The Huns

Fülszöveg

This is a history of the Huns in Europe from their first attacks on the Goths north of the Black Sea to the collapse of their central European empire after the death of the legendary Attila. In the only connected narrative account in English of the rise and fali of the Huns, Professor Thompson reconstructs their campaigns in detail from disparate and often fragmentary sources. In the process, there emerges a clear picture of their dramatic successes, and failures, against the non-Roman peoples of central and eastern Europe, and of their many invasions of the eastern and western halves of the Román Empire. This dramatic narrative is punctuated by analytical chapters which chart the transfonnations wrought in Hunnic society by contact with the more developed world of the Román Mediterranean. In these chapters, the author sets himself the task of explaining the sudden rise and equally sudden fali of the Huns in the fourth and fifth centuries. He finds his answer in the impact of Román... Tovább

Fülszöveg

This is a history of the Huns in Europe from their first attacks on the Goths north of the Black Sea to the collapse of their central European empire after the death of the legendary Attila. In the only connected narrative account in English of the rise and fali of the Huns, Professor Thompson reconstructs their campaigns in detail from disparate and often fragmentary sources. In the process, there emerges a clear picture of their dramatic successes, and failures, against the non-Roman peoples of central and eastern Europe, and of their many invasions of the eastern and western halves of the Román Empire. This dramatic narrative is punctuated by analytical chapters which chart the transfonnations wrought in Hunnic society by contact with the more developed world of the Román Mediterranean. In these chapters, the author sets himself the task of explaining the sudden rise and equally sudden fali of the Huns in the fourth and fifth centuries. He finds his answer in the impact of Román wealth upon the originál social structures of the Huns. The Huns includes an Afterword by Peter Heather which sets Professor Thompson's book in the broad context of recent stuclies on the Huns. E. A. Thompson The author was Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham from 1948 to 1979. His previous books include A History of Attila and the Huns, The Early Germans, The Goths in Spain, Romans and Barbarians and Who was St. Patrick? Professor Thompson died in 1994. Peter Heather is Reader in Early Medieval History at University College London. His own book The Goths was alsó published in this series in hardback in 1996 and in paperback in 1998. Cover illustration: Attila before Aquileia,and Attila before Popé Leo /. after the Hun invasion ofltaly in 152 Thirteenth-century illumination from the Saxon World Chronicle, Gotha. Photo: AK(i London. Cover design by Miller, Craig and Cocking Vissza