Description of the Huns in Res Gestae, Book XXXI, Chapter 2 by Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330–395) was a Roman soldier and historian of Greek origin born at Antioch who wrote a major historical account of the fourth century. His work, Rerum gestarum Libri (“The Chronicles of Events”), or Res Gestae as it is better known, chronicled in Latin the history of the Roman Empire in 31 books from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The first thirteen books have been lost. Only the sections covering the period 353 to 378 survive.
The sections 2–11 of Book 31 is a highly prejudiced characterization of the Huns, while the sections 17–25 are about the Alans. The sections in between (12–16) function as a transition between the descriptions of these two peoples.
The Alans were an ancient and medieval Iranian nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus, possibly a part of the Massagetae of ancient Greek and Latin sources and Yancai of Chinese sources. When the Huns defeated the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around 375 CE, many of the Alans migrated westwards along with various Germanic tribes. Some Alans remained under Hunnic rule and founded the kingdom of Alania in the North Caucasus in the 9ᵗʰ century, which survived until the Mongol invasions of the 13ᵗʰ century. They are regarded as the ancestors of the modern Ossetians.
Ammianus had little factual information about the Huns, and utilized the traditional notions about ‘primitive barbarians’ going back to the Scythians’ description in Herodotus.
The following is from “Ammianus Marcellinus. With An English Translation,” John C. Rolfe, Ph.D., Litt.D., Harvard University Press, 1935-1940.
[2.1] However, the seed and origin of all the ruin and various disasters that the wrath of Mars aroused, putting in turmoil all places with unwonted fires, we have found to be this. The people of the Huns,[1] but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea near the ice-bound ocean, exceed every degree of savagery.
[2.2] Since there the cheeks of the children are deeply furrowed with the steel[2] from their very birth, in order that the growth of hair, when it appears at the proper time, may be checked by the wrinkled scars, they grow old without beards and without any beauty, like eunuchs. They all have compact, strong limbs and thick necks, and are so monstrously ugly and misshapen, that one might take them for two-legged beasts or for the stumps, rough-hewn into images, that are used in putting sides to bridges.[3]
[3] Used for adorning the parapets of bridges. cf. Jordanes, 24.
[2.3] But although they have the form of men, however ugly, they are so hardy in their mode of life that they have no need of fire nor of savory food, but eat the roots of wild plants and the half-raw flesh of any kind of animal whatever, which they put between their thighs and the backs of their horses, and thus warm it a little.
[2.4] They are never protected by any buildings, but they avoid these like tombs, which are set apart from everyday use. For not even a hut thatched with reed can be found among them. But roaming at large amid the mountains and woods, they learn from the cradle to endure cold, hunger, and thirst. When away from their homes they never enter a house unless compelled by extreme necessity; for they think they are not safe when staying under a roof.
[2.5] They dress in linen cloth or in the skins of field-mice sewn together, and they wear the same clothing indoors and out. But when they have once put their necks into a faded tunic, it is not taken off or changed until by long wear and tear it has been reduced to rags and fallen from them bit by bit.
[2.6] They cover their heads with round caps and protect their hairy legs with goatskins; their shoes are formed upon no lasts, and so prevent their walking with free step. For this reason they are not at all adapted to battles on foot, but they are almost glued to their horses, which are hardy, it is true, but ugly, and sometimes they sit them woman-fashion and thus perform their ordinary tasks. From their horses by night or day every one of that nation buys and sells, eats and drinks, and bowed over the narrow neck of the animal relaxes into a sleep so deep as to be accompanied by many dreams.
[2.7] And when deliberation is called for about weighty matters, they all consult as a common body in that fashion.[4] They are subject to no royal restraint, but they are content with the disorderly government of their important men, and led by them they force their way through every obstacle.
[2.8] They also sometimes fight when provoked, and then they enter the battle drawn up in wedge-shaped masses, while their medley of voices makes a savage noise. And as they are lightly equipped for swift motion, and unexpected in action, they purposely divide suddenly into scattered bands and attack, rushing about in disorder here and there, dealing terrific slaughter; and because of their extraordinary rapidity of movement they are never seen to attack a rampart or pillage an enemy's camp.
[2.9] And on this account you would not hesitate to call them the most terrible of all warriors, because they fight from a distance with missiles having sharp bone, instead of their usual points,[5] joined to the shafts with wonderful skill; then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords, regardless of their own lives; and while the enemy are guarding against wounds from the sabre-thrusts, they throw strips of cloth plaited into nooses over their opponents and so entangle them that they fetter their limbs and take from them the power of riding or walking.[6]
[6] This device was used also by the Sagartian nomads; see Hdt. vii. 85; Val. Flaccus, vi. 132 ff.; etc.
[2.10] No one in their country ever plows a field or touches a plow-handle. They are all without fixed abode, without hearth, or law, or settled mode of life, and keep roaming from place to place, like fugitives, accompanied by the wagons in which they live; in wagons their wives weave for them their hideous garments, in wagons they cohabit with their husbands, bear children, and rear them to the age of puberty. None of their offspring, when asked, can tell you where he comes from, since he was conceived in one place, born far from there, and brought up still farther away.
[2.11] In truces they are faithless and unreliable, strongly inclined to sway to the motion of every breeze of new hope that presents itself, and sacrificing every feeling to the mad impulse of the moment. Like unreasoning beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the difference between right and wrong; they are deceitful and ambiguous in speech, never bound by any reverence for religion or for superstition. They burn with an infinite thirst for gold, and they are so fickle and prone to anger, that they often quarrel with their allies without provocation, more than once on the same day, and make friends with them again without a mediator.
