The Battle of Chalons AD 451

[Patrick Waterson]

As for Cassiodorus, he'll have had annals, which need have given little more information than we have. He could have had two or three sets, and there might be panegyrics that are lost to us, probably were. A few ecclesiastical histories and saints lives would give him a bit. Especially as there is a fair bit of tradition about which cities had bishops who turned back the Huns or stiffened the defenders resistance. There could well be Gothic oral history stories that came down as well.  So he put in the information he had, and padded it out with a bit of scene setting, invented a few speeches that sounded convincing.

Or he might have made a faithful attempt to pull together such actual information as there was on the subject.  Either way, we are interpreting (guessing on the basis of our own thought-habits) rather than revealing.

To me, Attila's speech looks real simply because it does not dovetail with the actions he subsequently undertook: an invented speech would be more in line with what happened next, emphasising the suitability of the Alans as targets and then ordering a charge against them.  The other point about this speech that makes me think it genuine is that it is out of the normal sequence: it is an in-battle (or proelium interruptum speech) speech rather than a pre-battle speech, whereas an invented speech would stick with the expected convention of being delivered before the battle.

Jordanes tells us the result of the speech:

"And although the situation was itself fearful, yet the presence of their king dispelled anxiety and hesitation." (Getica XL/207)

The indication that the Huns were, or felt, at a serious disadvantage this early in the battle is an unlikely feature for a made-up story.

The big question is 'Where were these great libraries of documents?'

Constantinople, Alexandria and possibly Antioch, though I take Jim's point about the fading of literature and literary tastes as Christianity increasingly took over as the literary subject of choice (or rather necessity) and about the nature and lack of thoroughness of records.  It would however be surprising if Aetius had not counted up the army with him (if only to ensure enough foodstuffs were on hand to prevent marauding) and had not at least drawn up a battle plan for the sake of letting his allies and officers know what was intended, and acquired information on the Hunnic strengths and dispositions from deserters and captives, together with his own observations.  If he expected any sort of approbation he would have taken care to get this all down and in addition to sending a (perhaps concise) official report to Ravenna would have freely corresponded with his friends and associates.  One might draw parallels with Marlborough if one felt the need.

So I can see there being documentation around for Cassiodorus to make a pretty good attempt at recreating the battle, or at least the important aspects of it, the real question being how much of the extant information he would have been able to track down.  In this connection, we note that Jordanes leaves out the pre-battle clash between Franks and Gepids that Gregory notes: this indicates another extant stratum of information into which Gregory tapped, albeit possibly enhancing a skirmish into a full engagement between contingents.  I would say that the information was there.

[Jim Webster]

I think we differ in our belief in what documentation was available.
Why on earth would Aetius bother Ravenna with details of supplies, which if they had come through channels would have been through the Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls, certainly not from Ravenna.
Similarly what evidence have we that anybody bothered with this sort of detail, we have no surviving histories which quote it, or even refer to it.
What we do have is works like the Gallic Annals which are very sparse in detail, which indicates that the detail wasn't there.
As for Gregory, he might well have come across a monastic chronicle in Gaul which mentioned a skirmish that took place close to a sister house or to the home of their founder or some other person of importance to them. Such a comment would probably not make it into annals held in Italy.
But we have to be very careful we don't foist on them our own love of bureaucracy. Even in my Grandfather's day, the British government saw no need to record the firearms held privately by British citizens.
I don't think comparing Marlborough with Aetius serves any function, they operated at very different levels in very different environments, Marlborough certainly needed to leave a far more convincing paper trail to support his activities. He was dependent on votes in Parliament and suchlike. Aetius was in a position of power where the paper trail was irrelevant, to remove him you had to kill him, he was above the courts and bureaucracy.
An invented speech serves the purposes of the Author. Jordanes may merely have wished to portray the Romans in a bad light, thus throwing the Goths into high relief as their much needed saviors.
The fact that it is an in-battle speech makes it even more likely to be unrecorded. A prebattle speech might well have been worked on before hand, and there could even be clerks involved. In battle, one finds few persons taking shorthand, and, in reality, in the chaos of battle fewer people would even hear it.
Jordanes tells us what he expects the results would be, that it rallied them.
It might be that Jordanes heard that the men rallied and supplied a speech as a reason to explain the rallying

