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How Attila the Hun Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. There's a guest producer, Dylan Again.
0:19
Speaker 1: You know, Dylan got a job here because he heard
0:21
Speaker 1: of How Stuff Works, because he was a Stuff you
0:23
Speaker 1: Should Know fan. This might be the most thrilling moment
0:26
Speaker 1: of Dylan's life, the most thrilling two hours. Either that
0:30
Speaker 1: or the most illusion shattering two hours. I think that
0:33
Speaker 1: since Dylan started working here, it's just been a slow
0:36
Speaker 1: anti climax, down, down, down, leading to this moment of
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Speaker 1: rock bottom. We're like that guy, rag him out. Oh
0:46
Speaker 1: how's it going. It's going terrifically. How are you Dylan good?
0:50
Speaker 1: He said, I see, he knows he's a fan. He
0:53
Speaker 1: didn't even try to speak. Noel will be like, well
0:56
Speaker 1: let me tell you, yeah, let me see if I
0:58
Speaker 1: can find a microphone. It just shows one of us
1:01
Speaker 1: out of the way, knows what he's doing. Uh. You
1:06
Speaker 1: know what. I couldn't help. But when I was researching this,
1:09
Speaker 1: probably because we just did this is think about Genghis
1:13
Speaker 1: Khan and if you go on the internet and type
1:17
Speaker 1: in Attil of the Hun or Genghis Khan. There are
1:21
Speaker 1: so many nerdy websites where people pitt uh fictional battles
1:28
Speaker 1: against historic leaders really yeah, like who would have won
1:32
Speaker 1: in a cage match until of the Hunter Genghis Khan? Right?
1:35
Speaker 1: But there's like actual thought put behind it? Or is
1:37
Speaker 1: it just like no genghas cool? There's a range from
1:42
Speaker 1: that to like the people who really put too much
1:45
Speaker 1: effort into it and um, but those are interesting to read,
1:50
Speaker 1: you know, like you've got to remember guys like Genghis
1:54
Speaker 1: Khan had a thousand years of weaponry development to his advantage.
2:00
Speaker 1: And when it comes to personal fighting tactics as opposed
2:03
Speaker 1: to leadership, those are two different things to talk about.
2:07
Speaker 1: And then their voice changes until they've become Toby from
2:10
Speaker 1: American Splendor. Genghis Khan was what a thousand years after
2:16
Speaker 1: at Till of the Hunt? Is that correct? Well? Because
2:19
Speaker 1: I thought the opposite. I thought he was BC And again,
2:21
Speaker 1: we just did a show on him, and I already
2:23
Speaker 1: forgot since here leven sixty two for Chingas and four
2:29
Speaker 1: oh six for a Till of the Hunt. That is fascinating,
2:32
Speaker 1: So okay, yeah, I mean ching has had a lot
2:35
Speaker 1: of advancements in that thousand years for sure. Yeah, And
2:39
Speaker 1: I don't know, I couldn't help but compare these guys.
2:41
Speaker 1: So I might just sort of pepper that in here
2:45
Speaker 1: and there and and comparing these because our own article
2:48
Speaker 1: starts out by mentioning Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and
2:53
Speaker 1: Chingis khan uh as some of the most brutal conquerors
2:58
Speaker 1: and antiquity. I really appreciate you moving to Chingas might
3:03
Speaker 1: as well. So until of the Hun, he was around
3:08
Speaker 1: between he was in the fifth century CE, right, four
3:14
Speaker 1: oh six. You know, they don't know exactly about his
3:17
Speaker 1: birth dates, but they're they're putting it around four or six. No,
3:20
Speaker 1: we should do this, Um, we should do this chronologically.
3:23
Speaker 1: But I think we should say out of the gate
3:25
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of um debate in the
3:29
Speaker 1: in the historical field of just how much we could
3:33
Speaker 1: say about um Attil of the Hun's early life. Yeah,
3:37
Speaker 1: I mean over that period between him and Chingas, like,
3:42
Speaker 1: there was a lot more record keeping. Two. Right, that's
3:44
Speaker 1: a that's a great point. We don't even know what
3:46
Speaker 1: language the Huns spoke necessarily, No, we debate on that.
3:50
Speaker 1: No idea um. Apparently, one of the things you can
3:53
Speaker 1: kind of glean what language people spoke is UM from
3:57
Speaker 1: their names, and a lot of the names associated with Attila,
4:02
Speaker 1: the Hunt and the Huns in general are Germanic, so
4:05
Speaker 1: they say, well, they spoke Germanic. The other people say
4:08
Speaker 1: well no. By the time until of the Hun came
4:10
Speaker 1: around in the fifth century UM, the Germanic tongue had
4:14
Speaker 1: spread far and wide, so that's probably not what their
4:18
Speaker 1: native tongue originally was. It's just lost the time. One
4:22
Speaker 1: of the reasons it was lost the time is because
4:24
Speaker 1: these were, in the parliance of the day, total barbarians.
4:29
Speaker 1: They were nomadic horse people who lacked virtually any anything
4:35
Speaker 1: resembling a government, um, anything like an economy, anything like
4:41
Speaker 1: the trappings of what you would call a civilization. They
4:44
Speaker 1: were by definition barbarians, right, But all that aside, it's
4:49
Speaker 1: not to say that that that civilization is just everything's perfect.
4:54
Speaker 1: Definitely has its own flaws, and barbarianism has its own amazements, right.
5:00
Speaker 1: But the thing that made the Huns definitive barbarians is
5:06
Speaker 1: because they would come through sack your town, burn it down,
5:11
Speaker 1: kill you and your family, and then just move on.
5:14
Speaker 1: They would take your gold. They had no desire to
5:17
Speaker 1: subjugate you, to to rule you, to extract taxes, to
5:21
Speaker 1: maybe make you grow crops for them. Nothing. It was
5:24
Speaker 1: basically pillaging, raping, and murdering is what the Huns were
5:28
Speaker 1: known for, because that's what they did. Yeah, and I
5:31
Speaker 1: think the main difference that I found, well, plenty of differences,
5:34
Speaker 1: but the main one between he and Khan was sort of,
5:38
Speaker 1: like you said, like Genghis, Khan wanted to rule the
5:42
Speaker 1: world and spread his empire as as ruler of people's
5:46
Speaker 1: and Attila the Hun, by all accounts, wanted to collect
5:50
Speaker 1: gold right um, but was also for all his ferocity.
