Ardaric

Ardaric was king of the Gepids under Attila. After Attila’s death he led the revolt that broke the Hun empire. Jordanes calls him “the renowned king of the Gepidae” and says he was “famed for his loyalty and wisdom”.^[1]

Under Attila

The Gepids under Ardaric and the Ostrogoths under Valamir marched with Attila in the war against the eastern empire in 447.^[2] At the battle on the Catalaunian Plains in 451 Ardaric was there “with a countless host”.^[3]^[4] Jordanes writes that, because of his great loyalty to Attila, Ardaric shared Attila’s plans. Attila prized him and Valamir above all the other chieftains. The rest of the kings “hung upon Attila’s nod like slaves”.^[1] Ardaric and Valamir stood almost on a par with Attila’s leading men. The Hun empire may have been a vested interest for Ardaric, as it was for Aetius in the Roman world.^[5] He was Attila’s chief adviser.^[6]

The revolt

After Attila’s death his sons demanded that the subject nations be divided among them equally. They demanded also that warlike kings with their peoples be apportioned to them by lot “like a family estate”. Ardaric was enraged that so many nations were being treated like slaves of the basest condition. He was the first to rise against the sons of Attila.^[7] The former loyal follower of Attila now led a Germanic alliance against his house.^[8] The armies met in Pannonia near the river Nedao. Victory fell unexpectedly to the Gepids. Jordanes says: “the sword and conspiracy of Ardaric destroyed almost thirty thousand men, Huns as well as those of the other nations who brought them aid”. Attila’s eldest son Ellac fell in the battle.^[9] The battle of the Nedao is dated to 454 in one reckoning and probably to 455 in a second.^[10]^[11]

Ardaric’s cause, Jordanes writes, raised the long downcast spirits of all the peoples who had been unwillingly subject to the Huns. Many sent envoys to the emperor Marcian and received lands to settle in. The Gepids took the territory of the Huns by their own strength. They ruled the whole of Dacia and asked of the Roman empire nothing more than peace and a yearly gift.^[12]

An older assumption that the Gepids became Christian under Ardaric has no support in the texts.^[13]

References

^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 199–200, p. 107
^ Thompson 1948, p. 90
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 199, p. 107
^ Thompson 1948, p. 140–143
^ Thompson 1948, p. 166
^ Bury 1923, p. 296
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 259–260, p. 125
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 104
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 262, p. 126
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 147
^ Thompson 1948, p. 153
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 263–264, p. 126–127
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 287

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)
J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, vol. I (1923)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)