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Aetius would not have bothered Ravenna with details of supplies, but the details would need to have been made available for the civil officials (literate, record-keeping men) responsible for getting them to the right place at the right time.  They would almost certainly have insisted on having it in writing, particularly as this looks as if it was the largest assemblage of fighting manpower in Gaul in the whole of the 5th century AD.

In any event, one can expect unofficial sources in addition to official records: Ammianus (XVI.12.67) mentions that despite Constantius' attempts to suppress mention of Julian's victories in Gaul, 'fama' (report, mention, verbal and perhaps even written samizdat) ensured that the facts got around.  This does not even consider Julian's own 'diary' or those of his staff as potential information sources.

And I trust that the earlier mention of potential Hunnic memories did not go unnoticed.

In some ways, for source material, bureaucracy and official reports were just the icing on the cake, even if the cake could be considered a bit stale by the time Cassiodorus got to it.

[Erpingham]

I think there are two issues here; how much material existed and how much Cassiodorus and Jordanes had access to.  A lot of the documentation would have been ephemeral and not archived (a lot of the bureaucracy of the earlier Roman army is visible through documentation that was dumped but survived).  The battle may have been mentioned in private correspondence but would this have been collected and archived? 

The other point is how the histories were constructed.  Do we know anything either of the source access or the compilation techniques used by either author?

[Jim Webster]

Aetius would not have bothered Ravenna with details of supplies, but the details would need to have been made available for the civil officials (literate, record-keeping men) responsible for getting them to the right place at the right time.  They would almost certainly have insisted on having it in writing, particularly as this looks as if it was the largest assemblage of fighting manpower in Gaul in the whole of the 5th century AD.   

But again, why bother Ravenna with these details? From what I can make out from Late Rome, the major problem an Emperor faced was actually learning what went on anyway. I recommend 'Corruption and the Decline of Rome' by Ramsay Macmullen
We know from Egypt that units kept some records, we know they did because we found the old ones, not in archives but in rubbish tips. Someone may well have kept records of the supplies to Aetius's forces, but twelve months later they could just as easily have been thrown out or over-written because they were utterly irrelevant. If Aetius was going to be tried for corruption, nobody actually needed evidence.
Similarly no one is going to turn to any Roman high official and demand that you got your orders in writing to cover your back when things when sour. Firstly it wouldn't work, Roman justice didn't operate like that, you'd survive things going sour not by having evidence but by having a protector, and insulting your potential protector is a bad way to start a process.

In any event, one can expect unofficial sources in addition to official records: Ammianus (XVI.12.67) mentions that despite Constantius' attempts to suppress mention of Julian's victories in Gaul, 'fama' (report, mention, verbal and perhaps even written samizdat) ensured that the facts got around.  This does not even consider Julian's own 'diary' or those of his staff as potential information sources.

perhaps even written? perhaps not. The Great are going to know what is going on, trusted friends will carry messages which need not be in writing. The lesser mortals are just going to pass on gossip they've picked up from what someone overheard when they were waiting table. Just because people are literate, don't assume a literary culture. My father was literate, read a lot, wrote in a beautiful copperplate hand, and didn't pick up a pen from one years end to the next other than to sign his name. As one friend said, "His was a handwriting not spoiled by over use." 

And I trust that the earlier mention of potential Hunnic memories did not go unnoticed. 

Indeed they would have had an oral tradition, but given what happened to the Hunnic Empire (or protection racket) I wouldn't be hopeful that there was a lot of records or that they survived. They might have had a Jordanes, but who was his patron? Who was he writing for? Who was going to support him in literary idleness whilst he worked? I cannot imagine there would be much call for Hunnic histories in the courts of Ravenna or Constantinople.