5:57
Speaker 1: There are also scholars and historians who believe that uh
6:01
Speaker 1: Man I might get these names mixed up. Now that
6:03
Speaker 1: I'm all in my head about it, I'm I've been
6:05
Speaker 1: just hanging on by my fingernail. There are a lot
6:08
Speaker 1: of scholars and historians who believe that until of the
6:10
Speaker 1: hun Is was also uh sort of a fair person
6:16
Speaker 1: and generally a man of his word, and maybe rustled
6:21
Speaker 1: up a lot of these stories to drive himself to
6:24
Speaker 1: drive fear into his enemies, and was not as brutal
6:28
Speaker 1: as maybe history believes in some cases. Yeah, but I
6:32
Speaker 1: I so. You remember when we did the chinaskon episode, like,
6:36
Speaker 1: there was a lot of um, a lot of examples
6:39
Speaker 1: and things you could point to and be like they
6:41
Speaker 1: improved the world in these ways. There you can count
6:45
Speaker 1: the ones about until of the hun like basically on
6:47
Speaker 1: your fingers, and when when it was an example of
6:52
Speaker 1: him being like uncharacteristically magnanimous by sparing somebody's life, it
6:56
Speaker 1: was totally out of character for him, and like, um.
7:01
Speaker 1: One of the things about Chengiz Khan as well is
7:04
Speaker 1: that if you surrendered without a fight, if you just said,
7:07
Speaker 1: we surrender, take our town, you would live. And you
7:11
Speaker 1: would live now under the rule of the Mongols the
7:14
Speaker 1: till of the Hun he and the Huns would kill you,
7:17
Speaker 1: kill your whole town. Offering no resistance whatsoever, did not
7:20
Speaker 1: guarantee in any way, shape or form survival when you
7:24
Speaker 1: encountered the Hunts. They terrified people for hundreds of years
7:27
Speaker 1: in Europe. But at the same time, if you paid
7:30
Speaker 1: your your uh what what do you call it, like
7:33
Speaker 1: the gangster movies tribute? Yeah, but like you know when
7:37
Speaker 1: you pay someone to protect your money, Yeah, sort of
7:39
Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, protection from you. Basically, Uh, generally, and
7:45
Speaker 1: again there are examples even in this article of ours
7:48
Speaker 1: where he he went back on that. But generally if
7:50
Speaker 1: you paid that gold, he would also leave you alone. Um,
7:55
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to lose. Like I said, he
7:57
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to just conquer the world. So he seemed
8:01
Speaker 1: like he would only undertake a mission or a or
8:04
Speaker 1: a war if he if there was something in it
8:06
Speaker 1: for him other than just like expanding his kingdom, which
8:12
Speaker 1: on a modern map eventually was it say here large
8:17
Speaker 1: portions of eastern and western Roman Empires, from Germany in
8:21
Speaker 1: the west, to Romania in the south, to the Netherlands
8:24
Speaker 1: and the north, and Russia and Kazakhstan in the east.
8:28
Speaker 1: And uh, that was generally a till of the Huns
8:32
Speaker 1: area over about a ten year span, well nine I
8:36
Speaker 1: think nine years, well nineteen years period. But in that
8:40
Speaker 1: ten year span is when he really liked did a
8:43
Speaker 1: lot of his damage, which is that's impressive, and put
8:46
Speaker 1: a big dent in the Roman Empire. That was another
8:49
Speaker 1: thing too, Like you can you can say what you
8:51
Speaker 1: want about the guy, and I think it's worth pointing
8:53
Speaker 1: out there's all of this is to say, like nobody
8:57
Speaker 1: is bad. And when you get this far are away,
9:00
Speaker 1: almost two thousand years away, years away from somebody like,
9:05
Speaker 1: their character just becomes cartoonish. So there is not a
9:10
Speaker 1: lot we can say, especially about the nuances of this
9:12
Speaker 1: guy's character, but you can point to what he did
9:17
Speaker 1: and say, this man change the course of history, and
9:20
Speaker 1: he definitely did, especially by basically hastening the fall of
9:23
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire. Right, this is pretty impressive stuff. I
9:28
Speaker 1: feel like we should almost stick a break. That was
9:29
Speaker 1: a nice preamble. All right, we'll get back to his
9:33
Speaker 1: birth and start over right after this. Alright, So four
10:01
Speaker 1: oh sixes when they think Attila the Hunt was born
10:04
Speaker 1: in uh Pannonia, which what you would now say is Hungary. Yeah,
10:11
Speaker 1: because by this time the Hunts, well they first appear
10:14
Speaker 1: in the Western record, and I think ce Tacitus, the
10:20
Speaker 1: historian Roman historian says, oh, yeah, by the way, there's
10:24
Speaker 1: these people out there called the Hunts. There are barbarian
10:26
Speaker 1: tribe who cares watch you're back. Well, he didn't even
10:28
Speaker 1: say that. He just basically said there's a barbarian tribe
10:31
Speaker 1: out there. But by the time Attila was was born,
10:33
Speaker 1: the Hunts had made a name for themselves is being fierce,
10:37
Speaker 1: fearsome warriors that just basically could overtake anybody, and they had. Yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: he was not born. His story is very different from
10:47
Speaker 1: Chingis Khans, and that he was born already into I
10:50
Speaker 1: guess what you would consider royalty, uh and and privilege.
10:55
Speaker 1: And that they think the Huns came from Kazakhstan, I
10:58
Speaker 1: think you said, or their their empire stretched all the
11:01
Speaker 1: way kash Central Asia. They think that's where they probably originated.
11:05
Speaker 1: But by the time Untila was born, Um, he was
11:08
Speaker 1: born on the Danube in Hungary, which is like became
11:12
Speaker 1: the capital of the area they settled. Yeah, and you
11:15
Speaker 1: mentioned that the Huns were known as fierce warriors. Um,
11:17
Speaker 1: much like Khan's army. They really made their hay on horses.
