August 9, 2018 • 42 mins
If you go to the Internet you'll see a few people championed as all-time greatest conquerors - Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Atilla the Hun. Listen in today as Josh and Chuck dive into number three on this list, Atilla the Hun.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. There's a guest producer, Dylan Again.
You know, Dylan got a job here because he heard
(00:21):
of How Stuff Works, because he was a Stuff you
Should Know fan. This might be the most thrilling moment
of Dylan's life, the most thrilling two hours. Either that
or the most illusion shattering two hours. I think that
since Dylan started working here, it's just been a slow
anti climax, down, down, down, leading to this moment of
rock bottom. We're like that guy, rag him out. Oh
(00:46):
how's it going. It's going terrifically. How are you Dylan good?
He said, I see, he knows he's a fan. He
didn't even try to speak. Noel will be like, well
let me tell you, yeah, let me see if I
can find a microphone. It just shows one of us
out of the way, knows what he's doing. Uh. You
know what. I couldn't help. But when I was researching this,
(01:09):
probably because we just did this is think about Genghis
Khan and if you go on the internet and type
in Attil of the Hun or Genghis Khan. There are
so many nerdy websites where people pitt uh fictional battles
against historic leaders really yeah, like who would have won
(01:32):
in a cage match until of the Hunter Genghis Khan? Right?
But there's like actual thought put behind it? Or is
it just like no genghas cool? There's a range from
that to like the people who really put too much
effort into it and um, but those are interesting to read,
you know, like you've got to remember guys like Genghis
(01:54):
Khan had a thousand years of weaponry development to his advantage.
And when it comes to personal fighting tactics as opposed
to leadership, those are two different things to talk about.
And then their voice changes until they've become Toby from
American Splendor. Genghis Khan was what a thousand years after
(02:16):
at Till of the Hunt? Is that correct? Well? Because
I thought the opposite. I thought he was BC And again,
we just did a show on him, and I already
forgot since here leven sixty two for Chingas and four
oh six for a Till of the Hunt. That is fascinating,
So okay, yeah, I mean ching has had a lot
of advancements in that thousand years for sure. Yeah, And
(02:39):
I don't know, I couldn't help but compare these guys.
So I might just sort of pepper that in here
and there and and comparing these because our own article
starts out by mentioning Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and
Chingis khan uh as some of the most brutal conquerors
and antiquity. I really appreciate you moving to Chingas might
(03:03):
as well. So until of the Hun, he was around
between he was in the fifth century CE, right, four
oh six. You know, they don't know exactly about his
birth dates, but they're they're putting it around four or six. No,
we should do this, Um, we should do this chronologically.
(03:23):
But I think we should say out of the gate
that there is a lot of um debate in the
in the historical field of just how much we could
say about um Attil of the Hun's early life. Yeah,
I mean over that period between him and Chingas, like,
there was a lot more record keeping. Two. Right, that's
(03:44):
a that's a great point. We don't even know what
language the Huns spoke necessarily, No, we debate on that.
No idea um. Apparently, one of the things you can
kind of glean what language people spoke is UM from
their names, and a lot of the names associated with Attila,
the Hunt and the Huns in general are Germanic, so
(04:05):
they say, well, they spoke Germanic. The other people say
well no. By the time until of the Hun came
around in the fifth century UM, the Germanic tongue had
spread far and wide, so that's probably not what their
native tongue originally was. It's just lost the time. One
of the reasons it was lost the time is because
these were, in the parliance of the day, total barbarians.
(04:29):
They were nomadic horse people who lacked virtually any anything
resembling a government, um, anything like an economy, anything like
the trappings of what you would call a civilization. They
were by definition barbarians, right, But all that aside, it's
(04:49):
not to say that that that civilization is just everything's perfect.
Definitely has its own flaws, and barbarianism has its own amazements, right.
But the thing that made the Huns definitive barbarians is
because they would come through sack your town, burn it down,
(05:11):
kill you and your family, and then just move on.
They would take your gold. They had no desire to
subjugate you, to to rule you, to extract taxes, to
maybe make you grow crops for them. Nothing. It was
basically pillaging, raping, and murdering is what the Huns were
known for, because that's what they did. Yeah, and I
think the main difference that I found, well, plenty of differences,
(05:34):
but the main one between he and Khan was sort of,
like you said, like Genghis, Khan wanted to rule the
world and spread his empire as as ruler of people's
and Attila the Hun, by all accounts, wanted to collect
gold right um, but was also for all his ferocity.
(05:57):
There are also scholars and historians who believe that uh
Man I might get these names mixed up. Now that
I'm all in my head about it, I'm I've been
just hanging on by my fingernail. There are a lot
of scholars and historians who believe that until of the
hun Is was also uh sort of a fair person
and generally a man of his word, and maybe rustled
(06:21):
up a lot of these stories to drive himself to
drive fear into his enemies, and was not as brutal
as maybe history believes in some cases. Yeah, but I
I so. You remember when we did the chinaskon episode, like,
there was a lot of um, a lot of examples
and things you could point to and be like they
improved the world in these ways. There you can count
(06:45):
the ones about until of the hun like basically on
your fingers, and when when it was an example of
him being like uncharacteristically magnanimous by sparing somebody's life, it
was totally out of character for him, and like, um.
One of the things about Chengiz Khan as well is
that if you surrendered without a fight, if you just said,
(07:07):
we surrender, take our town, you would live. And you
would live now under the rule of the Mongols the
till of the Hun he and the Huns would kill you,
kill your whole town. Offering no resistance whatsoever, did not
guarantee in any way, shape or form survival when you
encountered the Hunts. They terrified people for hundreds of years
(07:27):
in Europe. But at the same time, if you paid
your your uh what what do you call it, like
the gangster movies tribute? Yeah, but like you know when
you pay someone to protect your money, Yeah, sort of
like that, Yeah, protection from you. Basically, Uh, generally, and
again there are examples even in this article of ours
(07:48):
where he he went back on that. But generally if
you paid that gold, he would also leave you alone. Um,
because he didn't want to lose. Like I said, he
wasn't trying to just conquer the world. So he seemed
like he would only undertake a mission or a or
a war if he if there was something in it
for him other than just like expanding his kingdom, which
(08:12):
on a modern map eventually was it say here large
portions of eastern and western Roman Empires, from Germany in
the west, to Romania in the south, to the Netherlands
and the north, and Russia and Kazakhstan in the east.
And uh, that was generally a till of the Huns
(08:32):
area over about a ten year span, well nine I
think nine years, well nineteen years period. But in that
ten year span is when he really liked did a
lot of his damage, which is that's impressive, and put
a big dent in the Roman Empire. That was another
thing too, Like you can you can say what you
want about the guy, and I think it's worth pointing
(08:53):
out there's all of this is to say, like nobody
is bad. And when you get this far are away,
almost two thousand years away, years away from somebody like,
their character just becomes cartoonish. So there is not a
lot we can say, especially about the nuances of this
guy's character, but you can point to what he did
(09:17):
and say, this man change the course of history, and
he definitely did, especially by basically hastening the fall of
the Roman Empire. Right, this is pretty impressive stuff. I
feel like we should almost stick a break. That was
a nice preamble. All right, we'll get back to his
birth and start over right after this. Alright, So four
(10:01):
oh sixes when they think Attila the Hunt was born
in uh Pannonia, which what you would now say is Hungary. Yeah,
because by this time the Hunts, well they first appear
in the Western record, and I think ce Tacitus, the
historian Roman historian says, oh, yeah, by the way, there's
(10:24):
these people out there called the Hunts. There are barbarian
tribe who cares watch you're back. Well, he didn't even
say that. He just basically said there's a barbarian tribe
out there. But by the time Attila was was born,
the Hunts had made a name for themselves is being fierce,
fearsome warriors that just basically could overtake anybody, and they had. Yeah,
he was not born. His story is very different from
(10:47):
Chingis Khans, and that he was born already into I
guess what you would consider royalty, uh and and privilege.
And that they think the Huns came from Kazakhstan, I
think you said, or their their empire stretched all the
way kash Central Asia. They think that's where they probably originated.
