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In 452 Attila crossed the Julian Alps into northern Italy.[1][2] The Huns destroyed Aquileia and took the cities of Venetia and Liguria as far as Milan. They did not reach Rome. Famine, disease and an eastern attack on their homeland forced them back across the Alps.[1][2] The Gallic chronicle of 452 says that Attila came “furious about the unexpected defeat he had suffered in Gaul”.[3]

The crossing

The passes over the Julian Alps were unguarded. It has been held that rarely in history has a statesman been caught so completely off his guard as Aetius in the spring of 452. The chronicler Prosper says that Aetius even planned to leave Italy with the emperor.[4] The charge is disputed. No fifth-century defender of Italy ever held those passes against an enemy from the east. The Huns came down into the plain in the early summer of 452, and letters of Pope Leo of 22 May and 11 June still show no sign of war.[5] Aetius lacked the strength to face Attila directly. He hindered his advance by strategic measures.[6]

Aquileia

Attila’s first move was to besiege Aquileia, the chief city of Venetia. The siege went on long without success. The army began to murmur and wished to leave. Then, Jordanes writes, Attila walked round the walls and saw the white storks, which nest in the gables of houses, carrying their young out of the city into the country, against their custom. He told his men to look. The birds foresaw the future, he said, and were leaving a city that was about to perish. With machines and engines of every kind his men took the city and plundered it. They laid it waste so cruelly that scarcely a trace of it was left.[7]

The storks may be a story of the kind Priscus told when he had no real information.[8] A different explanation traces it to a Chinese story about the general Lü Guang at Kucha in 384. It holds that the Huns must have brought the story from the East.[9] The walls were breached only when Attila used siege engines, built by Roman deserters or prisoners. Jordanes exaggerates the destruction, for Aquileia was rebuilt.[10] The city was so destroyed that its historic site became hard to determine. The inhabitants of the ravaged lands fled to the islands of the Venetian lagoon, where Venice later grew.[6]

The cities of the plain

The Huns raged through the other cities of Venetia. They devastated Milan, the chief city of Liguria and once the residence of the emperors, and Ticinum as well. They laid waste almost the whole of Italy, Jordanes writes.[11] A later list adds Concordia, Altinum, Patavium, Vicetia, Verona, Brixia and Bergomum.[12] Some scholars hold that Milan and Ticinum were taken but not plundered, and that their citizens were not massacred.[13] A Byzantine lexicon tells that Attila saw a painting in Milan. It showed Scythians lying at the feet of the Roman emperors on golden thrones. He ordered a painter to show the Hun king on a throne and the emperors pouring out gold before him.[14]

According to one account, the Huns crossed the Po and devastated the province of Aemilia, but did not cross the Apennines.[12] According to another, Attila retired from Italy without ever setting foot south of the Po.[15]

Rome and the embassy at the Mincius

Attila’s mind was set on going to Rome. His own men turned him from it, as Priscus relates. They did so not out of care for the city, but because they remembered Alaric, king of the Visigoths, who had not long survived the sack of Rome.[11][16]

An embassy from Rome came to him. Pope Leo met him in the Ambuleian district of the Veneti, at the much-used ford of the river Mincius, with the former consul Avienus and the former prefect Trygetius. Attila laid aside his fury and went back beyond the Danube with the promise of peace, Jordanes writes.[17][18] He threatened to come back and do worse in Italy unless the Romans sent him Honoria with her share of the royal wealth.[17] The chronicler Prosper gave the credit to Leo and to Attila’s superstitious fears.[6] Leo’s real errand may have been to ransom captives.[19]

The withdrawal

Italy was suffering from a severe famine, made worse by Attila’s devastation. A march on Rome without food was a great undertaking.[6] In the summer of 452 famine and disease struck the Hun army.[20][14] At the same time troops sent by the eastern emperor Marcian, under a general named Aetius, crossed the Danube and defeated the Huns who had stayed at home.[21][15] Strategic, logistic and outside military pressure together forced Attila to withdraw. The Romans won a strategic victory without a direct battle.[22] A further explanation is that Attila was unused to siege warfare of the western kind. He was thus unduly impressed by the walls of Aquileia, which he could easily have bypassed, and the road from the Danubian plain to Venetia crosses comparatively low ground. This explanation combines the pope’s arguments, the fate of Alaric, plague and a shortage of food and fodder as the reasons for the withdrawal. It also finds in the discontent of the army during the siege a sign that his authority was slipping.[23]

Attila returned to his own land and declared war on the emperors in the East, because the tribute fixed by Theodosius was no longer paid.[24] His campaign has been counted worse than a failure. He could not force the western Romans to make a treaty, to pay tribute again or to restore him the rank of a Roman commander.[19] A different judgement is that his empire had been shaken to its foundations.[15] The captives taken from the diocese of Aquileia came home only in the spring of 458.[25]

References

  1. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 132–141
  2. ^ a b Thompson 1948, p. 144–148
  3. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 132
  4. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 144–145
  5. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 134–136
  6. ^ a b c d Yavuz 2025, p. 102
  7. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 219–221, p. 112–113
  8. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 145
  9. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 134
  10. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 136–137
  11. ^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 222, p. 113
  12. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 137
  13. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 146
  14. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 139
  15. ^ a b c Thompson 1948, p. 148
  16. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 17, p. 99
  17. ^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 223, p. 113–114
  18. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 140
  19. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 141
  20. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 147
  21. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 138
  22. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 102–103
  23. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 195–196
  24. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 19, p. 99–100
  25. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 142

Sources

Literature

  • Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
  • Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
  • J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, vol. I (1923)
  • Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
  • E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)

Related

What links here9

Persons
Aetius · Attila · Valentinian III
States
Hunnic Empire · Western Roman Empire
Battles & Events
Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
Places
Aquileia
Peoples
History of the Turkic peoples · Huns

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Hunnic invasion of Italy, 452.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/conflicts/hunnic-invasion-of-italy-452/

Last revised: 8 November 2026