, with a sway extending
over a multitude of peoples — Alani, Bohemians, Moravians, etc., from all
of whom he commands unquestioning obedience. Attila presides over a rich
court, surrounded by a loyal bodyguard. A conqueror of great ambition,
he threatens the whole world, the east centred at Constantinople and the
west, centred at Rome, against which he will send mighty armies. He has
found the long lost sword of Mars, sign of invincibility, and this greatly
increases his confidence. Roman emissaries who come to Attila’s court are
both frightened by him and impressed by his shrewdness, his hospitality,
and his greed. Chroniclers give detailed accounts of his campaigns in Gaul
and Italy, with lists of the tribes with and against whom he fought, the rivers
by which he camped, and the towns he besieged. A number of records tell of
his camping in Lombardy, there receiving a delegation from Rome, come to
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plead that he suspend an attack on the city, of his prophetic vision, warning
him to do so, and subsequent withdrawal to Pannonia.
The nature of Attila’s death, like that of Arthur, remains a mystery.
There is no record of it in the fragments left by Priscus; but Jordanes
insists that he died of asphyxiation, and further that his body was sine
ullo vulnere, and the Huns rejoiced that their king died neither from the
wounds of enemies, nor from the treachery of his own people, but safe in the
bosom of his family. It has been suggested that Jordanes’s very insistence
that Attila was not murdered indicates familiarity with accounts which said
that he was, accounts which the historian was at pains to refute.7 Such an
hypothesis was given support in the sixth century by John Malalas who
offered three versions of the death: the king died from asphyxiation, was
murdered by a woman, or by a bodyguard bribed to kill him. By the
ninth century such tales had fused, and we find the chronicler Theophanes
reporting that Attila fell into a drunken sleep after celebrating his marriage
and died of asphyxiation in the arms of his bride.
The mystery surrounding his end reaches a climax in the later Norse
sagas, such as the Atlakvia, Piriks, and Volsunga Sagas, which variously
report that “Atli” is murdered when drunk by his wife; pierced by a sword
while asleep; lured into a mountain cavern, then locked inside; burned;
wrapped in a shroud, placed in a special coffin and set upon a ship; prepared
for a stone sarcophagus, a splendid tomb; or left to rot in a cave.
The impression of Attila as a mighty conqueror is also found in German
heroic poetry. His kingdom is vast, his wealth beyond compare, his court
splendid, his warriors loyal and richly rewarded. A marauder, he is yet
magnanimous, ready to pardon enemies and accept their oath of allegiance.
There is only one negative aspect to this Attila, or Etzel: he is often an
“inactive” king.8 At times his court is just a backdrop or starting point for
the main action; and he himself, though still powerful, does not remain the
dominant figure. Thus in the Waltharius, the first work to involve him with
German heroes, initially Etzel conquers mighty nations — but then lapses
into inactivity. It is Walthar who leads the troops to victory, tricks the
drunken king, and escapes, leaving Etzel to rage and despair, incapable of
action, ultimately even unable to persuade his warriors to pursue the fleeing
Walthar.
A similar pattern of behaviour appears in the Niebelungen, where, as
Franz Bauml has cogently pointed out, “a feudal lord as ignorant of the
goings-on at his court as Attila/Etzel, would not be a feudal lord for very
long” (see n. 8). He knows nothing of his wife’s plotting against him or
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her continuing attachment to Siegfried, doesn’t join the fighting at his own
court, and is mocked by Hagan. Again, in the Wunderer Etzel doesn’t take
up arms to defend a maiden, is accused of cowardice, and, indeed, as often in
German epics, displays a tendency to fade silently into the background when
a man of action is required (Williams 229). In such regal inactivity, as well
as in his excellences, Etzel resembles the King Arthur of many romances.
Keeping in mind the general outline of Attila that evolved from the
fifth to the thirteenth century, let us consider the comparable development
of Arthur.9 The British leader first appears as a dux bellorum, a war lord
who marshals his Romanized Celts in their struggles against the Saxons.