But by the time Untila was born, Um, he was
(11:08):
born on the Danube in Hungary, which is like became
the capital of the area they settled. Yeah, and you
mentioned that the Huns were known as fierce warriors. Um,
much like Khan's army. They really made their hay on horses.
I don't even know if that counts as a pun,
It doesn't, all right, It was just delightful though. They
(11:29):
were excellent horsemen. UM. I don't know if they rode
those little squatty horses like uh, like Khan's army did.
But they were great on horseback, apparently so great that
they kind of didn't get off their horses to do
much when it when in terms of battle. But even
beyond battle. I saw that they held negotiations on their horses.
Um that they were characterized as being one with their horse.
(11:54):
That was one thing, right, right, in the true sense
that was I hope not mainly for the horses, say yeah,
but um they they they were. The fact that they
were amazing horsemen. That's check one, and why they were
basically impossible to feat Check two was they had a
special kind of bow called the hun bow, right, and
(12:14):
these things are beautiful. It was a recursive bow where
the bow itself been curve back onto itself, which meant
you have more torque, which meant you could shoot an
arrow through armor at a hundred yards. Yeah, they're all
kinds of recurve bows, but this one was especially squatty
and kind of short. So it's recurved. It's not recursive,
(12:35):
yeah recurve. Um. Oh yeah, it was short, which meant
it was mobile. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So if you picture
just like a U shaped bow, that's just a bow,
but a recurve bends back around to face the other
way at both ends and both points. And this one was,
like I said, especially squatty, and it just it's cool
looking like bow enthusiasts collect these things. I can imagine
(12:57):
hun bows. You say, this is a till of the
huns areo boat. Everybody says that. So so wait a minute,
So we've got two things. Now we've got they were
basically one with their horse. They were so good on
a horse, they could shoot arrows through your armor a
hundred yards away, almost a hundred meters away. Um, while
on these horses. That's check two. And then number three
(13:21):
is that they didn't fight in any sort of coherent
battle formation. It was just show up out of nowhere,
right around, start picking people off, scatter, regroup out of nowhere,
show up again, pick more people off, scatter, regroup and
like you just you had no idea that they were
coming at any point in time, and they would just
(13:44):
come and basically waste your army. And there was no
formation that you could form against. It was just chaos. Yeah,
and and fast, like before you knew what was going on,
You're you're getting arrows slung your way. And like you said,
from any direction, wasn't like here they come from the north,
Like they were all over the place. Uh. It said
(14:05):
here in this one article you sent that the soldiers
they wore these heavy leather greased uh outfits greased with
animal fat, which is good, which just said made them
both supple and rain resistant. Maybe that was for the
horses and steel line helmets chain mail. They're very nimble.
(14:28):
They also used swords, of course, and their leather boots.
They rode horses so much they didn't even worry about hiking,
so they would wear these leather boots. Had very thin
soles that I guess major feet, more responsive to stirrup action.
I don't know, they were just more comfortable. They're like,
isoton boots? Did they make shoes? Oh? No, you're talking
(14:53):
about the gloves. They make slippers? I think, Oh really,
I think so. I don't think it was Damn Marina,
want to hear that isotoneer gloves and uh ace ventura.
All right, So these are the huns. They're nomadic there
chaotic and battle, their fierce, Their their stories precede them,
their legend precedes them. So when you are getting attacked
(15:14):
like that's got to do a mental number on you,
especially like when they came upon towns and cities, like
sometimes entire cities, they would level them, just utterly destroy
They would take everything they wanted kill everybody that they wanted.
They would take hostages and slaves and prisoners, um. But
then they would just destroy the town. And there was
(15:35):
one town in Italy um called Aquileia. Aquileia, I believe um.
No one knows where it was, they know it existed,
but then the Huns got They Huns sacked it and
now no one has any idea what it was because
they just utterly destroyed the tip. That was like the
kind of thing they would do, almost just out of spite,
(15:58):
just maliciously, you know, because apparently Attila the Hun was
known for um using his fierce reputation at an advantage
and he didn't want to fight or thought that fighting
was unwise. He could use his reputation to get you
to to surrender and then maybe you would survive, maybe
(16:20):
you wouldn't. UM. But they didn't necessarily need that because
they backed up the fierce reputation actually did these things
that people feared them for. And they had a name
for the Huns, and apparently specifically Attila the Hun in
the Holy Roman or the Roman Empires pre Holy Roman,
they called them the flagellum day the scourge of God.
(16:44):
And this is what these Christians thought, that that God
had sent this horrible, almost devil figure to come and
wipe their towns from the earth because they weren't living
upright enough. Yeah, and I saw some historians think that
he might have even made that name up. Oh really,
it seems like he was a big promoter of his
(17:04):
of his wicked ways, just to scare people. Well, it's
still working on me, like he would because I'm passing
all this stuff off. He was often drawn with like
goats horns and things like that, And I don't I
think he encouraged this stuff. Well, he did famously say
that wherever he's trod or past, grass will never grow again.
So yeah, he definitely, he definitely would play it up.
(17:24):
But it didn't hurt his feelings that people said these
things about him, right, so he I don't think we
mentioned yet. He uh took over along with his brother
Blada b L E. D A when they were young
their uncles actually, um, that's there was a lot of
biarchy going on at the time with the Huns, which
is a little bit unusual for a couple of people
(17:46):
to split ruling duties, and their uncles jointly ruled the
Hunt empire. Eventually the brothers took over as co rulers
in four thirty four, and I think they even had
their own territories that they were in charge of. It's
not like they were together. Uh. And then eventually Attila
was like, yeah, I think I'd rather just really operate
this show by myself. And he killed his brother, killed
(18:08):
his own brother. That's that's harsh. I didn't see. How
did you see? I didn't. I couldn't find it. I
couldn't either, as I saw once a story about a
night I think, who killed his own brother. But his
brother was a priest saying mass, and the night came
in and cut his own brother's head off while he
(18:29):
was saying mass. Like, if there is a god, that
really upset I'm unsure. So he and his brother uh
co rule and they settled down a little bit on
the great what was known as the Great Hungarian Plains,
a little less nomadic at this point were the Huns. Yeah,
because they were weighed down with so much golden plunder. Yeah,
(18:50):
they just they couldn't ride around like they did. So
have we reached the point where he's the single ruler? Now, yeah,
let's go ahead and get rid of his brother, so
we should a. I don't know if this name came
upon him ascending to um being the co ruler with
his brother or the single ruler. But Attila means little father.
(19:12):
They do not think that this is his birth name,
because that's just no matter what age or period of
history we're talking about, it'd be weird to name your
son little father. Um. They think it was a name
of respect and affection, is how I saw it put
and that they think that this was basically his His
king name was Attila. They have no idea what his
(19:32):
real name was, but they think that Attila was not it. No,
but by the time he became ruler, like you said,
he was born into a privileged household. Um, he he
knew what to do from a very early age. His
uncle's as rulers brought him and his brother Bleda up
to speak Latin. So maybe he did come up with
(19:54):
Flagellum Davey Goth which was another Germanic tribe who figure
into this picture later on. Um and to to understand diplomacy,
military strategy, horsemanship obviously, UM all of this stuff. So
it was brought up to lead, so it was kind
of natural that he would kill his brother and take
over the entire hunt empire. Yeah, and the other another
(20:16):
thing I thought was interesting was even though he was
sort of on a conquest for gold and riches, he
lived sort of simply as a ruler. Like all of
his his upper uh subordinates. Apparently they did live the
high life, and they drank from silver and gold chalices
and had fancy clothes and big you know, make mansions,
(20:39):
platform shoes, platform shoes with goldfish in the heel. And
Attila lived in a log house with animal skins on
the walls and drank from a wooden cup. And even
though he wanted to get all this gold, it doesn't
look like he lived that way, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
That really kind of opens up the guy for interpretation.
You know, like says a couple of things. One, he's
(21:01):
surrounded by all these material goods, but his tastes are
extraordinarily simple, and he stuck to it. He didn't try
to show off at any point. He just was who
he was as far as his taste point. And then secondly,
he also didn't demand that the people subordinate to him
live like he lived. That says an enormous amount you know, like,
(21:22):
there's so many people at the top who want the
people below them to act like them, to live like them,
to behave like them. So for him to to have
like there was a cult of personality around this guy,
and for him to allow and maybe even encourage people
to live their own way totally counter to how he lived.
