Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

712 23. the balkans and greece 420,602
benefits of Roman law and life, have to be interpreted carefully: they do
not prove that life was better for everyone under the Huns, and it must be
remembered that far more Romans ended up as bleached skeletons, such
as those that made it difficult for Priscus and his fellow envoys to find a
clean camp site outside Naissus even seven years after the city’s sack, 35 than
as privileged Hun servants.
iii. from the huns to the avars
The fragmentation of the Hun federation following Attila’s unexpected
death changed but did not remove the threat to the Balkan provinces, since
in place of a unified group whose leader was usually amenable to negotiations,
there emerged a complicated array of competing tribal groups. This
state of affairs persisted from the mid fifth century until the Avars began
to reimpose unity under the authority of their Chagan in the 560s. On occasions
the Romans could turn disunity to their advantage: for example, in
the 460s Roman generals blockaded a heterogeneous tribal group; an
officer of Hunnic descent in the Roman army, Celchal, persuaded the
Goths among the starving enemy to attack their Hunnic comrades by
reminding them of the exploitation to which Huns normally subjected
Goths, and the Romans took advantage of the consequent massacre. But
on other occasions Romans suffered from the fragmentation, since instability
north of the Danube prompted tribesmen to regard Roman territory to
the south as an escape route or a resource to be exploited: the movement
of the Amal-led Goths into the empire in the 460s has plausibly been attributed
to their inability to achieve conclusive domination in power struggles
north of the river, while in 551 the Gepids summoned help from the
Kotrigurs, but when 12,000 troops arrived too early for action against their
intended foes, the Lombards, the Gepids ferried them across the Danube
to gain satisfaction in Roman territory. A separate problem in these years
was the emergence of the Vandal navy as a threat to southern Greece in
the 460s and 470s, when the Ionian islands, the western Peloponnese and,
probably, Athens all suffered. 36
It was the Gepids who effected the collapse of Hunnic power when they
led a coalition of Germanic tribes which defeated their former masters at
the river Nedao in Pannonia in 454; thereafter, they established themselves
as masters of Pannonia, and achieved the status of Roman allies, although
their loyalty was not exceptional. Attila’s sons failed to co-ordinate their
actions, and no son emerged as sole leader, so that the mighty Huns rapidly
descended to the level of other tribal groups. Two Gothic groups, each of
35 Priscus fr. 11.2.52–5.
36 Priscus fr. 49; Heather, Goths and Romans 247–50; Procop. Wars viii.18; Frantz (1988) 78.
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