Attila

EPILOGUE

And there, lest I begin to sound as self-important and disingenuous as Caesar in his dubious Gallic Wars, let me cease referring to myself in the third person.

Upon Aetius’ return to Rome from the camp of the Huns, yes, it was I who for two short but rich years was his pedagogue. At sixteen he left home to join the army. But for those two years I shaped and formed him, as I had others, though only five years his senior. And I watched over his progress for fully the next forty years.

As an old man I have come to write the life and times of the most remarkable pupil I ever taught, the most remarkable man I ever knew. Or rather, the life and times of Aetius and Attila. For you cannot write about one without the other. They were sun and moon, they were night and day, they were as destined and inseparable as lovers, as Troilus and Cressida, as Dido and Aeneas. Nothing could separate them, yet nothing in the end could bring them together, either: for the great tide of history, or perhaps the will of the unknown gods, was set against them.

And a more tragic tale of two great men I do not think there has ever been.