I don't know. He's a complex figure for sure. Um.
(21:46):
Should we talk about the Treaty of Marcus. Yeah, this
is a big turning point in history. Yeah. So this
was in four thirty four. Uh, and he I believe
that what we're going back to when Bledah was still alive. Um,
they worked up a peace treaty called the Treaty of
Marcus with what is this the Eastern Roman Empire. Yes,
(22:06):
and they basically said, hey, if you return all these
hunt refugees, basically people that fled my rule, return these
people to us. How many were there? At least of fourteen,
but I think maybe seventeen Yeah, like not seventeen thousand,
but seventeen people. But that's how much he prized loyalty,
is how I saw it. Put. Yeah, like I want
these people back, and he also didn't want them going
(22:28):
off into the Roman Empire and stirring up rebellion to
come take over the Hunting Empire. Yeah, exactly. So if
you return, these people will establish some trading rights that
are fair. You guys pay us about seven hundred pounds
of gold every year directly to me and my bro
and we'll, like, we'll lay off and you can just
(22:49):
kind of do your thing here in the Eastern Roman Empire. Yeah,
it's extortion. Yeah, I saw that that Attila was. He
plundered in war and extorted in peacetime. That's what he did.
So yeah, he said, we won't invade you if you
pay a seven hundred pounds of goal of a year,
and he didn't. But then he said, um, there was
(23:09):
another part of this too. He said that that he
wanted not just the traitorous Huns who left or escaped
his rule to be returned to him. He also wanted um,
a Roman bishop who he believed had come into the
Hunting Empire and desecrated some graves and stolen grave goods
(23:31):
from the graves, to be handed over to him. And
apparently the Eastern Empire uh Emperor Theodosius the second said, hey,
man I gave, I gave all of the Huns I
could find in the empire over to you and this bishop.
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think
this is actually true. Um, they didn't give over the bishop.
(23:55):
And so Attila actually said, um, you guys just broke
the treaty, were invading, And he did invade, and they
actually invaded through Marguts. And the guy who opened the
gates of Marguts too for them to the Huns was
the bishop who stole the grave goods. So had the
emperor handed over this guy, the the invasion of Italy
(24:19):
by the Huns would have never happened. And that's the
sound that played when he opened the gate. Apparently they
got within about twenty miles of Constantinople. And Theodosius too said, whoa,
you're getting a little too close. How about pounds of
(24:41):
gold per year three times as much cold? And I
believe that that quelled Attila's desires for temporarily, at least temporarily.
So that just meant with Attila that he just turned
his sight somewhere else. Yeah, you want to take a break, Yeah,
let's do it. Okay, okay, man, we're back. So, um,
(25:24):
the Eastern Roman Empire has said all right, here here
take some more gold. Um leave us alone, and he
did for a little while. But one of the things
that um Attila the hunt did was he created like
a domino effect, there were other Germanic tribes of barbarians
(25:44):
and making air quotes everybody um who were in the
area that got pushed out of the area and into
the Roman Empire by the Hunts. So the Hunts pushed
out the Allan's, the Alan's pushed out the Goths. The
Goths pushed out some other tribes, and as a result,
(26:05):
you now had other Germanic tribes living in the Roman Empire.
It's a big seed that got planted by the Hunts
because the Hunts pushed everybody out and took over their empire. Right,
This actually led to the downfall of the Roman Empire
later on. It was that the Great migration, yeah, or
the wandering of the nations. Now is this when people
(26:26):
split and just fractured the Roman Empire, So hopefully get that.
So what happened was the um the these different tribes
got pushed into the Roman Empire started and the Vandals
that so um, the the Visigoths in particular got pushed
(26:47):
into there and they were living as Roman subjects under
Roman rule, but they were not being treated very well
by the Roman governors of the territories they lived in.
And they eventually rose up against Rome, against a Roman
empire in the areas where they lived. And these little
battles and skirmishes that that that Rome was having, or
(27:08):
the Roman Empire was having with these groups that would
have otherwise not been in their borders started to weaken
the empire enough that it actually felt the the I
think it was the Goths that actually sacked Rome and
and crumbled the Roman Empire. And the whole reason they
could make it to Rome was because they were in
(27:30):
the Roman Empire already, because the Huns had pushed them
in their years before and set off this chain of
events that led to maybe the most powerful empire in
the history of the world. Tell of the Hun did that?
It wasn't Susie in her banshees no leading the Goths.
Did you like them? Oh? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, me too,
(27:53):
they were great. I generally wasn't into that, though, yes,
I don't even know what counts. She You didn't like
the cure or the smiths, or I guess the smiths
weren't weren't goth, but the cure definitely was. You don't
like the cure. I love the cure, but chuck your golf. Really,
my friend, you're GoF all right, I'll get my mass era. Okay,
(28:15):
uh yeah, I mean some of those terms, I don't
even know, like what the dividing line is. I don't
you know. You know, people are still hung up on
that kind of thing. Do you like the cure? Yes? Good,
you're smart for liking the cure. They're great and you're
a god. Should we talk about his weird marriage situation? Yes,
(28:36):
so this was odd. He had well, obviously he had
a bunch of wives, because that's just the way it
was back then. No one knows how many wives. I
don't think it's like anything like Chingis Khan, where they
think he fathered like half the world's uh people or
anything like that. But he had a share of wives.
And this was an interesting thing. Here. In the spring
of fourteen fifty, there was a woman named Honorrhea, and
(29:00):
she was the sister of uh Valentinian, the third Emperor
of Western Room. He was trying to marry her off
to an aristocrat, as you do, like you're my sister here,
take this husband out of my hair. I'm sorready hearing
about it. Uh. And she was like, I don't really
like this guy who you're trying to hook me up with,
(29:20):
so I'm gonna do a weird thing. He's got no
hair growing out of his nose, and he's like everybody
has hair growing out of their nose. It's the fifth century. Uh.
So she sends her engagement ring to Attila, said, Hey,
I don't want to marry this guy. Can you help
me out? This is a very bizarre act. It's a
(29:40):
bizarre act because Attila basically sees this as, oh, she
wants to marry me because I've got this little wedding ring.
Now I put on my pinky toe and uh, I'm
gonna go. I'm gonna go claim this bride. And I
also want half of your empire as dowry, half of
the Western Roman empire. He demanded his dowry, and he
(30:01):
was coming to get Did you call her Honoria? And
it seems to me like a Noria was kind of
like immediately like, what, yeah, I didn't really I didn't
What I didn't? How is this woman not more famous?
I don't know like, what a blunder it This is
a crazy blunder that led to a huge sacking of Rome.
(30:24):
And why, Like, I feel like there's part of the
story missing. Why wet out to Antille of the Hunt.
From what I saw, there was no they'd never met before.
There was no interaction whatsoever. She just basically said, here, servant,
take this ring to Attil of the Hunt. I don't
know where he is, go find him. He wasn't like
met her years ago and it's like, Hey, if you
need remember me from high school, give me a call.
(30:46):
I'll sack whatever needs sacking. None of that happened. From
what I understand, I guess this dude was just the baddest,
fiercest guy that a Noria could think of, and she
said help. She really really made a missed up and
including the engagement ring or maybe even reaching out at all.
But the engagement ring was it gave at Till of
(31:06):
the Hun just enough entree to say, oh, this is
this is a pretty good reason to to invade the
Western Roman Empire, which he did. That's right, looking for
an Aria and that was the pretense. Yeah, but on
his way he took another wife, uh name Bildico I
think so, all right, And on their wedding night he
(31:27):
actually died. He was not known, especially for the time,
to be like a great like drinker. I mean, he
wasn't a teetotal or no, but he was very moderate,
temperate person as far as that stuff goes. Yeah, for
the most part, he wasn't like the rest of the
Huns that were just you know, getting wasted everything, or
the rest of the Western Roman or Eastern Roman Empire like.
