Balamber

Balamber is the first king of the Huns whom any source names. He is named in one source only, the Gothic history of Jordanes.^[1] In Jordanes he twice brings the Ostrogoths under Hunnic rule.

When Hermanaric lay sick of a wound, Jordanes writes, “Balamber, king of the Huns, took advantage of his ill health to move an army into the country of the Ostrogoths”. Hermanaric could bear neither the pain of his wound nor the inroads of the Huns. He died.^[2] Later the Amal Vinitharius broke away, because he would not live under the Huns, and made war on the Antes. He had ruled thus freely for barely a year when Balamber called to his side the Goth Gesimund, who had kept his oath to the Huns with a great part of the Goths. Balamber led an army against Vinitharius. Vinitharius won the first two battles. In the third, at a river called the Erac, Balamber shot him in the head with an arrow.^[3] He then married Vinitharius’s granddaughter Vadamerca. He ruled the whole Gothic people in peace, through a Gothic king of their own who governed under the counsel of the Huns.^[4]

Ammianus, the contemporary account, names no Hun at all. In his version Hermanaric took his own life. His successor Vithimiris fought not the Huns but the Alans, with Huns whom he had hired on his own side.^[5] Some scholars prefer Ammianus where he and the Gothic tradition differ on this war.^[6]

Whether Balamber lived is argued. Some call him a shadowy figure and leave the question open. They note that Cassiodorus would not have married a Gothic princess to a man who was not some kind of king.^[7] They hold that the name was assimilated to the Gothic Valamer. The Hunnic name, they say, was Balimber.^[8] It has also been held that Balamber never existed. The Goths, they say, invented him to explain who had conquered them.^[9] A few works simply repeat him as king of the Huns without comment.^[10] On a fourth account, if he lived, he was at most the leader of a tribe or of a band of warriors put together for the occasion. Nothing, that account says, shows a strong conquering personality directing the moves against the Alans and the Goths.^[11] After him the first Hun named in the sources is Uldin, about 400.^[12]

References

^ Mierow 1915, p. 164
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 130, p. 87
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 247–249, p. 121
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 249, p. 121
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.2–3, p. 397
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 17
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 12, 59
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 414
^ Thompson 1948, p. 57
^ Golden 1992, p. 89
^ Sinor 1990, p. 181
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 59

Sources

Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)
Ammianus Marcellinus

Literature

Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English Translation, vol. III: Books XXVII–XXXI (1939)
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)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)