11:25
Speaker 1: I don't even know if that counts as a pun,
11:26
Speaker 1: It doesn't, all right, It was just delightful though. They
11:29
Speaker 1: were excellent horsemen. UM. I don't know if they rode
11:32
Speaker 1: those little squatty horses like uh, like Khan's army did.
11:36
Speaker 1: But they were great on horseback, apparently so great that
11:40
Speaker 1: they kind of didn't get off their horses to do
11:42
Speaker 1: much when it when in terms of battle. But even
11:45
Speaker 1: beyond battle. I saw that they held negotiations on their horses.
11:49
Speaker 1: Um that they were characterized as being one with their horse.
11:54
Speaker 1: That was one thing, right, right, in the true sense
11:56
Speaker 1: that was I hope not mainly for the horses, say yeah,
12:00
Speaker 1: but um they they they were. The fact that they
12:04
Speaker 1: were amazing horsemen. That's check one, and why they were
12:07
Speaker 1: basically impossible to feat Check two was they had a
12:11
Speaker 1: special kind of bow called the hun bow, right, and
12:14
Speaker 1: these things are beautiful. It was a recursive bow where
12:17
Speaker 1: the bow itself been curve back onto itself, which meant
12:22
Speaker 1: you have more torque, which meant you could shoot an
12:24
Speaker 1: arrow through armor at a hundred yards. Yeah, they're all
12:28
Speaker 1: kinds of recurve bows, but this one was especially squatty
12:31
Speaker 1: and kind of short. So it's recurved. It's not recursive,
12:35
Speaker 1: yeah recurve. Um. Oh yeah, it was short, which meant
12:38
Speaker 1: it was mobile. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So if you picture
12:41
Speaker 1: just like a U shaped bow, that's just a bow,
12:45
Speaker 1: but a recurve bends back around to face the other
12:48
Speaker 1: way at both ends and both points. And this one was,
12:51
Speaker 1: like I said, especially squatty, and it just it's cool
12:54
Speaker 1: looking like bow enthusiasts collect these things. I can imagine
12:57
Speaker 1: hun bows. You say, this is a till of the
12:59
Speaker 1: huns areo boat. Everybody says that. So so wait a minute,
13:04
Speaker 1: So we've got two things. Now we've got they were
13:06
Speaker 1: basically one with their horse. They were so good on
13:08
Speaker 1: a horse, they could shoot arrows through your armor a
13:12
Speaker 1: hundred yards away, almost a hundred meters away. Um, while
13:17
Speaker 1: on these horses. That's check two. And then number three
13:21
Speaker 1: is that they didn't fight in any sort of coherent
13:26
Speaker 1: battle formation. It was just show up out of nowhere,
13:31
Speaker 1: right around, start picking people off, scatter, regroup out of nowhere,
13:36
Speaker 1: show up again, pick more people off, scatter, regroup and
13:39
Speaker 1: like you just you had no idea that they were
13:41
Speaker 1: coming at any point in time, and they would just
13:44
Speaker 1: come and basically waste your army. And there was no
13:47
Speaker 1: formation that you could form against. It was just chaos. Yeah,
13:52
Speaker 1: and and fast, like before you knew what was going on,
13:55
Speaker 1: You're you're getting arrows slung your way. And like you said,
13:59
Speaker 1: from any direction, wasn't like here they come from the north,
14:03
Speaker 1: Like they were all over the place. Uh. It said
14:05
Speaker 1: here in this one article you sent that the soldiers
14:09
Speaker 1: they wore these heavy leather greased uh outfits greased with
14:13
Speaker 1: animal fat, which is good, which just said made them
14:19
Speaker 1: both supple and rain resistant. Maybe that was for the
14:22
Speaker 1: horses and steel line helmets chain mail. They're very nimble.
14:28
Speaker 1: They also used swords, of course, and their leather boots.
14:31
Speaker 1: They rode horses so much they didn't even worry about hiking,
14:34
Speaker 1: so they would wear these leather boots. Had very thin
14:36
Speaker 1: soles that I guess major feet, more responsive to stirrup action.
14:43
Speaker 1: I don't know, they were just more comfortable. They're like,
14:47
Speaker 1: isoton boots? Did they make shoes? Oh? No, you're talking
14:53
Speaker 1: about the gloves. They make slippers? I think, Oh really,
14:55
Speaker 1: I think so. I don't think it was Damn Marina,
14:58
Speaker 1: want to hear that isotoneer gloves and uh ace ventura.
15:03
Speaker 1: All right, So these are the huns. They're nomadic there
15:06
Speaker 1: chaotic and battle, their fierce, Their their stories precede them,
15:11
Speaker 1: their legend precedes them. So when you are getting attacked
15:14
Speaker 1: like that's got to do a mental number on you,
15:17
Speaker 1: especially like when they came upon towns and cities, like
15:21
Speaker 1: sometimes entire cities, they would level them, just utterly destroy
15:26
Speaker 1: They would take everything they wanted kill everybody that they wanted.
15:29
Speaker 1: They would take hostages and slaves and prisoners, um. But
15:33
Speaker 1: then they would just destroy the town. And there was
15:35
Speaker 1: one town in Italy um called Aquileia. Aquileia, I believe um.
15:44
Speaker 1: No one knows where it was, they know it existed,
15:46
Speaker 1: but then the Huns got They Huns sacked it and
15:49
Speaker 1: now no one has any idea what it was because
15:51
Speaker 1: they just utterly destroyed the tip. That was like the
15:54
Speaker 1: kind of thing they would do, almost just out of spite,
15:58
Speaker 1: just maliciously, you know, because apparently Attila the Hun was
16:04
Speaker 1: known for um using his fierce reputation at an advantage
16:11
Speaker 1: and he didn't want to fight or thought that fighting
16:14
Speaker 1: was unwise. He could use his reputation to get you
16:17
Speaker 1: to to surrender and then maybe you would survive, maybe
16:20
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. UM. But they didn't necessarily need that because
16:25
Speaker 1: they backed up the fierce reputation actually did these things
16:29
Speaker 1: that people feared them for. And they had a name
16:31
Speaker 1: for the Huns, and apparently specifically Attila the Hun in
16:35
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman or the Roman Empires pre Holy Roman,
16:39
Speaker 1: they called them the flagellum day the scourge of God.
