The Age Of Attila

This book considers the great cultural and geopolitical changes in western Eurasia in the fifth century CE. It focuses on the Roman Empire, but it also examines the changes taking place in northern Europe, in Iran under the Sasanian Empire, and on the great Eurasian steppe. Attila is presented as a contributor to and a symbol of these transformations.

The author intends in his book "to give the reader with little or no Greek a chance to see for himself how the writers nearest to the events described their age," the fifth century, and specifically the dealings of the West and East Roman courts with the barbarians. For this purpose, he has translated those fragments of Olympiodorus, Priscus, Malchus, Candidus, and John of Antioch which have an immediate bearing on political events, distributed them over six chapters, and connected them with brief introductions and comments. Notes contain cross references, references to other ancient and a few modern writings, and textual criticism. The so-called general reader is bound to get a one-sided picture of the fifth century, unless he fits the fragments into the one he has already drawn for himself from Gibbon, Bury, Seeck, or Stein. Used with caution, as a supplement to textbooks, the volume may fulfill its purpose.

In The Death of Attila, the great Hun leader dominates the late Roman world; in his shadow, a Hun warrior and a German princeling form a fragile comradeship. When Attila dies, the world around them crumbles, and the two men face terrible choices.

Explains how the legendary military commander's principles of leadership can be applied to contemporary business situations in the '90s.

Attila the Hun - godless barbarian and near-mythical warrior king - has become a byword for mindless ferocity. His brutal attacks smashed through the frontiers of the Roman empire in a savage wave of death and destruction. His reign of terror shattered an imperial world that had been securely unified by the conquests of Julius Caesar five centuries before. This book goes in search of the real Attila the Hun. For the first time it reveals the history of an astute politician and first-rate military commander who brilliantly exploited the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman empire. We ride with Attila and the Huns from the windswept steppes of Kazakhstan to the opulent city of Constantinople, from the Great Hungarian Plain to the fertile fields of Champagne in France. Challenging our own ideas about barbarians and Romans, imperialism and civilisation, terrorists and superpowers, this is the absorbing story of an extraordinary and complex individual who helped to bring down an empire and forced the map of Europe to be redrawn forever.