References in early Celtic chronicles and in the sixth century Gildas’s De
Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae tell how a descendant of Romans grew
greatly in strength, challenged the Saxon conquerors to battle, fought without pause for three days and three nights at Mount Badon “when almost the
last but not the least slaughter of these hangdogs [Saxons] took place.”10
And this warrior, Ambrosius Aurelianus, with his epic strength, scholars
think was the original Arthur. In the ninth century Nennius says that it
was Arthur who led the British against the Saxons at Badon, and won many
other victories. In the twelfth century, poems about the king and his men
are found in Welsh MSS, for example in the Black Book of Carmarthen there
are “Verses on the Graves of the Heroes”:
A grave for March, a grave for Guythur,
A grave for Gugaun of the Red Sword,
Concealed till Doomsday, the grave of Arthur,11
which suggests that its place was unknown. Even then Arthur had merely
“passed away.”
If like that of Attila, the king’s end almost from the beginning was
open to question, his prowess as a fighter was not — any more than was
that of Attila. In the Book of Aneirin a warrior “glutted black ravens
on the ramparts of the city, though he was not Arthur,”12 the comparison
alone indicating that his epic stature was increasing. By the early twelfth
century his reputation was well established as a great tribal chieftain, with
something of miracle, mystery, and an air of supernatural power about him.
Yet he was not a man to be “dreamed of in false myths,” as William of
Malmesbury protested, but one to be “proclaimed in truthful histories.”
William depicted a pseudo-historical Arthur, a serious national leader who
“kindled the spirits of his countrymen to war,”13 just as the Attila/Hitler
of de Wohl’s novel would do some eight hundred years later.
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Ultimately Geoffrey of Monmouth gathered together the snippets of
history, legend, and myth, and wove them into the account upon which
all subsequent depictions have been based.14 Geoffrey’s Arthur is a world
conqueror, who overthrows not only Picts, Saxons, Scots, but also men
of Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Gaul, and Italy. Among other adventures of
the king, Geoffrey tells of his military campaign in Europe: how, leaving
his kingdom and queen in charge of Mordred, he marches to attack Rome,
receives word that Mordred is in rebellion, returns, wins two battles, but
in a third is mortally wounded. Thus Geoffrey supplies the general outline
for both the character and career of King Arthur that later authors would
expand, imitate, or vary. Layamon, for instance, increases his ferocity and
mystery adds his prophetic dream of betrayal, the magic origin of his sword,
Excalibur, as invincible as Attila’s sword of Mars, and the three queens who
come from fairy land to carry him away after the last great battle in the
West.
There are various versions of Arthur’s going off, just as there are of
Attila’s: he died of wounds inflicted by Mordred; he was borne off to the
apple-bearing isle of Avalon, whether to be healed or to die, to stay or
return, remained an open question even in Chaucer’s day, when Alice, the
Wife of Bath, referred with some distain to “the Kyng Arthour,/ Of which
that Britons speken greet honour” (iii [D]. 857–58). Some said, and some
say still, that Arthur lies sleeping in a cave near Mount Snowden in Wales.15
Thomas Malory best sums up the uncertainty about his end:
Now more of the deth of kynge Arthur coude I never fynde, but that thes
ladyes brought hym to hys grave, and such one was entyred there whych [the]
ermyte bar wytnes that sometyme was Bysshop of Caunterbyry. But yet the
ermyte knew nat in sertayne that he was veryly the body of kynge Arthur; for
thys tale sir Bedwere, a knyght of the Table Rounde, made hit to be wrytten.
Yet som men say in many partys of Inglonde that kynge Arthur ys nat dede,
but had by the wyll of oure Lorde Jesu into another place; and men say that
he shall com agayne, and he shall wynne the Holy Crosse. Yet I woll nat say
that hit shall be so, but rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged
hys lyff. And many men say that there ys wrytten uppon the tumbe thys:
hic iacet arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus. (872–73)
It is in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes that Arthur’s resemblance
to the “inactive” Etzel first emerges. In these twelfth-century French works
the king and his court are mere backdrops for the courtly love affairs and
adventures of his knights. But matters get even worse in the later French
Vulgate Cycle of romances.16 Here emphasis falls squarely upon religion;
the Round Table, representing chivalry and worldly glory, is opposed to the
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Holy Grail, and the quest for that religious symbol is the central focus of all
action. Arthur is not just an “inactive” king, but a rex inutilis,17 a useless
king, head of a kingdom that falls into complete decay when his knights
abandon him to follow the Grail.
This impression of ineffectuality and subordination of role is clearly
seen in the most famous of all English romances, the fourteenth-century
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which centres on Gawain. The court is
only the place where Gawain’s big adventure begins and ends. And it is the
knight, not the king, who accepts the green monster’s frightening challenge.