16:44
Speaker 1: And this is what these Christians thought, that that God
16:47
Speaker 1: had sent this horrible, almost devil figure to come and
16:52
Speaker 1: wipe their towns from the earth because they weren't living
16:55
Speaker 1: upright enough. Yeah, and I saw some historians think that
16:58
Speaker 1: he might have even made that name up. Oh really,
17:01
Speaker 1: it seems like he was a big promoter of his
17:04
Speaker 1: of his wicked ways, just to scare people. Well, it's
17:07
Speaker 1: still working on me, like he would because I'm passing
17:10
Speaker 1: all this stuff off. He was often drawn with like
17:12
Speaker 1: goats horns and things like that, And I don't I
17:14
Speaker 1: think he encouraged this stuff. Well, he did famously say
17:17
Speaker 1: that wherever he's trod or past, grass will never grow again.
17:21
Speaker 1: So yeah, he definitely, he definitely would play it up.
17:24
Speaker 1: But it didn't hurt his feelings that people said these
17:26
Speaker 1: things about him, right, so he I don't think we
17:29
Speaker 1: mentioned yet. He uh took over along with his brother
17:33
Speaker 1: Blada b L E. D A when they were young
17:36
Speaker 1: their uncles actually, um, that's there was a lot of
17:40
Speaker 1: biarchy going on at the time with the Huns, which
17:43
Speaker 1: is a little bit unusual for a couple of people
17:46
Speaker 1: to split ruling duties, and their uncles jointly ruled the
17:49
Speaker 1: Hunt empire. Eventually the brothers took over as co rulers
17:52
Speaker 1: in four thirty four, and I think they even had
17:56
Speaker 1: their own territories that they were in charge of. It's
17:58
Speaker 1: not like they were together. Uh. And then eventually Attila
18:02
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I think I'd rather just really operate
18:06
Speaker 1: this show by myself. And he killed his brother, killed
18:08
Speaker 1: his own brother. That's that's harsh. I didn't see. How
18:11
Speaker 1: did you see? I didn't. I couldn't find it. I
18:13
Speaker 1: couldn't either, as I saw once a story about a
18:18
Speaker 1: night I think, who killed his own brother. But his
18:22
Speaker 1: brother was a priest saying mass, and the night came
18:26
Speaker 1: in and cut his own brother's head off while he
18:29
Speaker 1: was saying mass. Like, if there is a god, that
18:33
Speaker 1: really upset I'm unsure. So he and his brother uh
18:37
Speaker 1: co rule and they settled down a little bit on
18:41
Speaker 1: the great what was known as the Great Hungarian Plains,
18:44
Speaker 1: a little less nomadic at this point were the Huns. Yeah,
18:47
Speaker 1: because they were weighed down with so much golden plunder. Yeah,
18:50
Speaker 1: they just they couldn't ride around like they did. So
18:54
Speaker 1: have we reached the point where he's the single ruler? Now, yeah,
18:57
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get rid of his brother, so
18:59
Speaker 1: we should a. I don't know if this name came
19:02
Speaker 1: upon him ascending to um being the co ruler with
19:07
Speaker 1: his brother or the single ruler. But Attila means little father.
19:12
Speaker 1: They do not think that this is his birth name,
19:14
Speaker 1: because that's just no matter what age or period of
19:18
Speaker 1: history we're talking about, it'd be weird to name your
19:20
Speaker 1: son little father. Um. They think it was a name
19:24
Speaker 1: of respect and affection, is how I saw it put
19:26
Speaker 1: and that they think that this was basically his His
19:29
Speaker 1: king name was Attila. They have no idea what his
19:32
Speaker 1: real name was, but they think that Attila was not it. No,
19:37
Speaker 1: but by the time he became ruler, like you said,
19:40
Speaker 1: he was born into a privileged household. Um, he he
19:44
Speaker 1: knew what to do from a very early age. His
19:47
Speaker 1: uncle's as rulers brought him and his brother Bleda up
19:51
Speaker 1: to speak Latin. So maybe he did come up with
19:54
Speaker 1: Flagellum Davey Goth which was another Germanic tribe who figure
19:58
Speaker 1: into this picture later on. Um and to to understand diplomacy,
20:04
Speaker 1: military strategy, horsemanship obviously, UM all of this stuff. So
20:08
Speaker 1: it was brought up to lead, so it was kind
20:10
Speaker 1: of natural that he would kill his brother and take
20:12
Speaker 1: over the entire hunt empire. Yeah, and the other another
20:16
Speaker 1: thing I thought was interesting was even though he was
20:19
Speaker 1: sort of on a conquest for gold and riches, he
20:23
Speaker 1: lived sort of simply as a ruler. Like all of
20:27
Speaker 1: his his upper uh subordinates. Apparently they did live the
20:32
Speaker 1: high life, and they drank from silver and gold chalices
20:34
Speaker 1: and had fancy clothes and big you know, make mansions,
20:39
Speaker 1: platform shoes, platform shoes with goldfish in the heel. And
20:43
Speaker 1: Attila lived in a log house with animal skins on
20:46
Speaker 1: the walls and drank from a wooden cup. And even
20:49
Speaker 1: though he wanted to get all this gold, it doesn't
20:51
Speaker 1: look like he lived that way, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
20:54
Speaker 1: That really kind of opens up the guy for interpretation.
20:59
Speaker 1: You know, like says a couple of things. One, he's
21:01
Speaker 1: surrounded by all these material goods, but his tastes are
21:04
Speaker 1: extraordinarily simple, and he stuck to it. He didn't try
21:08
Speaker 1: to show off at any point. He just was who
21:10
Speaker 1: he was as far as his taste point. And then secondly,
21:13
Speaker 1: he also didn't demand that the people subordinate to him
21:18
Speaker 1: live like he lived. That says an enormous amount you know, like,
21:22
Speaker 1: there's so many people at the top who want the
21:24
Speaker 1: people below them to act like them, to live like them,
21:28
Speaker 1: to behave like them. So for him to to have
21:30
Speaker 1: like there was a cult of personality around this guy,
21:33
Speaker 1: and for him to allow and maybe even encourage people
21:37
Speaker 1: to live their own way totally counter to how he lived.
