Arrival of the Huns in Europe (c. 370): Collapse of the Goths

The arrival of the Huns in Europe around 370 was one of the great turning points of late antiquity. Nomadic horsemen from the Central Asian steppe crossed the Volga and Don rivers, crushed the Alans and the Gothic kingdoms north of the Black Sea, and drove tens of thousands of refugees towards the Roman frontier on the Danube. The crisis that followed led directly to the Roman catastrophe at Adrianople in 378 and helped set in motion the migrations that transformed the Western Roman Empire.

Who were the Huns?

The Huns were a confederation of nomadic peoples from the Eurasian steppe. They lived largely from herding, moved with their animals and were outstanding mounted archers, using a powerful composite bow made of wood, horn and sinew. Some of their elite practised artificial skull shaping in infancy, and large bronze cauldrons are typical finds of the Hunnic period.

Their origins are debated. Since the 18th century scholars have linked them to the Xiongnu, a steppe empire north of China that fought the Han dynasty from the 3rd century BC. The similarity of names, some shared customs and cauldron types support a connection, and some recent ancient-DNA studies have found Xiongnu-related eastern steppe ancestry among a few individuals of the Hunnic period in Europe. Most scholars now see the European Huns as a mixed population whose ruling groups may have had eastern origins, rather than a single people that migrated intact.

Almost nothing survives of the Hunnic language except personal names, and the Huns left no written records of their own. Everything we know about their early history comes from Roman and Greek writers and from archaeology.

The world north of the Black Sea

By the mid-4th century the lands north of the Black Sea were dominated by two Gothic groups. The Greuthungi lived east of the Dniester river under the king Ermanaric, whose power the later historian Jordanes greatly exaggerated. The Tervingi lived to the west of the Dniester, near the Roman Danube frontier, led by Athanaric, who held the title of judge.

Further east, between the Volga and the Don, lived the Alans, an Iranian-speaking nomadic people known for their heavily armed cavalry. These peoples had complex relationships with Rome: the Tervingi had fought a war with the Emperor Valens in 367-369 and then made peace with him on boats moored in the middle of the Danube.

The Hunnic onslaught

The historian Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in the 390s, describes how the Huns first fell on the Alans living near the Don, killing many and forcing the survivors into alliance. Together they then attacked the Greuthungi. Ermanaric resisted for a time and then, according to Ammianus, took his own life. His successor Vithimiris was killed in battle, and the Greuthungi, led by the regents Alatheus and Saphrax on behalf of a child king, retreated west towards the Dniester.

Athanaric tried to defend the line of the Dniester, but the Huns crossed the river by night, outflanked his army and routed it. Athanaric withdrew into the Carpathian highlands and began building a defensive wall, but most of his people no longer trusted him to protect them. Hunger and fear spread through the Gothic lands.

The exact dates of these events are uncertain. They are usually placed between about 370 and 376. The Huns of this period do not appear to have had a single supreme ruler. Their attacks were probably made by separate groups seeking plunder and tribute, which made them all the harder to resist or negotiate with.

The crisis on the Danube

In 376 a large part of the Tervingi, under the leaders Alavivus and Fritigern, gathered on the north bank of the lower Danube and asked the Emperor Valens to let them settle inside the empire. Valens, busy with a war against Persia, agreed, seeing the Goths as a source of recruits and farmers. Ammianus says the numbers crossing were so great that they could not be counted; modern estimates for the Tervingi range widely, from perhaps tens of thousands to around 100,000 people including families.

The admission was badly managed. Roman commanders, notably Lupicinus and Maximus, exploited the starving refugees, selling them dog meat in exchange for slaves according to Ammianus. Meanwhile the Greuthungi crossed the river without permission. In 377 the Goths rebelled and ravaged Thrace, and on 9 August 378 they destroyed a Roman army at the Battle of Adrianople, where Valens himself was killed.

Key people

• Ermanaric: king of the Greuthungi, who died around 375 after Hunnic attacks; later legend made him ruler of a vast empire.
• Athanaric: leader of the Tervingi and persecutor of Gothic Christians, who failed to stop the Huns on the Dniester.
• Fritigern: Tervingian leader who led the Goths across the Danube and commanded them at Adrianople.
• Valens (ruled 364-378): eastern Roman emperor who admitted the Goths and died in the war that followed.
• Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330-c. 395): Roman soldier and historian, our main source for the period.

Myths and facts

Myth: a single Hunnic horde of millions swept across Europe. The Huns were relatively few. Their success came from mobility, archery and their ability to absorb conquered peoples such as the Alans and Goths into their forces.

Myth: the Huns were led by Attila from the start. Attila ruled from 434 to 453, more than sixty years after the first Hunnic attacks on the Goths. The Huns did not move their main power base onto the Hungarian plain until the early 5th century.

Myth: Ammianus gives an eyewitness portrait of the Huns. His famous description of Huns living on horseback, eating raw meat warmed under their saddles and having no houses relies largely on literary stereotypes of nomads. Archaeology shows a more complex society.

Consequences

The Hunnic advance destroyed the political order north of the Black Sea and set off a chain of movements. Gothic groups who had been living beside the empire were now living within it, often as armed and semi-independent forces. Their presence shaped Roman politics for decades and led in time to the Sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths under Alaric.

The Huns themselves moved gradually westwards. By about 400 a Hunnic leader named Uldin was active on the Danube, and in the 420s and 430s the Huns established a powerful empire centred on the Hungarian plain. Under Attila they invaded the Balkans, Gaul and Italy, until their defeat at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 and Attila’s death in 453.

Timeline

• 367-369: The Emperor Valens fights a war against the Tervingi.
• c. 370: The Huns attack the Alans near the Don and force them into alliance.
• c. 370-375: Huns and Alans defeat the Greuthungi; Ermanaric dies.
• c. 375-376: Athanaric is outflanked on the Dniester and his Tervingi break apart.
• 376: Valens allows the Tervingi under Fritigern to cross the Danube.
• 377: The Goths revolt against Roman mistreatment in Thrace.
• 378, 9 August: The Goths defeat and kill Valens at Adrianople.

Why it matters

The arrival of the Huns was the first link in the chain of events that brought Germanic peoples into the Roman Empire in large numbers. It changed the balance of power between Rome and its neighbours, and historians see it as a key starting point for the transformation of the Roman West into the kingdoms of early medieval Europe.