In fact, among English romances, only The Alliterative Morte Arthure focusses consistently upon the character and career of King Arthur.18
The exact sources of this anonymous fourteenth-century poem are unknown, although its general outline seems to derive from Geoffrey of Monmouth, with some assistance from Wace and Layamon.19 But major segments, such as the invasion of Italy, with Arthur’s itinerary mapped out in
precise detail, are found only in The Morte Arthur . Where did they come
from? Richard Barber thinks that such an account implies an “intimate
knowledge of the country,” and hazards a wild guess: “either the writer or
his informant were among the party of four hundred pilgrims” who traveled
from England to Rome in 1350 “for the jubilee year celebration” at the seat
of Christendom (54). William Matthews noted the original additions to the
chronicle story not only of the invasion of Italy, but also of the reduction
of Lombardy and Tuscany, and the capture of Metz. Matthews was, however, primarily concerned with the relation between the French romances
of Alexander the Great and the English poem, which, he concluded, was
structured so as to reflect the rise and fall of a tragic hero modeled upon
Alexander.20 He might better have said upon Attila.
The “inactive” quality which Arthur shares with Attila has been recognized by one or two scholars before,21 but until now no one has ever
suggested that the British king’s general character, as well as his attacks
upon Metz, Gaul, and Italy, may have originated in accounts of the Hun
leader. Yet it has been suggested that Beowulf , the most famous of all Old
English poems, is indebted to just such a source. Martin Puhvel entertains
the possibility that the burial rites of Beowulf, including the riding round
his commemorative barrow by a select group of thanes, who chant as they
ride a song in celebration of their leader’s heroic life and deeds, were based
on those of Attila. He believes that in view of similar popular rituals among
Germanic peoples it is not necessary to assume that the details came directly
from reports of Attila’s funeral, yet does not totally dismiss the possibility
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of influence upon the Beowulf poet of earlier literary echoes, as well as of
custom and tradition.
Frederick Klaeber also raised some provocative questions about the similarity between the two funerals: was “the author of Beowulf indebted to
Jordanes for the notion of the riding thanes? Or to a story of Attila’s burial
so famous that echoes of it had reached the ears of an Old English poet some
four hundred years after the fact?” (265). Numerous, pervasive parallels
between The Alliterative Morte Arthure and the career of Attila strongly
argue that an even more detailed story of the great Hun leader had, indeed,
reached the ears of a Middle English poet, even longer after the fact.
These parallels appear most readily in a comparison between The Morte
Arthure and the twentieth-century novel, Attila, by G.P.R. James.22 James
presents a type of mediaeval tragedy, in which a larger-than-life-size hero
falls from success and happiness to ruin and misery, pursuing the same
course that Matthews traces in The Tragedy of Arthur . In the novel, Attila,
although a powerful tribal chieftain like the Arthur of Gildas and Nennius, is
a man of simple habits, temperance, and calm equanimity, who establishes
laws and justice, like the Arthur of Geoffrey of Monmouth. He treats his
men with great generosity, the “fredom” characteristic of any Germanic
ring-giver, and his comitatus, his bodyguard of warriors, reverence him as
the knights of the Round Table do their king.
When emissaries come from Rome demanding that Attila pay tribute to
their emperor, his eyes flash with wrath; he rages like a lion. And they cower,
trembling on the ground before him. But when his tempest of emotion
subsides, he offers them courteous hospitality, a lavish feast and rich gifts,
before rejecting their demands outright, and sending them scuttling back
to carry his message: rather than pay tribute, he will come and collect it
himself.
Similarly, in The Alliterative Morte Arthure, when Roman ambassadors
present their demands to the king, his anger is terrifying; his eyes glow like
coals; he shakes with rage like a lion; bites his lips; can hardly speak for
wrath; glares at the messengers so cruelly that they crouch for fear like dogs
on the floor. But Arthur, too, then treats them graciously, provides a rich
banquet and gifts, before sending them back to Rome with a violent threat;
he shall hold his court, his Round Table, by the Rhone, then invade Italy,
mine down the walls of cities, and attack Rome itself.