21:41
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's a complex figure for sure. Um.
21:46
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the Treaty of Marcus. Yeah, this
21:48
Speaker 1: is a big turning point in history. Yeah. So this
21:52
Speaker 1: was in four thirty four. Uh, and he I believe
21:56
Speaker 1: that what we're going back to when Bledah was still alive. Um,
22:00
Speaker 1: they worked up a peace treaty called the Treaty of
22:02
Speaker 1: Marcus with what is this the Eastern Roman Empire. Yes,
22:06
Speaker 1: and they basically said, hey, if you return all these
22:10
Speaker 1: hunt refugees, basically people that fled my rule, return these
22:14
Speaker 1: people to us. How many were there? At least of fourteen,
22:18
Speaker 1: but I think maybe seventeen Yeah, like not seventeen thousand,
22:21
Speaker 1: but seventeen people. But that's how much he prized loyalty,
22:25
Speaker 1: is how I saw it. Put. Yeah, like I want
22:26
Speaker 1: these people back, and he also didn't want them going
22:28
Speaker 1: off into the Roman Empire and stirring up rebellion to
22:32
Speaker 1: come take over the Hunting Empire. Yeah, exactly. So if
22:35
Speaker 1: you return, these people will establish some trading rights that
22:38
Speaker 1: are fair. You guys pay us about seven hundred pounds
22:42
Speaker 1: of gold every year directly to me and my bro
22:46
Speaker 1: and we'll, like, we'll lay off and you can just
22:49
Speaker 1: kind of do your thing here in the Eastern Roman Empire. Yeah,
22:52
Speaker 1: it's extortion. Yeah, I saw that that Attila was. He
22:57
Speaker 1: plundered in war and extorted in peacetime. That's what he did.
23:01
Speaker 1: So yeah, he said, we won't invade you if you
23:03
Speaker 1: pay a seven hundred pounds of goal of a year,
23:05
Speaker 1: and he didn't. But then he said, um, there was
23:09
Speaker 1: another part of this too. He said that that he
23:13
Speaker 1: wanted not just the traitorous Huns who left or escaped
23:18
Speaker 1: his rule to be returned to him. He also wanted um,
23:22
Speaker 1: a Roman bishop who he believed had come into the
23:27
Speaker 1: Hunting Empire and desecrated some graves and stolen grave goods
23:31
Speaker 1: from the graves, to be handed over to him. And
23:35
Speaker 1: apparently the Eastern Empire uh Emperor Theodosius the second said, hey,
23:43
Speaker 1: man I gave, I gave all of the Huns I
23:47
Speaker 1: could find in the empire over to you and this bishop.
23:49
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think
23:51
Speaker 1: this is actually true. Um, they didn't give over the bishop.
23:55
Speaker 1: And so Attila actually said, um, you guys just broke
24:00
Speaker 1: the treaty, were invading, And he did invade, and they
24:03
Speaker 1: actually invaded through Marguts. And the guy who opened the
24:07
Speaker 1: gates of Marguts too for them to the Huns was
24:11
Speaker 1: the bishop who stole the grave goods. So had the
24:14
Speaker 1: emperor handed over this guy, the the invasion of Italy
24:19
Speaker 1: by the Huns would have never happened. And that's the
24:26
Speaker 1: sound that played when he opened the gate. Apparently they
24:29
Speaker 1: got within about twenty miles of Constantinople. And Theodosius too said, whoa,
24:36
Speaker 1: you're getting a little too close. How about pounds of
24:41
Speaker 1: gold per year three times as much cold? And I
24:44
Speaker 1: believe that that quelled Attila's desires for temporarily, at least temporarily.
24:49
Speaker 1: So that just meant with Attila that he just turned
24:51
Speaker 1: his sight somewhere else. Yeah, you want to take a break, Yeah,
24:54
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, okay, man, we're back. So, um,
25:24
Speaker 1: the Eastern Roman Empire has said all right, here here
25:27
Speaker 1: take some more gold. Um leave us alone, and he
25:30
Speaker 1: did for a little while. But one of the things
25:34
Speaker 1: that um Attila the hunt did was he created like
25:40
Speaker 1: a domino effect, there were other Germanic tribes of barbarians
25:44
Speaker 1: and making air quotes everybody um who were in the
25:50
Speaker 1: area that got pushed out of the area and into
25:54
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire by the Hunts. So the Hunts pushed
25:57
Speaker 1: out the Allan's, the Alan's pushed out the Goths. The
26:00
Speaker 1: Goths pushed out some other tribes, and as a result,
26:05
Speaker 1: you now had other Germanic tribes living in the Roman Empire.
26:10
Speaker 1: It's a big seed that got planted by the Hunts
26:14
Speaker 1: because the Hunts pushed everybody out and took over their empire. Right,
26:17
Speaker 1: This actually led to the downfall of the Roman Empire
26:20
Speaker 1: later on. It was that the Great migration, yeah, or
26:23
Speaker 1: the wandering of the nations. Now is this when people
26:26
Speaker 1: split and just fractured the Roman Empire, So hopefully get that.
26:31
Speaker 1: So what happened was the um the these different tribes
26:35
Speaker 1: got pushed into the Roman Empire started and the Vandals
26:42
Speaker 1: that so um, the the Visigoths in particular got pushed
26:47
Speaker 1: into there and they were living as Roman subjects under
26:50
Speaker 1: Roman rule, but they were not being treated very well
26:52
Speaker 1: by the Roman governors of the territories they lived in.