In some ways, for source material, bureaucracy and official reports were just the icing on the cake, even if the cake could be considered a bit stale by the time Cassiodorus got to it.

Remember we know how good their record keeping was, we have the Notitia which seems to have been sporadically updated and abandoned. The keeping of public records over long periods doesn't seem to have been a priority.

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

I've read through a few battles of the late empire. Many are indeed scant in detail (i.e. the primary sources we have mention little or nothing about the deployment and course of the battles themselves). Others have more detail - like Argentoratum - because someone on the spot gathered enough information from eyewitness accounts to make a reconstruction of the battle possible. The the constant though seems to be that if the writer of the time did not have plenty of data on the battle, he didn't make it up.  We know that the best primary source for Argentoratum, Ammianus, had an eyewitness account written by Julian himself. From the Wiki article:

By far the most detailed and reliable source for the battle, and Julian's Gallic campaign (355-60) generally, is the Res Gestae (Histories) of Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian. Ammianus was a Greek career soldier who joined the army before 350 and served until at least 363.[8] Enlisted as a protector (cadet senior officer), he served as a staff officer under magister equitum Ursicinus and then under Julian himself in the latter's Persian campaign. Although he was not present at Strasbourg, he had experience of the Gallic front as he was involved in the suppression of the revolt of Claudius Silvanus, the magister equitum (commander-in-chief) in Gaul (355).[9] However, his narrative reveals a passionate admiration of Julian and occasionally descends to the level of eulogy. Furthermore, as he was writing some 40 years after the event, it is likely that Ammianus relied heavily, if not exclusively, on Julian's own memoir of the Strasbourg campaign (which we know he published, but has been lost)

There is sufficient detail in Jordanes' account of Chalons for it to be evident he was using a source that ultimately went back to one or more eyewitness accounts of the battle. In other words, if he was going to substantially make it up, I think it is clear enough, as Patrick pointed out, that he would have made up the details differently. Something like the following, assuming he knew only that Aetius, helped by a bunch of barbarians, notably the Visigoths whose king was killed, fought the Huns, who lost:

And the numberless host of Huns poured into the empire, trampling the fair fields of Gaul until the redoutable general Aetius, like a saviour of the civilised world, gathered the Romans and barbarians and fought Attila in a sad and bloody hour [not necessarily by the Shrewsbury clock]. The Huns, ravening wolves, threw themselves upon the Roman and allied host. Attila himself met the king of the Visigoths, Theodoric, and the two fought nose to nose, giving and suffering dreadful wounds until the Visigothic king, his warlike valour finally overcome by the weakness of age, succumbed to his injuries and died. Then Aetius, heartening his men with renewed confidence, attacked the Hunnic horde again and yet again, and finally drove them back in defeat. Attila, his fury unabated, returned with his army back to Caucasia [or Armenia or Scythia if you like], contemplating a dreadful revenge that he would unleash on the war-weary empire in the following year.

Lots of inspiring waffle with no real detail, and a little bit of creativity on how Theodoric died. Something that contemporary politicians are rather good at.

[Patrick Waterson]

But again, why bother Ravenna with these details?

Who said anything about bothering Ravenna?  I just pointed out that such records would exist somewhere.  Life did exist outside the top imperial bureaucracy back then; I believe it still does even today. 

Just because people are literate, don't assume a literary culture.

But the Late Empire still had a literary culture.  A fair bit was wasted in panegyrics, true, but the culture was still hanging on.

I cannot imagine there would be much call for Hunnic histories in the courts of Ravenna or Constantinople.

But 'I heard Attila speak' would be part of the corpus of surviving Hun tradition in the 450s-460s and a remembered verbatim record of his speech could easily have been told to an interested Roman listener.  One would imagine that Aetius himself may even have obtained a record one way or another, given his past involvement with the Huns.