(31:50):
But he was basically the one large area ruler who
wasn't like just getting wasted and eating like five turkey
legs at a time. Right, he was different in that
sense for sure. Yeah, he was the only one that
didn't have gout. Yeah, I guess as far as I know. Uh,
so he marries this lady. Apparently he did drink a
(32:10):
little bit too much on his wedding night and supposedly
was prone to nose bleeds, and as the story goes,
in the middle of the night, had some sort of
massive nosebleed, also saw something about an artery bursting, uh
and choked on his blood in his sleep and died. Yeah,
that's supposedly how I tell of the Hun died. Weird story,
(32:33):
but believable, I guess. For yeah, I mean, the alternative
explanation is that Il Deco murdered him or um abedded
an assassination um that was carried out by I think
one of the one either the Eastern or Western Roman emperors.
Either way, like they think I said, I got the
(32:55):
impression that that's the generally accepted ideas that he choked
on his own blood. He basically died out of natural causes,
which I mean, it's like, Gosh, you overindulge one night
and you pay for it with your life, you know.
But throughout throughout his reign we left out a huge
chunk of of his history. At some point he turned
his attention to Gaul France modern day France Belgium area,
(33:17):
and that's where he suffered as one defeat. So out
of the entire nineteen years, this guy was running around
Eurasia terrorizing it. Um he suffered one defeat, and even
then it was really a draw. But he uh, he
attacked Gaul and I think troops and the Western Roman
(33:41):
emperor got with the Goths and said, you guys, we
gotta do something about this, and they managed to basically
enter into a draw with the Huns, so much so
that the Huns had to withdraw to their camp and
eventually left Gaul after this, but it was supposedly one
of the bloodiest battles in the history of of the world. Yeah,
(34:01):
they managed to fight him back after and this is
after the beginning was definitely going in the favor of
the Huns. Uh, So it looked like the riding was
on the wall and that was that was a big comeback.
But imagine basically spending every day of your life engaged
in conquest, in battle and you got one lost to
your name. Yeah, you gotta have one. Everybody's got to
(34:24):
have the ups with the downs, right. Yeah. Well, let's
talk about his his his burial after his death. Yeah,
this is pretty interesting. After he died, his his horsemen,
his followers, they cut off their hair, they smeared blood
all over their face, and they slowly circled him on
their horses. Um, I guess just I don't know if
(34:45):
that was a uh sign of respect that normally happens,
or if they were just reacting instinctively, or if it
was some old ritual, But at any rate, they just
slowly rode around his body that was the tent. Eventually
he went in three coffins. Yeah, which makes me think
(35:06):
that he could still be found, Yes, because he was
in a coffin of gold, silver and iron, apparently, like, ah,
was it a Matrushka nesk? I don't know, Matroishka. What
is that? You know? The little Russian dolls that nest
inside one another Russian nesting dolls. Let's just call him that. Yeah,
I didn't know they had to. I think it's Maroika. Yeah,
(35:29):
I think so. I love those. And show me a
child that's not delighted by one of those, yeah, little
things inside of other things. Show you a dollard. Uh.
So they put him in three coffins. According to legend,
they divert a river um like fully damn up a
river and bury him in the river bed and then
(35:49):
release the river once again, so that his grave would
never be found. They also killed the people who buried
him so that they couldn't tell anybody who were slaves.
So there's there's actually so that sounds like a total
like Paul Bunyan esque tall tale. Right, there's actually historical
evidence that this had been done at least two other times.
(36:10):
The emperor Gilgamesh, you know, the Epic of Gilgamesh. They
believed that they found his resting place under the Euphrates,
and legend has it that they diverted the Euphrates to
bury him in the river bed for the same exact reason.
They think they've actually found gilgamesh Is burying place. And
then um, I think the Doocious the first Yeah, the
(36:34):
Goth king who was killed in one of those battles
in Gaul, the one that that repelled Um until of
the hunt. Um kind of he was buried in a
diverted river as well. So they're saying like they think
this actually may have happened, which means that you if
you search bet it was the Danube that they buried
(36:55):
him in. But if you search a river, I would
I would start with the Danube because that's where the
capital of the Huns was. Could they divert the Danube?
Though I don't know, maybe a part of it. Who
knows that that maybe one day a till of the
huns um grave will be found, especially as archaeological technology advances.
(37:15):
I guarantee you in fifty years we're going to have
found Until of the Huns gray Man, and it will
be under a riverbed in three coffins. Yes, I really
think that that's for real. I believe it. Believe it.
Oh wait, you said you did? Ah, you go anything else? No,
I mean that which there's a lot of the till
of the hun stuff that we did not get to.
(37:38):
Can I add one more thing? I want to defend
my use of barbarian one of the I think contemporary
historians described the Huns as not making no use of fire.
They even use fire. Supposedly they didn't cook their food.
They would eat roots from the ground and then raw
(37:59):
meat that they would put between their thighs in the
saddle to tenderize it, I guess, and then they would
eat that. They're barbarians. Okay, I saw that article. It said, uh,
something like half raw, and they said, we say half
raw because they would hold it between their thighs to
cook it. Yeah, you got some beef thighs there. You
(38:22):
got some red stained thighs. That sounds like, uh, I
don't need what that sounds like on the menu something
it's been cooked from the thighs of a hun. Right,
It's kind of like it's one hipster step above su
vied cooking. Really, if you think about. Okay, now we're done.
Nothing like the warm glow of a hunt testicle against
(38:45):
the stake it man, Oh boy, who's going on the
rails here? Yeah? So if you want to know more
about the huns, you can type that word in the
search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
said that, it's time for a listener maw, I'm gonna
call this follow up to we got a surprising amount
of email from that goofy show we did on the Jobs. Yeah,
(39:08):
I know, it's like a high, high volume episode. Yeah,
I was surprised. You never know. Uh. And by the way,
we had a lot of people right in and say,
by the way, there is still chariot racing. It's called
harness racing pin setters, and I take issue with that.
Harness racing is harness racing. Those are not chariots. Oh yeah, okay,
what if I gets the same thing. There are pin
(39:29):
setters and lamp lighters too. Basically, it was a fraudulent episode.
Now I'm with you. Harness racing is not cherry. Like
standing up in a in a wooden box being pulled
by eight horses is not the same thing as a
harness race. I've been to a harness race. I have to.
My dad used to take us to those, let us
bet like a dollar on him. I don't think I
ever won, Yeah, which is probably good for my gambling bug.
(39:51):
It never took off at a young age. Yeah, just
the skittles and poker. Yeah. I'm not a big gamper either.
Uh okay, alright, So anyway, this is about lamp lighters.
This from Carlos in Mexico. Hey, guys, have found the
stuff you talk about about lamp lighting fascinating. Like to
add some extra info, Back in the day, people used
to tip and or threaten the lamplighters to leave the
(40:14):
lamp near a park bench or something turned off so
couples could have more privacy. You know what I'm saying, Like, Hey,
don't like that lamp. I gotta cure some meat over here,
you know, the hunway. In fact, there is a Spanish
folk song by the Cherumbellas suggestion on how to pronounce
(40:37):
it h jerum bellas. Is it a d J? It's
a c H pronounced like a ju. He says jerom
Bellas about a lamp lighter being harassed by couples every
night to leave the lamp off. The chorus loosely translates
as follows, lamp lighter, go a little over there and
(40:59):
leave this lamp off. In love affairs the lamp, the
light of lamp always gets in the way. And this
song is from the song Farrelero by the Chambarillas. How
about that. I think you made it through quite nicely. Uh.
And this is from Carlos from Guadalajara, and he also
wants to suggest a topic, how capture work? Oh nice?
(41:22):
Did we not cover that? No, we could do a
whole one on like caption the Turing test and all
that would be cool because capture stands for something, right,
stands for computer automated pap tests PEP, something test to
tell computers and humans apart. And now that's the end. Yeah.
(41:44):
Maybe I think we did something about that on our
dump TV show. That's what it was. You're absolutely right, yeah,
uh yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch
with us to find out what dumb TV show chucks
talking about, good luck, because we don't talk about it
any longer. Um, you can follow us by going onto
our website stuff you should know dot com looking for
(42:05):
all of the links to our social media's and then
meeting us there. You can also send us an email
to Stuff podcast and how stuff works dot com for
moralness and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. There's a guest producer, Dylan Again.