The details and extent of their ensuing campaigns raise both men above
the status of tribal chieftain and turn them into international conquerors,
bring them, indeed, close to being lords of the world. Both fight with or
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against men from Africa, Almayne, Aquitaine, Burgundy, Gaul, Genoa,
Gotland, Lorraine, Rhodes, Scythia, Saxony, their marches extending from
Belgium to Germany to Lorraine to Lombardy, to the walls of Rome. And
they fight at or near the same places: the rivers Seine, Loire, Marne,
Danube; the cities of Toulous, Troyes, Auton, then Pisa, Pavia, Ravenna,
Venice; and both of them besiege Metz.
As William Matthews points out (44), the lengthy section of The Morte
Arthure that describes Arthur’s capture of Metz is one of its anonymous
author’s most extensive additions to the chronicle story. He doesn’t mention
Aquileia, whose destruction by Attila is fully recorded in history and legend.
Yet it seems significant that his original account of Arthur’s onslaught on
Metz closely parallels that of Attila on Aquileia. That the following details
occur, in the same order, in the romance-epic of Arthur and the history of
Attila, is at the very least interesting. Both tell of a long, fierce siege of
a strongly garrisoned city, whose defenders withstand the attack so stoutly
that the attackers grow discontented and eager to withdraw. The battle
leader circles the walls, considering whether to leave or stay; constructs
battering rams; brings up all manner of engines of war; his men break down
the walls; divide the spoils; lay the city waste; and devastate it so cruelly
and completely as to leave scarcely a trace behind. At Metz, Arthur displays
a savagery unexpected in a Christian king, but identical to that displayed
by Attila at Aquileia.
Following the fighting in Gaul, both generals traverse the valleys of
Switzerland in Autumn, sweep down through the Alpine passes into Italy;
ravage the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany — but not Milan, whose Duke
sends a ransom to Attila and tribute to Arthur. On the plains of northern
Italy they rest, resupply their troops, and then are visited by representatives
of the Church in Rome. In The Morte Arthure a cardinal visits Arthur; in
Christian histories Pope Leo i visits Attila. These dignitaries plead with
the conquerors to spare the holy city and the servants of God; and that
night each has a dream, warning that his fortune is at end. He should
remember the fate of his predecessors, Arthur that of Alexander, Attila
that of Alaric; should withdraw his forces, and return home. And so they
do, retreating back through the Alps, Arthur to the last battle in Camelot,
where Mordred’s sword lays him low; Attila to his tents on the Hungarian
plain, where some say a woman kills him; but no one knows for sure the
final fate of either man.
Of course, resemblances such as these between Attila and Arthur could
be attributed to coincidence and/or the traditional depiction of a hero.
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After all, Alexander also had a dream. But Alexander did not invade all of
the provinces invaded by both Attila and Arthur, and in the same order; did
not battle the same men they both did; camp near the same rivers; attack
the same towns; cross the Alps at the same season; destroy the same cities
in northern Italy; camp in Lombardy, receive a churchman from Rome, and
then dream a dream, and as a result retreat through the Alps to a mysterious
end.
The channels of transmission through which the character and career
of Attila impinged upon those of Arthur are unknown. Was there once an
epic of Attila comparable to the ones concerning Siegfried, or Dietrich von
Bern, upon which The Morte Arthure might have been based? Or had the
histories, legends, and myths of the Hun leader passed into the domain of the
folk, become familiar enough to exert a continual, even if unconscious, effect
on a writer? At this distance in time, and in the absence of more concrete
proof, it seems impossible to say. But the details of resemblance between the
two leaders are too many, too specific, and too consistent in their ordering
to be considered insignificant, or to be attributed to the chance coincidence
of disparate details — even if some of those details do occur in the account
of various other heroic figures.
Such resemblence is, after all, not to be wondered at. That Attila
and the heroes of German, or Old, or Middle English — Dietrich von Bern,
Siegfried, Alexander, Arthur — should have a general similarity is only to
be expected in light of their historical context. All such figures embody
the warlike codes of behaviour which governed the wandering Germanic
tribes and are reflected in the earliest English poetry, like the Christian
epics, Elene, Juliana, Genesis A and B , or in secular poems like Beowulf ,
Waldhere, and Widsith. Such literature is truly heroic in the sense that it
glorifies bravery as an outward expression of the spirit. We find this even in
The Dream of the Rood , where Christ is a bold warrior, striding proudly to
mount the cross. And we find it still in The Battle of Maldon, in the words
of Byrhtnoth, “thought shall be the harder, heart the keener, courage the
greater, as our might lessens,” when England had been Christian for over
three hundred years.