26:56
Speaker 1: And they eventually rose up against Rome, against a Roman
27:00
Speaker 1: empire in the areas where they lived. And these little
27:04
Speaker 1: battles and skirmishes that that that Rome was having, or
27:08
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire was having with these groups that would
27:11
Speaker 1: have otherwise not been in their borders started to weaken
27:14
Speaker 1: the empire enough that it actually felt the the I
27:19
Speaker 1: think it was the Goths that actually sacked Rome and
27:24
Speaker 1: and crumbled the Roman Empire. And the whole reason they
27:27
Speaker 1: could make it to Rome was because they were in
27:30
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire already, because the Huns had pushed them
27:33
Speaker 1: in their years before and set off this chain of
27:36
Speaker 1: events that led to maybe the most powerful empire in
27:40
Speaker 1: the history of the world. Tell of the Hun did that?
27:44
Speaker 1: It wasn't Susie in her banshees no leading the Goths.
27:49
Speaker 1: Did you like them? Oh? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, me too,
27:53
Speaker 1: they were great. I generally wasn't into that, though, yes,
27:58
Speaker 1: I don't even know what counts. She You didn't like
28:01
Speaker 1: the cure or the smiths, or I guess the smiths
28:04
Speaker 1: weren't weren't goth, but the cure definitely was. You don't
28:06
Speaker 1: like the cure. I love the cure, but chuck your golf. Really,
28:10
Speaker 1: my friend, you're GoF all right, I'll get my mass era. Okay,
28:15
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean some of those terms, I don't
28:18
Speaker 1: even know, like what the dividing line is. I don't
28:21
Speaker 1: you know. You know, people are still hung up on
28:23
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Do you like the cure? Yes? Good,
28:26
Speaker 1: you're smart for liking the cure. They're great and you're
28:28
Speaker 1: a god. Should we talk about his weird marriage situation? Yes,
28:36
Speaker 1: so this was odd. He had well, obviously he had
28:38
Speaker 1: a bunch of wives, because that's just the way it
28:39
Speaker 1: was back then. No one knows how many wives. I
28:43
Speaker 1: don't think it's like anything like Chingis Khan, where they
28:46
Speaker 1: think he fathered like half the world's uh people or
28:50
Speaker 1: anything like that. But he had a share of wives.
28:54
Speaker 1: And this was an interesting thing. Here. In the spring
28:56
Speaker 1: of fourteen fifty, there was a woman named Honorrhea, and
29:00
Speaker 1: she was the sister of uh Valentinian, the third Emperor
29:05
Speaker 1: of Western Room. He was trying to marry her off
29:08
Speaker 1: to an aristocrat, as you do, like you're my sister here,
29:11
Speaker 1: take this husband out of my hair. I'm sorready hearing
29:14
Speaker 1: about it. Uh. And she was like, I don't really
29:17
Speaker 1: like this guy who you're trying to hook me up with,
29:20
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna do a weird thing. He's got no
29:22
Speaker 1: hair growing out of his nose, and he's like everybody
29:26
Speaker 1: has hair growing out of their nose. It's the fifth century. Uh.
29:31
Speaker 1: So she sends her engagement ring to Attila, said, Hey,
29:36
Speaker 1: I don't want to marry this guy. Can you help
29:38
Speaker 1: me out? This is a very bizarre act. It's a
29:40
Speaker 1: bizarre act because Attila basically sees this as, oh, she
29:45
Speaker 1: wants to marry me because I've got this little wedding ring.
29:48
Speaker 1: Now I put on my pinky toe and uh, I'm
29:51
Speaker 1: gonna go. I'm gonna go claim this bride. And I
29:54
Speaker 1: also want half of your empire as dowry, half of
29:59
Speaker 1: the Western Roman empire. He demanded his dowry, and he
30:01
Speaker 1: was coming to get Did you call her Honoria? And
30:07
Speaker 1: it seems to me like a Noria was kind of
30:09
Speaker 1: like immediately like, what, yeah, I didn't really I didn't
30:14
Speaker 1: What I didn't? How is this woman not more famous?
30:17
Speaker 1: I don't know like, what a blunder it This is
30:19
Speaker 1: a crazy blunder that led to a huge sacking of Rome.
30:24
Speaker 1: And why, Like, I feel like there's part of the
30:27
Speaker 1: story missing. Why wet out to Antille of the Hunt.
30:29
Speaker 1: From what I saw, there was no they'd never met before.
30:33
Speaker 1: There was no interaction whatsoever. She just basically said, here, servant,
30:36
Speaker 1: take this ring to Attil of the Hunt. I don't
30:39
Speaker 1: know where he is, go find him. He wasn't like
30:41
Speaker 1: met her years ago and it's like, Hey, if you
30:42
Speaker 1: need remember me from high school, give me a call.
30:46
Speaker 1: I'll sack whatever needs sacking. None of that happened. From
30:49
Speaker 1: what I understand, I guess this dude was just the baddest,
30:52
Speaker 1: fiercest guy that a Noria could think of, and she
30:56
Speaker 1: said help. She really really made a missed up and
31:00
Speaker 1: including the engagement ring or maybe even reaching out at all.
31:04
Speaker 1: But the engagement ring was it gave at Till of
31:06
Speaker 1: the Hun just enough entree to say, oh, this is
31:10
Speaker 1: this is a pretty good reason to to invade the
31:12
Speaker 1: Western Roman Empire, which he did. That's right, looking for
31:15
Speaker 1: an Aria and that was the pretense. Yeah, but on
31:19
Speaker 1: his way he took another wife, uh name Bildico I
31:24
Speaker 1: think so, all right, And on their wedding night he
31:27
Speaker 1: actually died. He was not known, especially for the time,
31:31
Speaker 1: to be like a great like drinker. I mean, he
31:36
Speaker 1: wasn't a teetotal or no, but he was very moderate,
31:39
Speaker 1: temperate person as far as that stuff goes. Yeah, for
31:42
Speaker 1: the most part, he wasn't like the rest of the
31:44
Speaker 1: Huns that were just you know, getting wasted everything, or
31:46
Speaker 1: the rest of the Western Roman or Eastern Roman Empire like.