You know, Dylan got a job here because he heard
(00:21):
of How Stuff Works, because he was a Stuff you
Should Know fan. This might be the most thrilling moment
of Dylan's life, the most thrilling two hours. Either that
or the most illusion shattering two hours. I think that
since Dylan started working here, it's just been a slow
anti climax, down, down, down, leading to this moment of
rock bottom. We're like that guy, rag him out. Oh
(00:46):
how's it going. It's going terrifically. How are you Dylan good?
He said, I see, he knows he's a fan. He
didn't even try to speak. Noel will be like, well
let me tell you, yeah, let me see if I
can find a microphone. It just shows one of us
out of the way, knows what he's doing. Uh. You
know what. I couldn't help. But when I was researching this,
(01:09):
probably because we just did this is think about Genghis
Khan and if you go on the internet and type
in Attil of the Hun or Genghis Khan. There are
so many nerdy websites where people pitt uh fictional battles
against historic leaders really yeah, like who would have won
(01:32):
in a cage match until of the Hunter Genghis Khan? Right?
But there's like actual thought put behind it? Or is
it just like no genghas cool? There's a range from
that to like the people who really put too much
effort into it and um, but those are interesting to read,
you know, like you've got to remember guys like Genghis
(01:54):
Khan had a thousand years of weaponry development to his advantage.
And when it comes to personal fighting tactics as opposed
to leadership, those are two different things to talk about.
And then their voice changes until they've become Toby from
American Splendor. Genghis Khan was what a thousand years after
(02:16):
at Till of the Hunt? Is that correct? Well? Because
I thought the opposite. I thought he was BC And again,
we just did a show on him, and I already
forgot since here leven sixty two for Chingas and four
oh six for a Till of the Hunt. That is fascinating,
So okay, yeah, I mean ching has had a lot
of advancements in that thousand years for sure. Yeah, And
(02:39):
I don't know, I couldn't help but compare these guys.
So I might just sort of pepper that in here
and there and and comparing these because our own article
starts out by mentioning Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and
Chingis khan uh as some of the most brutal conquerors
and antiquity. I really appreciate you moving to Chingas might
(03:03):
as well. So until of the Hun, he was around
between he was in the fifth century CE, right, four
oh six. You know, they don't know exactly about his
birth dates, but they're they're putting it around four or six. No,
we should do this, Um, we should do this chronologically.
(03:23):
But I think we should say out of the gate
that there is a lot of um debate in the
in the historical field of just how much we could
say about um Attil of the Hun's early life. Yeah,
I mean over that period between him and Chingas, like,
there was a lot more record keeping. Two. Right, that's
(03:44):
a that's a great point. We don't even know what
language the Huns spoke necessarily, No, we debate on that.
No idea um. Apparently, one of the things you can
kind of glean what language people spoke is UM from
their names, and a lot of the names associated with Attila,
the Hunt and the Huns in general are Germanic, so
(04:05):
they say, well, they spoke Germanic. The other people say
well no. By the time until of the Hun came
around in the fifth century UM, the Germanic tongue had
spread far and wide, so that's probably not what their
native tongue originally was. It's just lost the time. One
of the reasons it was lost the time is because
these were, in the parliance of the day, total barbarians.
(04:29):
They were nomadic horse people who lacked virtually any anything
resembling a government, um, anything like an economy, anything like
the trappings of what you would call a civilization. They
were by definition barbarians, right, But all that aside, it's
(04:49):
not to say that that that civilization is just everything's perfect.
Definitely has its own flaws, and barbarianism has its own amazements, right.
But the thing that made the Huns definitive barbarians is
because they would come through sack your town, burn it down,
(05:11):
kill you and your family, and then just move on.
They would take your gold. They had no desire to
subjugate you, to to rule you, to extract taxes, to
maybe make you grow crops for them. Nothing. It was
basically pillaging, raping, and murdering is what the Huns were
known for, because that's what they did. Yeah, and I
think the main difference that I found, well, plenty of differences,
(05:34):
but the main one between he and Khan was sort of,
like you said, like Genghis, Khan wanted to rule the
world and spread his empire as as ruler of people's
and Attila the Hun, by all accounts, wanted to collect
gold right um, but was also for all his ferocity.
(05:57):
There are also scholars and historians who believe that uh
Man I might get these names mixed up. Now that
I'm all in my head about it, I'm I've been
just hanging on by my fingernail. There are a lot
of scholars and historians who believe that until of the
hun Is was also uh sort of a fair person
and generally a man of his word, and maybe rustled
(06:21):
up a lot of these stories to drive himself to
drive fear into his enemies, and was not as brutal
as maybe history believes in some cases. Yeah, but I
I so. You remember when we did the chinaskon episode, like,
there was a lot of um, a lot of examples
and things you could point to and be like they
improved the world in these ways. There you can count
(06:45):
the ones about until of the hun like basically on
your fingers, and when when it was an example of
him being like uncharacteristically magnanimous by sparing somebody's life, it
was totally out of character for him, and like, um.
One of the things about Chengiz Khan as well is
that if you surrendered without a fight, if you just said,
(07:07):
we surrender, take our town, you would live. And you
would live now under the rule of the Mongols the
till of the Hun he and the Huns would kill you,
kill your whole town. Offering no resistance whatsoever, did not
guarantee in any way, shape or form survival when you
encountered the Hunts. They terrified people for hundreds of years
(07:27):
in Europe. But at the same time, if you paid
your your uh what what do you call it, like
the gangster movies tribute? Yeah, but like you know when
you pay someone to protect your money, Yeah, sort of
like that, Yeah, protection from you. Basically, Uh, generally, and
again there are examples even in this article of ours
(07:48):
where he he went back on that. But generally if
you paid that gold, he would also leave you alone. Um,
because he didn't want to lose. Like I said, he
wasn't trying to just conquer the world. So he seemed
like he would only undertake a mission or a or
a war if he if there was something in it
for him other than just like expanding his kingdom, which
(08:12):
on a modern map eventually was it say here large
portions of eastern and western Roman Empires, from Germany in
the west, to Romania in the south, to the Netherlands
and the north, and Russia and Kazakhstan in the east.
And uh, that was generally a till of the Huns
(08:32):
area over about a ten year span, well nine I
think nine years, well nineteen years period. But in that
ten year span is when he really liked did a
lot of his damage, which is that's impressive, and put
a big dent in the Roman Empire. That was another
thing too, Like you can you can say what you
want about the guy, and I think it's worth pointing
(08:53):
out there's all of this is to say, like nobody
is bad. And when you get this far are away,
almost two thousand years away, years away from somebody like,
their character just becomes cartoonish. So there is not a
lot we can say, especially about the nuances of this
guy's character, but you can point to what he did
(09:17):
and say, this man change the course of history, and
he definitely did, especially by basically hastening the fall of
the Roman Empire. Right, this is pretty impressive stuff. I
feel like we should almost stick a break. That was
a nice preamble. All right, we'll get back to his
birth and start over right after this. Alright, So four
(10:01):
oh sixes when they think Attila the Hunt was born
in uh Pannonia, which what you would now say is Hungary. Yeah,
because by this time the Hunts, well they first appear
in the Western record, and I think ce Tacitus, the
historian Roman historian says, oh, yeah, by the way, there's
(10:24):
these people out there called the Hunts. There are barbarian
tribe who cares watch you're back. Well, he didn't even
say that. He just basically said there's a barbarian tribe
out there. But by the time Attila was was born,
the Hunts had made a name for themselves is being fierce,
fearsome warriors that just basically could overtake anybody, and they had. Yeah,
he was not born. His story is very different from
(10:47):
Chingis Khans, and that he was born already into I
guess what you would consider royalty, uh and and privilege.
And that they think the Huns came from Kazakhstan, I
think you said, or their their empire stretched all the
way kash Central Asia. They think that's where they probably originated.
But by the time Untila was born, Um, he was
(11:08):
born on the Danube in Hungary, which is like became
the capital of the area they settled. Yeah, and you
mentioned that the Huns were known as fierce warriors. Um,
much like Khan's army. They really made their hay on horses.