[2.12] This race of untamed men, without encumbrances, aflame with an inhuman desire for plundering others’ property, made their violent way amid the rapine and slaughter of the neigh-bouring peoples as far as the Halani, once known as the Massagetae. And since we have come to this point, it is in place to tell of the origin and dwelling-place of this people also, and to point out the confused opinions of geographers, who after many different attempts to deal with the subject have at last come upon the core of the truth.[7]
[2.13] The Hister,[8] filled to overflowing by a great number of tributaries, flows past the Sauro-matians, and these extend as far as the river Tanais,[9] which separates Asia from Europe. On the other side of this river[10] the Halani, so called from the mountain range of the same name,[11] inhabit the measureless wastes of Scythia; and by repeated victories they gradually wore down the peoples whom they met and like the Persians incorporated them under their own national name.
[9] The Don.
[10] The Hister (Danube).
[11] Alanos (῎αλανος).
[2.14] Among these the Nervii[12] inhabit the interior of the country near the lofty, precipitous peaks nipped by the north winds and benumbed with ice and snow. Behind these are the Vidini[13] and the Geloni, exceedingly savage races, who strip the skins from their slain enemies to make clothing for themselves and coverings for their horses in war.[14] On the frontier of the Geloni are the Agathyrsi, who checker their bodies and dye their hair with a blue colour[15]—the common people with a few small marks, but the nobles with more and broader spots of dye.[16]
[13] The Budini of Herodotus, iv. 108–9.
[14] See Mela, ii. 1, 14.
[15] This detail is not mentioned by Herodotus (iv. 101).
[16] cf. Pliny, N.H. iv. 80; Mela, ii. 1, 10.
[2.15] Beyond these are the Melanchlaenae[17] and the Anthropophagi, who according to report lead a nomadic life and feed upon human flesh; and because of this abominable food they are left to themselves and all their former neighbours have moved to distant parts of the earth. And so the entire north-eastern[18] tract, until one comes to the Seres,[19] has remained uninhabitable.
[18] Oriens aestivus, north-east (Pliny, N.H. xvii. 105), so called because the sun rises in that quarter in summer. Hibernus oriens for south-east also occurs, and occidens aestivus for north-west (Columella, i. 6, 2); o.h., Livy, xliv. 46, 5. Cf. Gesner, Lex. Rusticum, s.v. aequinoctialis oriens.
[19] “Chinese” of Central and E. Asia (see xxiii. 6, 64). The Seres and the Ganges are not mentioned by Herodotus, nor the Halani except perhaps as Massagetae (i. 204).
[2.16] In another part of the country, near the abodes of the Amazons, the Halani mount to the eastward, divided into populous and extensive nations; these reach as far as Asia, and, as I have heard, stretch all the way to the river Ganges, which flows through the territories of India and empties into the southern ocean.
[2.17] Thus the Halani (whose various peoples it is unnecessary now to enumerate) are divided between the two[20] parts of the earth, but although widely separated from each other and roaming over vast tracts, as Nomads do, yet in the course of time they have united under one name, and are, for short, all called Halani because of the similarity in their customs, their savage mode of life, and their weapons.
[2.18] For they have no huts and care nothing for using the plowshare, but they live upon flesh and an abundance of milk, and dwell in wagons, which they cover with rounded canopies of bark and drive over the boundless wastes. And when they come to a place rich in grass, they place their carts in a circle and feed like wild beasts. As soon as the fodder is used up, they place their cities, as we might call them, on the wagons and so convey them: in the wagons the males have intercourse with the women, and in the wagons their babes are born and reared; wagons form their permanent dwellings, and wherever they come, that place they look upon as their natural home.
[2.19] Driving their plow-cattle before them, they pasture them with their flocks, and they give particular attention to breeding horses. In that land the fields are always green, and here and there are places set thick with fruit trees. Hence, wherever they go, they lack neither food for themselves nor fodder for their cattle, because of the moist soil and the numerous courses of rivers that flow hard by them.
[2.20] Therefore, all those who through age or sex are unfit for war remain close by the wagons and are occupied in light tasks; but the young men grow up in the habit of riding from their earliest boyhood and regard it as contemptible to go on foot; and by various forms of training they are all skilled warriors. From the same causes the Persians[21] also, who are Scythians by origin, are highly expert in fighting.
[2.21] Moreover, almost all the Halani are tall and handsome, their hair inclines to blond, by the ferocity of their glance they inspire dread, subdued though it is. They are light and active in the use of arms. In all respects they are somewhat like the Huns, but in their manner of life and their habits they are less savage. In their plundering and hunting expeditions they roam here and there as far as the Maeotic Sea and the Cimmerian Bosporus, and also to Armenia and Media.
[2.22] Just as quiet and peaceful men find pleasure in rest, so the Halani delight in danger and warfare. There the man is judged happy who has sacrificed his life in battle, while those who grow old and depart from the world by a natural death they assail with bitter reproaches, as de-generate and cowardly; and there is nothing in which they take more pride than in killing any man whatever: as glorious spoils of the slain they tear off their heads, then strip off their skins[22] and hang them upon their war-horses as trappings.
[2.23] No temple or sacred place is to be seen in their country, not even a hut thatched with straw can be discerned anywhere, but after the manner of barbarians a naked sword is fixed in the ground and they reverently worship it as their god of war, the presiding deity of those lands over which they range.[23]
[2.24] They have a remarkable way of divining the future; for they gather very straight twigs of osier and sort them out at an appointed time with certain secret incantations, and thus clearly learn what impends.[24]
[2.25] They do not know the meaning of slavery, since all are born of noble blood, and moreo-ver they choose as chiefs[25] those men who are conspicuous for long experience as warriors. But let us return to what remains of our chosen subject.
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