31:50
Speaker 1: But he was basically the one large area ruler who
31:55
Speaker 1: wasn't like just getting wasted and eating like five turkey
31:59
Speaker 1: legs at a time. Right, he was different in that
32:01
Speaker 1: sense for sure. Yeah, he was the only one that
32:03
Speaker 1: didn't have gout. Yeah, I guess as far as I know. Uh,
32:07
Speaker 1: so he marries this lady. Apparently he did drink a
32:10
Speaker 1: little bit too much on his wedding night and supposedly
32:15
Speaker 1: was prone to nose bleeds, and as the story goes,
32:18
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, had some sort of
32:20
Speaker 1: massive nosebleed, also saw something about an artery bursting, uh
32:25
Speaker 1: and choked on his blood in his sleep and died. Yeah,
32:28
Speaker 1: that's supposedly how I tell of the Hun died. Weird story,
32:33
Speaker 1: but believable, I guess. For yeah, I mean, the alternative
32:38
Speaker 1: explanation is that Il Deco murdered him or um abedded
32:44
Speaker 1: an assassination um that was carried out by I think
32:47
Speaker 1: one of the one either the Eastern or Western Roman emperors.
32:52
Speaker 1: Either way, like they think I said, I got the
32:55
Speaker 1: impression that that's the generally accepted ideas that he choked
32:58
Speaker 1: on his own blood. He basically died out of natural causes,
33:01
Speaker 1: which I mean, it's like, Gosh, you overindulge one night
33:05
Speaker 1: and you pay for it with your life, you know.
33:07
Speaker 1: But throughout throughout his reign we left out a huge
33:10
Speaker 1: chunk of of his history. At some point he turned
33:13
Speaker 1: his attention to Gaul France modern day France Belgium area,
33:17
Speaker 1: and that's where he suffered as one defeat. So out
33:22
Speaker 1: of the entire nineteen years, this guy was running around
33:25
Speaker 1: Eurasia terrorizing it. Um he suffered one defeat, and even
33:31
Speaker 1: then it was really a draw. But he uh, he
33:34
Speaker 1: attacked Gaul and I think troops and the Western Roman
33:41
Speaker 1: emperor got with the Goths and said, you guys, we
33:44
Speaker 1: gotta do something about this, and they managed to basically
33:48
Speaker 1: enter into a draw with the Huns, so much so
33:51
Speaker 1: that the Huns had to withdraw to their camp and
33:54
Speaker 1: eventually left Gaul after this, but it was supposedly one
33:58
Speaker 1: of the bloodiest battles in the history of of the world. Yeah,
34:01
Speaker 1: they managed to fight him back after and this is
34:04
Speaker 1: after the beginning was definitely going in the favor of
34:06
Speaker 1: the Huns. Uh, So it looked like the riding was
34:09
Speaker 1: on the wall and that was that was a big comeback.
34:12
Speaker 1: But imagine basically spending every day of your life engaged
34:16
Speaker 1: in conquest, in battle and you got one lost to
34:20
Speaker 1: your name. Yeah, you gotta have one. Everybody's got to
34:24
Speaker 1: have the ups with the downs, right. Yeah. Well, let's
34:28
Speaker 1: talk about his his his burial after his death. Yeah,
34:31
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting. After he died, his his horsemen,
34:35
Speaker 1: his followers, they cut off their hair, they smeared blood
34:38
Speaker 1: all over their face, and they slowly circled him on
34:41
Speaker 1: their horses. Um, I guess just I don't know if
34:45
Speaker 1: that was a uh sign of respect that normally happens,
34:50
Speaker 1: or if they were just reacting instinctively, or if it
34:55
Speaker 1: was some old ritual, But at any rate, they just
34:57
Speaker 1: slowly rode around his body that was the tent. Eventually
35:01
Speaker 1: he went in three coffins. Yeah, which makes me think
35:06
Speaker 1: that he could still be found, Yes, because he was
35:09
Speaker 1: in a coffin of gold, silver and iron, apparently, like, ah,
35:14
Speaker 1: was it a Matrushka nesk? I don't know, Matroishka. What
35:19
Speaker 1: is that? You know? The little Russian dolls that nest
35:22
Speaker 1: inside one another Russian nesting dolls. Let's just call him that. Yeah,
35:26
Speaker 1: I didn't know they had to. I think it's Maroika. Yeah,
35:29
Speaker 1: I think so. I love those. And show me a
35:32
Speaker 1: child that's not delighted by one of those, yeah, little
35:35
Speaker 1: things inside of other things. Show you a dollard. Uh.
35:39
Speaker 1: So they put him in three coffins. According to legend,
35:43
Speaker 1: they divert a river um like fully damn up a
35:46
Speaker 1: river and bury him in the river bed and then
35:49
Speaker 1: release the river once again, so that his grave would
35:53
Speaker 1: never be found. They also killed the people who buried
35:57
Speaker 1: him so that they couldn't tell anybody who were slaves.
35:59
Speaker 1: So there's there's actually so that sounds like a total
36:02
Speaker 1: like Paul Bunyan esque tall tale. Right, there's actually historical
36:06
Speaker 1: evidence that this had been done at least two other times.
36:10
Speaker 1: The emperor Gilgamesh, you know, the Epic of Gilgamesh. They
36:14
Speaker 1: believed that they found his resting place under the Euphrates,
36:18
Speaker 1: and legend has it that they diverted the Euphrates to
36:21
Speaker 1: bury him in the river bed for the same exact reason.
36:23
Speaker 1: They think they've actually found gilgamesh Is burying place. And
36:26
Speaker 1: then um, I think the Doocious the first Yeah, the
36:34
Speaker 1: Goth king who was killed in one of those battles
36:37
Speaker 1: in Gaul, the one that that repelled Um until of
36:41
Speaker 1: the hunt. Um kind of he was buried in a
36:45
Speaker 1: diverted river as well. So they're saying like they think
36:48
Speaker 1: this actually may have happened, which means that you if
36:52
Speaker 1: you search bet it was the Danube that they buried
36:55
Speaker 1: him in. But if you search a river, I would
36:59
Speaker 1: I would start with the Danube because that's where the
37:01
Speaker 1: capital of the Huns was. Could they divert the Danube?
37:04
Speaker 1: Though I don't know, maybe a part of it. Who
37:06
Speaker 1: knows that that maybe one day a till of the
37:09
Speaker 1: huns um grave will be found, especially as archaeological technology advances.