I don't even know if that counts as a pun,
It doesn't, all right, It was just delightful though. They
(11:29):
were excellent horsemen. UM. I don't know if they rode
those little squatty horses like uh, like Khan's army did.
But they were great on horseback, apparently so great that
they kind of didn't get off their horses to do
much when it when in terms of battle. But even
beyond battle. I saw that they held negotiations on their horses.
Um that they were characterized as being one with their horse.
(11:54):
That was one thing, right, right, in the true sense
that was I hope not mainly for the horses, say yeah,
but um they they they were. The fact that they
were amazing horsemen. That's check one, and why they were
basically impossible to feat Check two was they had a
special kind of bow called the hun bow, right, and
(12:14):
these things are beautiful. It was a recursive bow where
the bow itself been curve back onto itself, which meant
you have more torque, which meant you could shoot an
arrow through armor at a hundred yards. Yeah, they're all
kinds of recurve bows, but this one was especially squatty
and kind of short. So it's recurved. It's not recursive,
(12:35):
yeah recurve. Um. Oh yeah, it was short, which meant
it was mobile. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So if you picture
just like a U shaped bow, that's just a bow,
but a recurve bends back around to face the other
way at both ends and both points. And this one was,
like I said, especially squatty, and it just it's cool
looking like bow enthusiasts collect these things. I can imagine
(12:57):
hun bows. You say, this is a till of the
huns areo boat. Everybody says that. So so wait a minute,
So we've got two things. Now we've got they were
basically one with their horse. They were so good on
a horse, they could shoot arrows through your armor a
hundred yards away, almost a hundred meters away. Um, while
on these horses. That's check two. And then number three
(13:21):
is that they didn't fight in any sort of coherent
battle formation. It was just show up out of nowhere,
right around, start picking people off, scatter, regroup out of nowhere,
show up again, pick more people off, scatter, regroup and
like you just you had no idea that they were
coming at any point in time, and they would just
(13:44):
come and basically waste your army. And there was no
formation that you could form against. It was just chaos. Yeah,
and and fast, like before you knew what was going on,
You're you're getting arrows slung your way. And like you said,
from any direction, wasn't like here they come from the north,
Like they were all over the place. Uh. It said
(14:05):
here in this one article you sent that the soldiers
they wore these heavy leather greased uh outfits greased with
animal fat, which is good, which just said made them
both supple and rain resistant. Maybe that was for the
horses and steel line helmets chain mail. They're very nimble.
(14:28):
They also used swords, of course, and their leather boots.
They rode horses so much they didn't even worry about hiking,
so they would wear these leather boots. Had very thin
soles that I guess major feet, more responsive to stirrup action.
I don't know, they were just more comfortable. They're like,
isoton boots? Did they make shoes? Oh? No, you're talking
(14:53):
about the gloves. They make slippers? I think, Oh really,
I think so. I don't think it was Damn Marina,
want to hear that isotoneer gloves and uh ace ventura.
All right, So these are the huns. They're nomadic there
chaotic and battle, their fierce, Their their stories precede them,
their legend precedes them. So when you are getting attacked
(15:14):
like that's got to do a mental number on you,
especially like when they came upon towns and cities, like
sometimes entire cities, they would level them, just utterly destroy
They would take everything they wanted kill everybody that they wanted.
They would take hostages and slaves and prisoners, um. But
then they would just destroy the town. And there was
(15:35):
one town in Italy um called Aquileia. Aquileia, I believe um.
No one knows where it was, they know it existed,
but then the Huns got They Huns sacked it and
now no one has any idea what it was because
they just utterly destroyed the tip. That was like the
kind of thing they would do, almost just out of spite,
(15:58):
just maliciously, you know, because apparently Attila the Hun was
known for um using his fierce reputation at an advantage
and he didn't want to fight or thought that fighting
was unwise. He could use his reputation to get you
to to surrender and then maybe you would survive, maybe
(16:20):
you wouldn't. UM. But they didn't necessarily need that because
they backed up the fierce reputation actually did these things
that people feared them for. And they had a name
for the Huns, and apparently specifically Attila the Hun in
the Holy Roman or the Roman Empires pre Holy Roman,
they called them the flagellum day the scourge of God.
(16:44):
And this is what these Christians thought, that that God
had sent this horrible, almost devil figure to come and
wipe their towns from the earth because they weren't living
upright enough. Yeah, and I saw some historians think that
he might have even made that name up. Oh really,
it seems like he was a big promoter of his
(17:04):
of his wicked ways, just to scare people. Well, it's
still working on me, like he would because I'm passing
all this stuff off. He was often drawn with like
goats horns and things like that, And I don't I
think he encouraged this stuff. Well, he did famously say
that wherever he's trod or past, grass will never grow again.
So yeah, he definitely, he definitely would play it up.
(17:24):
But it didn't hurt his feelings that people said these
things about him, right, so he I don't think we
mentioned yet. He uh took over along with his brother
Blada b L E. D A when they were young
their uncles actually, um, that's there was a lot of
biarchy going on at the time with the Huns, which
is a little bit unusual for a couple of people
(17:46):
to split ruling duties, and their uncles jointly ruled the
Hunt empire. Eventually the brothers took over as co rulers
in four thirty four, and I think they even had
their own territories that they were in charge of. It's
not like they were together. Uh. And then eventually Attila
was like, yeah, I think I'd rather just really operate
this show by myself. And he killed his brother, killed
(18:08):
his own brother. That's that's harsh. I didn't see. How
did you see? I didn't. I couldn't find it. I
couldn't either, as I saw once a story about a
night I think, who killed his own brother. But his
brother was a priest saying mass, and the night came
in and cut his own brother's head off while he
(18:29):
was saying mass. Like, if there is a god, that
really upset I'm unsure. So he and his brother uh
co rule and they settled down a little bit on
the great what was known as the Great Hungarian Plains,
a little less nomadic at this point were the Huns. Yeah,
because they were weighed down with so much golden plunder. Yeah,
(18:50):
they just they couldn't ride around like they did. So
have we reached the point where he's the single ruler? Now, yeah,
let's go ahead and get rid of his brother, so
we should a. I don't know if this name came
upon him ascending to um being the co ruler with
his brother or the single ruler. But Attila means little father.
(19:12):
They do not think that this is his birth name,
because that's just no matter what age or period of
history we're talking about, it'd be weird to name your
son little father. Um. They think it was a name
of respect and affection, is how I saw it put
and that they think that this was basically his His
king name was Attila. They have no idea what his
(19:32):
real name was, but they think that Attila was not it. No,
but by the time he became ruler, like you said,
he was born into a privileged household. Um, he he
knew what to do from a very early age. His
uncle's as rulers brought him and his brother Bleda up
to speak Latin. So maybe he did come up with
(19:54):
Flagellum Davey Goth which was another Germanic tribe who figure
into this picture later on. Um and to to understand diplomacy,
military strategy, horsemanship obviously, UM all of this stuff. So
it was brought up to lead, so it was kind
of natural that he would kill his brother and take
over the entire hunt empire. Yeah, and the other another
(20:16):
thing I thought was interesting was even though he was
sort of on a conquest for gold and riches, he
lived sort of simply as a ruler. Like all of
his his upper uh subordinates. Apparently they did live the
high life, and they drank from silver and gold chalices
and had fancy clothes and big you know, make mansions,
(20:39):
platform shoes, platform shoes with goldfish in the heel. And
Attila lived in a log house with animal skins on
the walls and drank from a wooden cup. And even
though he wanted to get all this gold, it doesn't
look like he lived that way, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
That really kind of opens up the guy for interpretation.
You know, like says a couple of things. One, he's
(21:01):
surrounded by all these material goods, but his tastes are
extraordinarily simple, and he stuck to it. He didn't try
to show off at any point. He just was who
he was as far as his taste point. And then secondly,
he also didn't demand that the people subordinate to him
live like he lived. That says an enormous amount you know, like,
(21:22):
there's so many people at the top who want the
people below them to act like them, to live like them,
to behave like them. So for him to to have
like there was a cult of personality around this guy,
and for him to allow and maybe even encourage people
to live their own way totally counter to how he lived.