The scribes who wrote down the early literature were nearly all monks,
of course, schooled in Christian beliefs. But they were German in heritage,
with the warrior ethos bred in their bones; which accounts for the strong
impression conveyed by their poems of being essentially pagan works, with
only a superficial overlay of Christianity. Christianity was no hindrance
to their admiration of prowess, pride, bravery — even if such virtures were
FLORENCE H. RIDLEY
113
accompanied by qualities that today would negate them: cruelty, savagery,
and greed.
Thus while an audience of today, including my own students, brainwashed by political, religious, and social history, may find equating Attila
to Arthur the same as equating Hitler to the Lone Ranger, a mediaeval
audience would not have found it so startling. And the anonymous author
of The Alliterative Morte Arthure would have felt no compunction about
depicting a King Arthur behind whom loomed the heroic figure of Attila
the Hun, overlaid with only a light coat of Christian whitewash.
University of California at Los Angeles
notes
1 Jennifer Williams, pp. 100–02, 98, reports that Gregory of Tours (539-594) in his
History of the Franks laid the foundation of the “Flagellum Dei” view of Attila, although
he did not use the term in connection with him. From the eleventh century on it appeared
as a title after Attila’s name.
2 Philip Martin best captures the sense of mystery surrounding the Huns, their
origin and destination, in a set of poems entitled “Strave.”
3 3 May 2/2, 1892.
4 Quoted in the New York Times, Aug. 20, 8:2, 1918.
5 Williams has made the most comprehensive and authoritative study of the early
accounts of Attila to date. For a survey of these accounts, and relevant quotations from
them, see her Etzel der Rı̂che.
6 For a reproduction and discussion of the painting, see C.V. Wedgwood, pp. 77–80.
7 G. Moravcsik, cited by Williams, p. 24.
8 Franz Bauml discussed this aspect of the king of the Huns in “Attila in Medieval
German Literature,” a paper delivered at a UCLA International Symposium on Attila
in 1988. Bauml concluded that Attila was guilty not merely of “inactivity,” as Williams
defined it (156–57), but especially in the Niebelungen of a debilitating lack of perspicacity.
9 For discussion of the development of the story and character of Arthur in legend,
chronicle, history, Celtic literature, and romance see, among others, J. Douglas Bruce;
Albert C. Baugh, pp. 165–93; Roger Sherman Loomis, ed., Arthurian Literature in the
Middle Ages. Richard L. Brengle gives a good selection of relevant quotations from the
earliest records through Malory’s Le Morte Darthur .
10 For the references in Gildas and Nennius, see Brengle, pp. 3–6.
11 See Loomis, “The Legend of Arthur’s Survival,” in Loomis, ed., p. 64.
12 See Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, “The Arthur of History,” in Loomis, ed., p. 3.
13 See Brengle, p. 8.
14 The material in Geoffrey is conveniently available in Historia Regum Britanniae,
trans. as History of the Kings of Britain by Sebastian Evans.
114
FLORILEGIUM 11, 1992
15 For various versions of Arthur’s death, see Loomis, “The Legend of Arthur’s
Survival,” in Loomis, ed., pp. 64–71.
16 For a citation of editions and discussion of the Vulgate Cycle, see Jean Frappier,
in Loomis, ed., pp. 295–318.
17 E. Peters, in applying the term “inutilis” to kings in medieval literature, cites
Arthur in Perlesvaus, among others.
18 On the poem’s focus on Arthur, see Valerie Krishna, p. xii; and “The Alliterative
Morte Arthure,” in The Romance of Arthur , ed. James J. Wilhelm and Laila Z. Gross.
The poem was edited by Edmund Brock for EETS.
19 On the sources of the poem, see among others J.L.N. O’Loughlin, “The English
Alliterative Romances,” in Loomis, ed., p. 523, and William Matthews, p. 3 and passim.
20 On the difference between Layamon, Wace and The Morte Arthure touched on
in Matthews, see pp. 98, 103–04, 132. As a whole his book is concerned with the relation
between the romances of Alexander and the English poem, as explicitly stated on p. 33.
21 See n. 17 above, and Helmut de Boor, p. 12.
22 James’s narrative is a fiction, Attila: a Romance. But it is one compounded
of details drawn from the historical outline in Jordanes, from Gallic and Italic as well
as from Byzantine histories and chronicles. I have followed his ordering of the material
because it makes most readily apparent the similarity between Attila and Arthur.
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