37:15
Speaker 1: I guarantee you in fifty years we're going to have
37:17
Speaker 1: found Until of the Huns gray Man, and it will
37:19
Speaker 1: be under a riverbed in three coffins. Yes, I really
37:23
Speaker 1: think that that's for real. I believe it. Believe it.
37:29
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you said you did? Ah, you go anything else? No,
37:32
Speaker 1: I mean that which there's a lot of the till
37:35
Speaker 1: of the hun stuff that we did not get to.
37:38
Speaker 1: Can I add one more thing? I want to defend
37:41
Speaker 1: my use of barbarian one of the I think contemporary
37:46
Speaker 1: historians described the Huns as not making no use of fire.
37:51
Speaker 1: They even use fire. Supposedly they didn't cook their food.
37:55
Speaker 1: They would eat roots from the ground and then raw
37:59
Speaker 1: meat that they would put between their thighs in the
38:02
Speaker 1: saddle to tenderize it, I guess, and then they would
38:05
Speaker 1: eat that. They're barbarians. Okay, I saw that article. It said, uh,
38:10
Speaker 1: something like half raw, and they said, we say half
38:13
Speaker 1: raw because they would hold it between their thighs to
38:16
Speaker 1: cook it. Yeah, you got some beef thighs there. You
38:22
Speaker 1: got some red stained thighs. That sounds like, uh, I
38:26
Speaker 1: don't need what that sounds like on the menu something
38:28
Speaker 1: it's been cooked from the thighs of a hun. Right,
38:32
Speaker 1: It's kind of like it's one hipster step above su
38:35
Speaker 1: vied cooking. Really, if you think about. Okay, now we're done.
38:41
Speaker 1: Nothing like the warm glow of a hunt testicle against
38:45
Speaker 1: the stake it man, Oh boy, who's going on the
38:50
Speaker 1: rails here? Yeah? So if you want to know more
38:52
Speaker 1: about the huns, you can type that word in the
38:55
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
38:57
Speaker 1: said that, it's time for a listener maw, I'm gonna
39:01
Speaker 1: call this follow up to we got a surprising amount
39:04
Speaker 1: of email from that goofy show we did on the Jobs. Yeah,
39:08
Speaker 1: I know, it's like a high, high volume episode. Yeah,
39:12
Speaker 1: I was surprised. You never know. Uh. And by the way,
39:15
Speaker 1: we had a lot of people right in and say,
39:17
Speaker 1: by the way, there is still chariot racing. It's called
39:20
Speaker 1: harness racing pin setters, and I take issue with that.
39:23
Speaker 1: Harness racing is harness racing. Those are not chariots. Oh yeah, okay,
39:28
Speaker 1: what if I gets the same thing. There are pin
39:29
Speaker 1: setters and lamp lighters too. Basically, it was a fraudulent episode.
39:34
Speaker 1: Now I'm with you. Harness racing is not cherry. Like
39:37
Speaker 1: standing up in a in a wooden box being pulled
39:39
Speaker 1: by eight horses is not the same thing as a
39:42
Speaker 1: harness race. I've been to a harness race. I have to.
39:44
Speaker 1: My dad used to take us to those, let us
39:46
Speaker 1: bet like a dollar on him. I don't think I
39:47
Speaker 1: ever won, Yeah, which is probably good for my gambling bug.
39:51
Speaker 1: It never took off at a young age. Yeah, just
39:54
Speaker 1: the skittles and poker. Yeah. I'm not a big gamper either.
39:57
Speaker 1: Uh okay, alright, So anyway, this is about lamp lighters.
40:00
Speaker 1: This from Carlos in Mexico. Hey, guys, have found the
40:04
Speaker 1: stuff you talk about about lamp lighting fascinating. Like to
40:07
Speaker 1: add some extra info, Back in the day, people used
40:10
Speaker 1: to tip and or threaten the lamplighters to leave the
40:14
Speaker 1: lamp near a park bench or something turned off so
40:17
Speaker 1: couples could have more privacy. You know what I'm saying, Like, Hey,
40:22
Speaker 1: don't like that lamp. I gotta cure some meat over here,
40:27
Speaker 1: you know, the hunway. In fact, there is a Spanish
40:31
Speaker 1: folk song by the Cherumbellas suggestion on how to pronounce
40:37
Speaker 1: it h jerum bellas. Is it a d J? It's
40:44
Speaker 1: a c H pronounced like a ju. He says jerom
40:48
Speaker 1: Bellas about a lamp lighter being harassed by couples every
40:52
Speaker 1: night to leave the lamp off. The chorus loosely translates
40:55
Speaker 1: as follows, lamp lighter, go a little over there and
40:59
Speaker 1: leave this lamp off. In love affairs the lamp, the
41:02
Speaker 1: light of lamp always gets in the way. And this
41:05
Speaker 1: song is from the song Farrelero by the Chambarillas. How
41:11
Speaker 1: about that. I think you made it through quite nicely. Uh.
41:15
Speaker 1: And this is from Carlos from Guadalajara, and he also
41:17
Speaker 1: wants to suggest a topic, how capture work? Oh nice?
41:22
Speaker 1: Did we not cover that? No, we could do a
41:25
Speaker 1: whole one on like caption the Turing test and all
41:28
Speaker 1: that would be cool because capture stands for something, right,
41:31
Speaker 1: stands for computer automated pap tests PEP, something test to
41:39
Speaker 1: tell computers and humans apart. And now that's the end. Yeah.
41:44
Speaker 1: Maybe I think we did something about that on our
41:45
Speaker 1: dump TV show. That's what it was. You're absolutely right, yeah,
41:50
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch
41:53
Speaker 1: with us to find out what dumb TV show chucks
41:55
Speaker 1: talking about, good luck, because we don't talk about it
41:58
Speaker 1: any longer. Um, you can follow us by going onto
42:03
Speaker 1: our website stuff you should know dot com looking for
42:05
Speaker 1: all of the links to our social media's and then
42:09
Speaker 1: meeting us there. You can also send us an email
42:11
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast and how stuff works dot com for
42:19
Speaker 1: moralness and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
42:22
Speaker 1: works dot com