I don't know. He's a complex figure for sure. Um.
(21:46):
Should we talk about the Treaty of Marcus. Yeah, this
is a big turning point in history. Yeah. So this
was in four thirty four. Uh, and he I believe
that what we're going back to when Bledah was still alive. Um,
they worked up a peace treaty called the Treaty of
Marcus with what is this the Eastern Roman Empire. Yes,
(22:06):
and they basically said, hey, if you return all these
hunt refugees, basically people that fled my rule, return these
people to us. How many were there? At least of fourteen,
but I think maybe seventeen Yeah, like not seventeen thousand,
but seventeen people. But that's how much he prized loyalty,
is how I saw it. Put. Yeah, like I want
these people back, and he also didn't want them going
(22:28):
off into the Roman Empire and stirring up rebellion to
come take over the Hunting Empire. Yeah, exactly. So if
you return, these people will establish some trading rights that
are fair. You guys pay us about seven hundred pounds
of gold every year directly to me and my bro
and we'll, like, we'll lay off and you can just
(22:49):
kind of do your thing here in the Eastern Roman Empire. Yeah,
it's extortion. Yeah, I saw that that Attila was. He
plundered in war and extorted in peacetime. That's what he did.
So yeah, he said, we won't invade you if you
pay a seven hundred pounds of goal of a year,
and he didn't. But then he said, um, there was
(23:09):
another part of this too. He said that that he
wanted not just the traitorous Huns who left or escaped
his rule to be returned to him. He also wanted um,
a Roman bishop who he believed had come into the
Hunting Empire and desecrated some graves and stolen grave goods
(23:31):
from the graves, to be handed over to him. And
apparently the Eastern Empire uh Emperor Theodosius the second said, hey,
man I gave, I gave all of the Huns I
could find in the empire over to you and this bishop.
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think
this is actually true. Um, they didn't give over the bishop.
(23:55):
And so Attila actually said, um, you guys just broke
the treaty, were invading, And he did invade, and they
actually invaded through Marguts. And the guy who opened the
gates of Marguts too for them to the Huns was
the bishop who stole the grave goods. So had the
emperor handed over this guy, the the invasion of Italy
(24:19):
by the Huns would have never happened. And that's the
sound that played when he opened the gate. Apparently they
got within about twenty miles of Constantinople. And Theodosius too said, whoa,
you're getting a little too close. How about pounds of
(24:41):
gold per year three times as much cold? And I
believe that that quelled Attila's desires for temporarily, at least temporarily.
So that just meant with Attila that he just turned
his sight somewhere else. Yeah, you want to take a break, Yeah,
let's do it. Okay, okay, man, we're back. So, um,
(25:24):
the Eastern Roman Empire has said all right, here here
take some more gold. Um leave us alone, and he
did for a little while. But one of the things
that um Attila the hunt did was he created like
a domino effect, there were other Germanic tribes of barbarians
(25:44):
and making air quotes everybody um who were in the
area that got pushed out of the area and into
the Roman Empire by the Hunts. So the Hunts pushed
out the Allan's, the Alan's pushed out the Goths. The
Goths pushed out some other tribes, and as a result,
(26:05):
you now had other Germanic tribes living in the Roman Empire.
It's a big seed that got planted by the Hunts
because the Hunts pushed everybody out and took over their empire. Right,
This actually led to the downfall of the Roman Empire
later on. It was that the Great migration, yeah, or
the wandering of the nations. Now is this when people
(26:26):
split and just fractured the Roman Empire, So hopefully get that.
So what happened was the um the these different tribes
got pushed into the Roman Empire started and the Vandals
that so um, the the Visigoths in particular got pushed
(26:47):
into there and they were living as Roman subjects under
Roman rule, but they were not being treated very well
by the Roman governors of the territories they lived in.
And they eventually rose up against Rome, against a Roman
empire in the areas where they lived. And these little
battles and skirmishes that that that Rome was having, or
(27:08):
the Roman Empire was having with these groups that would
have otherwise not been in their borders started to weaken
the empire enough that it actually felt the the I
think it was the Goths that actually sacked Rome and
and crumbled the Roman Empire. And the whole reason they
could make it to Rome was because they were in
(27:30):
the Roman Empire already, because the Huns had pushed them
in their years before and set off this chain of
events that led to maybe the most powerful empire in
the history of the world. Tell of the Hun did that?
It wasn't Susie in her banshees no leading the Goths.
Did you like them? Oh? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, me too,
(27:53):
they were great. I generally wasn't into that, though, yes,
I don't even know what counts. She You didn't like
the cure or the smiths, or I guess the smiths
weren't weren't goth, but the cure definitely was. You don't
like the cure. I love the cure, but chuck your golf. Really,
my friend, you're GoF all right, I'll get my mass era. Okay,
(28:15):
uh yeah, I mean some of those terms, I don't
even know, like what the dividing line is. I don't
you know. You know, people are still hung up on
that kind of thing. Do you like the cure? Yes? Good,
you're smart for liking the cure. They're great and you're
a god. Should we talk about his weird marriage situation? Yes,
(28:36):
so this was odd. He had well, obviously he had
a bunch of wives, because that's just the way it
was back then. No one knows how many wives. I
don't think it's like anything like Chingis Khan, where they
think he fathered like half the world's uh people or
anything like that. But he had a share of wives.
And this was an interesting thing. Here. In the spring
of fourteen fifty, there was a woman named Honorrhea, and
(29:00):
she was the sister of uh Valentinian, the third Emperor
of Western Room. He was trying to marry her off
to an aristocrat, as you do, like you're my sister here,
take this husband out of my hair. I'm sorready hearing
about it. Uh. And she was like, I don't really
like this guy who you're trying to hook me up with,
(29:20):
so I'm gonna do a weird thing. He's got no
hair growing out of his nose, and he's like everybody
has hair growing out of their nose. It's the fifth century. Uh.
So she sends her engagement ring to Attila, said, Hey,
I don't want to marry this guy. Can you help
me out? This is a very bizarre act. It's a
(29:40):
bizarre act because Attila basically sees this as, oh, she
wants to marry me because I've got this little wedding ring.
Now I put on my pinky toe and uh, I'm
gonna go. I'm gonna go claim this bride. And I
also want half of your empire as dowry, half of
the Western Roman empire. He demanded his dowry, and he
(30:01):
was coming to get Did you call her Honoria? And
it seems to me like a Noria was kind of
like immediately like, what, yeah, I didn't really I didn't
What I didn't? How is this woman not more famous?
I don't know like, what a blunder it This is
a crazy blunder that led to a huge sacking of Rome.
(30:24):
And why, Like, I feel like there's part of the
story missing. Why wet out to Antille of the Hunt.
From what I saw, there was no they'd never met before.
There was no interaction whatsoever. She just basically said, here, servant,
take this ring to Attil of the Hunt. I don't
know where he is, go find him. He wasn't like
met her years ago and it's like, Hey, if you
need remember me from high school, give me a call.
(30:46):
I'll sack whatever needs sacking. None of that happened. From
what I understand, I guess this dude was just the baddest,
fiercest guy that a Noria could think of, and she
said help. She really really made a missed up and
including the engagement ring or maybe even reaching out at all.
But the engagement ring was it gave at Till of
(31:06):
the Hun just enough entree to say, oh, this is
this is a pretty good reason to to invade the
Western Roman Empire, which he did. That's right, looking for
an Aria and that was the pretense. Yeah, but on
his way he took another wife, uh name Bildico I
think so, all right, And on their wedding night he
(31:27):
actually died. He was not known, especially for the time,
to be like a great like drinker. I mean, he
wasn't a teetotal or no, but he was very moderate,
temperate person as far as that stuff goes. Yeah, for
the most part, he wasn't like the rest of the
Huns that were just you know, getting wasted everything, or
the rest of the Western Roman or Eastern Roman Empire like.
