Attila

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL PLACE NAMES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT, WITH THEIR MODERN EQUIVALENTS

Modern equivalents marked with an asterisk* are approximations only

Aquileia – a little town still bears the name, on the Laguna di Grado. No Roman remains are visible.

Aquincum – Budapest

Argentoratum – Strasbourg

Augusta Vindelicorum – Augsburg

Baiae – Baia

Balaton, L – Lake Balaton

Beneventum – Benevento

Bononia – Bologna

Britain – England and Wales

Caledonia – Scotland

Campania – the countryside around Capua, known to the Romans as Campania Felix – Happy Campania, on account of its natural beauty, gentle climate and extraordinary fertility, which often allowed three crops a year.

Cannae – Canne della Battaglia

Cappadocia – Central Turkey

Capua – Capua Vetere

Carnuntum – Hainburg*

Caudium – San Martino*

Chersonesus – Sebastopol

Cisalpine Gaul – Lombardy*

Colonia Agrippina – Cologne

Consentia – Cosenza

Cumae – Cuma

Dacia – Romania*

Dubris – Dover

Dumnonia – Devon

Durostorum – Silistra, Romanian-Bulgarian border

Epidaurus – Dubrovnik

Euboea – Evvoia

Euxine Sea – the Black Sea

Falerii – Civita Castellana

Falernus Ager – a district of northern Campania, and origin of the magnificent Falernian wine

Florentia – Florence

Gades – Cadiz

Gallia Narbonensis – that quarter of Gaul commanded from Narbo Martis, or modern Narbonne. Roughly, the Languedoc/Roussillon area.

Gaul – France

Gessoriacum – Boulogne

Harvatha Mountains – the Gothic name for the Carpathians (see ‘Kharvad’)

Illyria – Bosnia/Serbia*

Isca Dumnoniorum – Isca of the Dumnonii, i.e. Exeter

Isca Silurum – Isca of the Silures, i.e. Caerleon

Isle of Mon – Anglesey

Kernow – Cornwall

Kharvad Mountains – the Hun name for the Carpathians (see ‘Harvatha’)

Lauriacum – Enns*

Londinium – London

Lucrine Lake – near Baia. Oysters were first farmed here, by the enterprising Sergius Orata, in the 1 ^ st century BC. He had already made a fortune inventing the domestic shower. See Pliny, Natural History.

Lugdunum Batavorum – Lugdunum of the Batavians, i.e. Leiden

Lutetia – Paris

Margus – Pozarevac, Serbia

Mauritania – Morocco and Northern Algeria*. Not to be confused with present-day Mauritania to the south, virtually unknown to the Roman world.

Mediolanum – Milan

Neapolis – Naples

Noricum – Austria*

Noviomagnus – Chichester

Numidia – Tunisia*

Ophiusa – a Greek name meaning ‘abounding in snakes,’ common throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes and Cyprus were each known colloquially as ‘Ophiusa’ – ‘Snake Island.’ Scythian Ophiusa, a Greek trading station on the Euxine, is today’s Odessa, in the Ukraine.

Panium – a humble and unremarked little town in Thrace

Pannonia – Hungary*

Patavium – Padua

Portus Lemanis – Port Lympne, Kent. One of the haunting lost cities of Roman Britain; once a bustling international port with a huge natural harbour, now no more than a few broken walls on a green hillside.

Puteoli – Pozzuoli

Sarmatia – see Scythia

Sarmatian Jazyges – the flat, rich, much-coveted pastureland of the Hungarian Plain, that lies between the Danube and the Tisza.

Scythia – Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and all points east*

Silestria – Northern Bulgaria*

Siluria – South Wales

Sirmium – Sremska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia

Tanais, R – the River Don, in the Ukraine

Tergestus – Trieste

Teutoberg Forest – Much of present-day Germany. Scholarly consensus now is that the legions of Varus were destroyed near to Osnabruck, north west of the hills still called the Teutoburger Wald.

Tibur – Tivoli

Toletum – Toledo

Trasimene, L – Trasimeno, Lago. The massacre took place between the two villages known to this day as Ossaia and Sanguineto – ‘the place of bones’ and ‘the place of blood.’ Any visitor there will soon understand the brilliance of Hannibal’s huge-scale ambush and use of landscape.

Vangiones – Worms

Vindobona – Vienna