Battle of the Nedao

The battle of the Nedao was fought in Pannonia in 454. On one side stood the sons of Attila. On the other stood the peoples that had served him, led by Ardaric, king of the Gepids.^[1]^[2] The Huns lost. Attila’s eldest son Ellac fell. The empire that Attila had held together broke apart within a year of his death.^[3] The only account is in Jordanes.^[4]

The quarrel of the heirs

After Attila’s death, his sons fell out over the kingdom. They were so many, Jordanes writes, that “through the license of his lust” they formed almost a people of themselves. They demanded that the subject peoples be divided among them equally. Warlike kings with their peoples were to be apportioned to them by lot, like a family estate.^[5] The sons divided the peoples, not the land.^[6] Their attempt to share out the subjects like an inheritance provoked unrest.^[7]

Ardaric, king of the Gepids, had stood closer to Attila than any other subject king. He would not let so many peoples be treated as the basest slaves. He was the first to rise against Attila’s sons.^[8] One account calls the rising a Germanic alliance under a man who had been loyal to Attila.^[7] A second account has it begin among Ostrogoths whom the Huns had moved to the valley of the Tisza. Ardaric then took the lead. After a series of battles, the decision fell at the Nedao.^[9]

The battle

The armies met in Pannonia, by a river called the Nedao.^[1] The river was probably a tributary of the Sava in southern Pannonia. The name occurs nowhere else.^[10] Jordanes describes the field as a meeting of every way of fighting: “the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepidae raging with the sword, the Rugi breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and the Heruli of light-armed warriors”.^[11] He does not say on which side each people stood. The Ostrogoths, however, did not fight on the Nedao.^[4]^[9] Most of the Sciri, Rugi, Suebi and Heruli stood with the Gepids. Some subject peoples still fought for their masters.^[9]

The victory went unexpectedly to the Gepids. According to Jordanes, the sword and the conspiracy of Ardaric destroyed almost thirty thousand men. These were Huns and men of the peoples that still brought them aid.^[12] Some scholars call the figure impossible.^[9] Ellac was the elder son, whom Attila had loved above all his children and preferred for the kingship. He fell after killing many of the enemy. He fought so bravely that his father, had he lived, would have wished him such an end.^[12]

Date

Jordanes gives no year. One dating places the battle in 454, from the panegyrics of Sidonius Apollinaris on Avitus and on Anthemius. By the summer of 455 at the latest, Pannonia was in Roman hands again.^[13] A second dating puts the battle probably in 455.^[9] A further account also dates it early in 455.^[14] A last account gives 454.^[15]

Aftermath

When Ellac was dead, his brothers fled towards the shore of the Black Sea. “Thus did the Huns give way,” Jordanes writes, “a race to which men thought the whole world must yield.”^[16] Many of the subject peoples sent envoys to the emperor Marcian and received lands within the empire.^[16] The Gepids took the seats of the Huns and the whole of Dacia. They asked nothing of Rome but peace and a yearly gift, which in Jordanes’s day they still received.^[17] The Ostrogoths saw this and asked the emperor for land. They received Pannonia.^[18]

The Huns did not vanish at once. Hernac, the younger son of Attila, settled with his people at the far edge of Lesser Scythia. His kinsmen Emnetzur and Ultzindur took Utus, Oescus and Almus in Dacia Ripensis.^[19] After 455 there were two Hunnic pockets inside the empire, one under Hernac in the Dobruja and one in Dacia Ripensis.^[20] Attila’s sons attacked the Ostrogoths in Pannonia as runaway slaves and were routed. Dintzic was driven back from Bassiana. The last of them fell in 469.^[21]^[22] The Hunnic remnants streamed back to the steppe and were absorbed into new confederations.^[15]

References

^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 260, p. 125
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 147
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 262–263, p. 126
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 144
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 259, p. 125
^ Thompson 1948, p. 152
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 104
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 199, 260, p. 107, 125
^ a b c d e Thompson 1948, p. 153
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 149
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 261, p. 126
^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 262, p. 126
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 145–147
^ Sinor 1990, p. 198
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 92
^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 263, p. 126
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 264, p. 126–127
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 264, p. 127
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 266, p. 127
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 152
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 268–273, p. 128–130
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 168

Sources

Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)

Literature

Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
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)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)