(31:50):
But he was basically the one large area ruler who
wasn't like just getting wasted and eating like five turkey
legs at a time. Right, he was different in that
sense for sure. Yeah, he was the only one that
didn't have gout. Yeah, I guess as far as I know. Uh,
so he marries this lady. Apparently he did drink a
(32:10):
little bit too much on his wedding night and supposedly
was prone to nose bleeds, and as the story goes,
in the middle of the night, had some sort of
massive nosebleed, also saw something about an artery bursting, uh
and choked on his blood in his sleep and died. Yeah,
that's supposedly how I tell of the Hun died. Weird story,
(32:33):
but believable, I guess. For yeah, I mean, the alternative
explanation is that Il Deco murdered him or um abedded
an assassination um that was carried out by I think
one of the one either the Eastern or Western Roman emperors.
Either way, like they think I said, I got the
(32:55):
impression that that's the generally accepted ideas that he choked
on his own blood. He basically died out of natural causes,
which I mean, it's like, Gosh, you overindulge one night
and you pay for it with your life, you know.
But throughout throughout his reign we left out a huge
chunk of of his history. At some point he turned
his attention to Gaul France modern day France Belgium area,
(33:17):
and that's where he suffered as one defeat. So out
of the entire nineteen years, this guy was running around
Eurasia terrorizing it. Um he suffered one defeat, and even
then it was really a draw. But he uh, he
attacked Gaul and I think troops and the Western Roman
(33:41):
emperor got with the Goths and said, you guys, we
gotta do something about this, and they managed to basically
enter into a draw with the Huns, so much so
that the Huns had to withdraw to their camp and
eventually left Gaul after this, but it was supposedly one
of the bloodiest battles in the history of of the world. Yeah,
(34:01):
they managed to fight him back after and this is
after the beginning was definitely going in the favor of
the Huns. Uh, So it looked like the riding was
on the wall and that was that was a big comeback.
But imagine basically spending every day of your life engaged
in conquest, in battle and you got one lost to
your name. Yeah, you gotta have one. Everybody's got to
(34:24):
have the ups with the downs, right. Yeah. Well, let's
talk about his his his burial after his death. Yeah,
this is pretty interesting. After he died, his his horsemen,
his followers, they cut off their hair, they smeared blood
all over their face, and they slowly circled him on
their horses. Um, I guess just I don't know if
(34:45):
that was a uh sign of respect that normally happens,
or if they were just reacting instinctively, or if it
was some old ritual, But at any rate, they just
slowly rode around his body that was the tent. Eventually
he went in three coffins. Yeah, which makes me think
(35:06):
that he could still be found, Yes, because he was
in a coffin of gold, silver and iron, apparently, like, ah,
was it a Matrushka nesk? I don't know, Matroishka. What
is that? You know? The little Russian dolls that nest
inside one another Russian nesting dolls. Let's just call him that. Yeah,
I didn't know they had to. I think it's Maroika. Yeah,
(35:29):
I think so. I love those. And show me a
child that's not delighted by one of those, yeah, little
things inside of other things. Show you a dollard. Uh.
So they put him in three coffins. According to legend,
they divert a river um like fully damn up a
river and bury him in the river bed and then
(35:49):
release the river once again, so that his grave would
never be found. They also killed the people who buried
him so that they couldn't tell anybody who were slaves.
So there's there's actually so that sounds like a total
like Paul Bunyan esque tall tale. Right, there's actually historical
evidence that this had been done at least two other times.
(36:10):
The emperor Gilgamesh, you know, the Epic of Gilgamesh. They
believed that they found his resting place under the Euphrates,
and legend has it that they diverted the Euphrates to
bury him in the river bed for the same exact reason.
They think they've actually found gilgamesh Is burying place. And
then um, I think the Doocious the first Yeah, the
(36:34):
Goth king who was killed in one of those battles
in Gaul, the one that that repelled Um until of
the hunt. Um kind of he was buried in a
diverted river as well. So they're saying like they think
this actually may have happened, which means that you if
you search bet it was the Danube that they buried
(36:55):
him in. But if you search a river, I would
I would start with the Danube because that's where the
capital of the Huns was. Could they divert the Danube?
Though I don't know, maybe a part of it. Who
knows that that maybe one day a till of the
huns um grave will be found, especially as archaeological technology advances.
(37:15):
I guarantee you in fifty years we're going to have
found Until of the Huns gray Man, and it will
be under a riverbed in three coffins. Yes, I really
think that that's for real. I believe it. Believe it.
Oh wait, you said you did? Ah, you go anything else? No,
I mean that which there's a lot of the till
of the hun stuff that we did not get to.
(37:38):
Can I add one more thing? I want to defend
my use of barbarian one of the I think contemporary
historians described the Huns as not making no use of fire.
They even use fire. Supposedly they didn't cook their food.
They would eat roots from the ground and then raw
(37:59):
meat that they would put between their thighs in the
saddle to tenderize it, I guess, and then they would
eat that. They're barbarians. Okay, I saw that article. It said, uh,
something like half raw, and they said, we say half
raw because they would hold it between their thighs to
cook it. Yeah, you got some beef thighs there. You
(38:22):
got some red stained thighs. That sounds like, uh, I
don't need what that sounds like on the menu something
it's been cooked from the thighs of a hun. Right,
It's kind of like it's one hipster step above su
vied cooking. Really, if you think about. Okay, now we're done.
Nothing like the warm glow of a hunt testicle against
(38:45):
the stake it man, Oh boy, who's going on the
rails here? Yeah? So if you want to know more
about the huns, you can type that word in the
search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
said that, it's time for a listener maw, I'm gonna
call this follow up to we got a surprising amount
of email from that goofy show we did on the Jobs. Yeah,
(39:08):
I know, it's like a high, high volume episode. Yeah,
I was surprised. You never know. Uh. And by the way,
we had a lot of people right in and say,
by the way, there is still chariot racing. It's called
harness racing pin setters, and I take issue with that.
Harness racing is harness racing. Those are not chariots. Oh yeah, okay,
what if I gets the same thing. There are pin
(39:29):
setters and lamp lighters too. Basically, it was a fraudulent episode.
Now I'm with you. Harness racing is not cherry. Like
standing up in a in a wooden box being pulled
by eight horses is not the same thing as a
harness race. I've been to a harness race. I have to.
My dad used to take us to those, let us
bet like a dollar on him. I don't think I
ever won, Yeah, which is probably good for my gambling bug.
(39:51):
It never took off at a young age. Yeah, just
the skittles and poker. Yeah. I'm not a big gamper either.
Uh okay, alright, So anyway, this is about lamp lighters.
This from Carlos in Mexico. Hey, guys, have found the
stuff you talk about about lamp lighting fascinating. Like to
add some extra info, Back in the day, people used
to tip and or threaten the lamplighters to leave the
(40:14):
lamp near a park bench or something turned off so
couples could have more privacy. You know what I'm saying, Like, Hey,
don't like that lamp. I gotta cure some meat over here,
you know, the hunway. In fact, there is a Spanish
folk song by the Cherumbellas suggestion on how to pronounce
(40:37):
it h jerum bellas. Is it a d J? It's
a c H pronounced like a ju. He says jerom
Bellas about a lamp lighter being harassed by couples every
night to leave the lamp off. The chorus loosely translates
as follows, lamp lighter, go a little over there and
(40:59):
leave this lamp off. In love affairs the lamp, the
light of lamp always gets in the way. And this
song is from the song Farrelero by the Chambarillas. How
about that. I think you made it through quite nicely. Uh.
And this is from Carlos from Guadalajara, and he also
wants to suggest a topic, how capture work? Oh nice?
(41:22):
Did we not cover that? No, we could do a
whole one on like caption the Turing test and all
that would be cool because capture stands for something, right,
stands for computer automated pap tests PEP, something test to
tell computers and humans apart. And now that's the end. Yeah.
(41:44):
Maybe I think we did something about that on our
dump TV show. That's what it was. You're absolutely right, yeah,
uh yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch
with us to find out what dumb TV show chucks
talking about, good luck, because we don't talk about it
any longer. Um, you can follow us by going onto
our website stuff you should know dot com looking for
(42:05):
all of the links to our social media's and then
meeting us there. You can also send us an email
to Stuff podcast and how stuff works dot com for
moralness and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
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Josh Clark
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