[Jim Webster]

Aetius was dead three years after Chalons, admittedly that might have given him more time for reading but probably restricted his access to the market for books

Why should records exist somewhere? That is a very late 20th and 21st century attitude. Even now we don't keep records for long. HMRC can only go back twenty years, government even now regularly destroys records
So we cannot assume that there were army records, we have no evidence that they existed in any form of long term storage, merely that units regularly destroyed them.

And we've seen the results of the Empires literary culture, it produces Sidonius and Jordanes, both of whom are far more interested in literary style than in trivia like historical accuracy

Jim

[aligern]

Ithoht that might wow us all with a missing fragment of Priscus  patrick and Justin, but apparently not.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that Jordanes made up the description of the battle whole cloth. However, the picture he gives is defective in many parts and he supplies us with details that show either that he has a Gothic source or that he is doing his inventions in order to produce  a Gothic history . Had he been following a full Roman source he would have had details about  the Roman deployment about which we hear nothing.
If Cassiodorus had created a speech for Attila it would have been longer and in clearer Latin. Perhaps Jordanes read such a speech and half remembered it or took notes at the level that I took notes in lectures.
As a battle Chalons will have had story, myth and legend surrounding it. Thus it would not have been such a great effort for Jordanes to create a narrative out of the story of
the Franks versus the Gepids, the battle for the hill, the death of Thodered, the retreat of Attila to his camp with the pyre prepared. What we have here are not lije Roman sources, more likely they are from the songs of the Goths.

The question that I have posed twice without response is  that of the second campaign of the Visigoths against Attila which is widely held to be a fabrication because there is not time for Attila to be in Italy and fight a separate campaign and it is mentioned nowhere else.

Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

The question that I have posed twice without response is  that of the second campaign of the Visigoths against Attila which is widely held to be a fabrication because there is not time for Attila to be in Italy and fight a separate campaign and it is mentioned nowhere else.

Yes, that is curious. Jordanes relates (Book XLIII):

"But as he was shrewd and crafty, he threatened in one direction and moved his army in another; for in the midst of these preparations he turned his face toward the Visigoths who had yet to feel his vengeance. (226) But here he had not the same success as against the Romans. Hastening back by a different way than before, he decided to reduce to his sway that part of the Alani which was settled across the river Loire, in order that by attacking them, and thus changing the aspect of the war, he might become a more terrible menace to the Visigoths. Accordingly he started from the provinces of Dacia and Pannonia, where the Huns were then dwelling with various subject peoples, and moved his array against the Alani. (227) But Thorismud, king of the Visigoths, with like quickness of thought perceived Attila's trick. By forced marches he came to the Alani before him, and was well prepared to check the advance of Attila when he came after him. They joined battle in almost the same way as before at the Catalaunian Plains, and Thorismud dashed his hopes of victory, for he routed him and drove him from the land without a triumph, compelling him to flee to his own country. Thus while Attila, the famous leader and lord of many victories, sought to blot out the fame of his destroyer and in this way to annul what he had suffered at the hands of the Visigoths, he met a second defeat and retreated ingloriously."

It does look a little inflated, but then we have the following sentence:

"(228) Now after the bands of the Huns had been repulsed by the Alani, without any hurt to his own men, Thorismud departed for Tolosa."

Reading between the lines, or simply reading the last line, it was the Alans who repulsed the Huns on this occasion - hardly a judgement particularly glorious for the Goths.  The fact that the Alans rather than the Visigoths are credited with the repulse makes me think Jordanes might actually be telling the truth about the invasion, even if Thorismund's part looks overstated.

Why should records exist somewhere? That is a very late 20th and 21st century attitude. Even now we don't keep records for long. HMRC can only go back twenty years, government even now regularly destroys records
So we cannot assume that there were army records, we have no evidence that they existed in any form of long term storage, merely that units regularly destroyed them.

So bags of time for interested parties to note down details and pass them on to other interested parties.

And we've seen the results of the Empires literary culture, it produces Sidonius and Jordanes, both of whom are far more interested in literary style than in trivia like historical accuracy

Ah - we have a literary culture!    It also produces Procopius and Agathias, who are more interested in historical accuracy than literary style (and even Sidonius seems able to give us occasional useful information when he can lay aside his poetical aspirations).

[Patrick Waterson]

I thought that you might wow us all with a missing fragment of Priscus,  Patrick and Justin, but apparently not.

Sadly we have to make do with the existing part of Priscus, but from a historical source/record-keeping angle the following is of interest:

"Having advanced a distance of seven days farther, we halted at a village; for as the rest of the route was the same for us and Attila, it behoved us to wait, so that he might go in front. Here we met with some of the "western Romans," who had also come on an embassy to Attila--the count Romulus, Promotus governor of Noricum, and Romanus a military captain. With them was Constantius whom Aetius had sent to Attila to be his secretary, and Tatulus, the father of Orestes; these two were not connected with the embassy, but were friends of the ambassadors. Constantius had known them of old in the Italies, and Orestes had married the daughter of Romulus."

We see quite a few people who could have provided information and memoirs, although in 451 the Romans would probably not have still been accompanying Attila - yet who knows?  Constantius the secretary would have been reporting to Aetius on the quiet, if Aetius had any sense, and the rest could easily have kept Priscus-style diaries emphasising their main area of interest, notably Romanus the 'military captain' and Tatulus, father of future Magister Militum Orestes.

It can be dangerous to assume that records of a particular event must have been lacking when a historian composed his contribution on the subject.

[Jim Webster]

It can be dangerous to assume that records of a particular event must have been lacking when a historian composed his contribution on the subject.

It is equally dangerous to assume that the documentation was there. A secretary to a Hunnic king might just act as a trusted translator, and also a writer of letters for the king. He needn't be a writer of histories or collector of annals.

When you say "So bags of time for interested parties to note down details and pass them on to other interested parties"

What interested parties? Fifty years after Chalons, who cared? You have Goths who have a tame 'historian' write a history to show them in a good light, Chalon gets covered because he can put a good gloss on it. If you read Jordanes, the battle of Frigidus gets 'And since the Emperor knew they [The Goths] were faithful to him and his friends, he took from their number more than twenty thousand warriors to serve against the tyrant Eugenius who had slain Gratian and seized Gaul. After winning the victory over the usurper, he wreaked his vengeance upon him."
Hardly Procopius ;-)

Hadrianople gets the following "Here a grievous battle took place and the Goths prevailed. The Emperor himself was wounded and fled to a farm hear Hadrianople. The Goths, not knowing that  an Emperor lay hidden in so poor a hut, set fire to it."

I'd suggest that there was probably some sort of records for both Frigidus and Hadrianople, but Jordanes doesn't use them, isn't interested in them.

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

I'd suggest that there was probably some sort of records for both Frigidus and Hadrianople, but Jordanes doesn't use them, isn't interested in them.

True.  He does seem to have been particularly interested in Chalons, and Priscus gives us another example of an unlikely but intriguing potential source for the Hunnic side of things:

"As I waited and walked up and down in front of the enclosure which surrounded the house, a man, whom from his Scythian dress I took for a barbarian, came up and addressed me in Greek, with the word Xaire, "Hail!" I was surprised at a Scythian speaking Greek. For the subjects of the Huns, swept together from various lands, speak, besides their own barbarous tongues, either Hunnic or Gothic, or--as many as have commercial dealings with the western Romans--Latin; but none of them easily speak Greek, except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian sea-coast; and these last are easily known to any stranger by their torn garments and the squalor of their heads, as men who have met with a reverse. This man, on the contrary, resembled a well-to-do Scythian, being well dressed, and having his hair cut in a circle after Scythian fashion. Having returned his salutation, I asked him who he was and whence he had come into a foreign land and adopted Scythian life. When he asked me why I wanted to know, I told him that his Hellenic speech had prompted my curiosity. Then he smiled and said that he was born a Greek and had gone as a merchant to Viminacium, on the Danube, where he had stayed a long time, and married a very rich wife. But the city fell a prey to the barbarians, and he was stript of his prosperity, and on account of his riches was allotted to Onegesius in the division of the spoil, as it was the custom among the Scythians for the chiefs to reserve for themselves the rich prisoners. Having fought bravely against the Romans and the Acatiri, he had paid the spoils he won to his master, and so obtained freedom. He then married a barbarian wife and had children, and had the privilege of eating at the table of Onegesius.

He considered his new life among the Scythians better than his old life among the Romans, and the reasons he gave were as follows: "After war the Scythians live in inactivity, enjoying what they have got, and not at all, or very little, harassed. The Romans, on the other hand, are in the first place very liable to perish in war, as they have to rest their hopes of safety on others, and are not allowed, on account of their tyrants to use arms. And those who use them are injured by the cowardice of their generals, who cannot support the conduct of war. But the condition of the subjects in time of peace is far more grievous than the evils of war, for the exaction of the taxes is very severe, and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others, because the laws are practically not valid against all classes. A transgressor who belongs to the wealthy classes is not punished for his injustice, while a poor man, who does not understand business, undergoes the legal penalty, that is if he does not depart this life before the trial, so long is the course of lawsuits protracted, and so much money is expended on them. The climax of the misery is to have to pay in order to obtain justice. For no one will give a court to the injured man unless he pay a sum of money to the judge and the judge's clerks."

In reply to this attack on the Empire, I asked him to be good enough to listen with patience to the other side of the question. "The creators of the Roman republic," I said, "who were wise and good men, in order to prevent things from being done at haphazard made one class of men guardians of the laws, and appointed another class to the profession of arms, who were to have no other object than to be always ready for battle, and to go forth to war without dread, as though to their ordinary exercise having by practice exhausted all their fear beforehand. Others again were assigned to attend to the cultivation of the ground, to support both themselves and those who fight in their defence, by contributing the military corn-supply.... To those who protect the interests of the litigants a sum of money is paid by the latter, just as a payment is made by the farmers to the soldiers. Is it not fair to support him who assists and requite him for his kindness? The support of the horse benefits the horseman.... Those who spend money on a suit and lose it in the end cannot fairly put it down to anything but the injustice of their case. And as to the long time spent on lawsuits, that is due to concern for justice, that judges may not fail in passing correct judgments, by having to give sentence offhand; it is better that they should reflect, and conclude the case more tardily, than that by judging in a hurry they should both injure man and transgress against the Deity, the institutor of justice.... The Romans treat their servants better than the king of the Scythians treats his subjects. They deal with them as fathers or teachers, admonishing them to abstain from evil and follow the lines of conduct whey they have esteemed honourable; they reprove them for their errors like their own children. They are not allowed, like the Scythians, to inflict death on them. They have numerous ways of conferring freedom; they can manumit not only during life, but also by their wills, and the testamentary wishes of a Roman in regard to his property are law."

My interlocutor shed tears, and confessed that the laws and constitution of the Romans were fair, but deplored that the governors, not possessing the spirit of former generations, were ruining the State."

In addition to being a useful insight into 'Late Empire Disease', this shows us that potential information sources can be found in the most unlikely guises and places.

[Jim Webster]

The tales of merchants and travellers are the basis of oral history (and according to the Byzantines, military intelligence)
Jordanes would have met plenty of Goths whose family legends included the great deeds of their Great Grandfathers or Grandfathers who fought at Chalon a century ago.
It's unlikely he met many Huns with family connections to the battle, the Hunnic Empire was gone, three or four years after Chalons.

Jim

[aligern]

I am with Jim on the both Cassodorus and Jordanes had opportunities to meet Goths whose fathers or grandfathers had been there or who could recite songs and tales handed own. that would  account for the gaps in the story where a Roman source might have been useful to us. However, it is inherently unlikely that any of these sources would give much detail from a leaders speech. What we are receiving is probably halfway to the Nibelunglied or the fight at Finnsburgh.
Roy