Basich

Basich was a leader of the Huns who, together with Kursich, led a raid into Media.^[1] Priscus heard of it at Attila’s court from the western envoy Romulus. Romulus wanted to show that Attila could reach Persia.^[1] The Medes were not far from the Scythians, Romulus said, and the Huns knew the road.^[1]

The raid

Famine raged in the Huns’ country, and the Romans did not oppose them because of a war they were fighting. In that time Basich and Kursich, leaders sprung from the royal Scythians, broke through as far as the Medes.^[1] They told of crossing a desert country and a marsh, which Romulus took for the Maeotis. After fifteen days they crossed some mountains and came down into Media.^[1]

While they plundered the land, a Persian army came upon them and filled the air with missiles.^[1] They withdrew over the mountains with little booty, for the Medes took most of it back. To escape pursuit they went home by another road, past the place where flame burns out of a rock by the sea.^[1] That road may have run near the oil country of Baku.^[2] Basich and Kursich later came to Rome with a great number of men to make an alliance.^[1]

Date

Priscus gives no date for the raid. Romulus says only that it happened long ago.^[1] The raid may belong to the great Hun invasion of 395, when the Huns broke through the Caucasus into Persia and the Roman provinces.^[3]^[4] The war that kept the Romans away would then be the struggle between Stilicho and Rufinus in that year.^[5] The group under Basich and Kursich rode down the Tigris and the Euphrates as far as Ctesiphon. The Persians overtook it, and it fled home through Azerbaijan and over the Caspian Gates.^[6] The visit to Rome may then have fallen in 404 or 407, and the homes of the two leaders lay in Europe, on the Danube.^[7] A later date is also proposed: about 415 to 420 or a little later.^[8] A third ties the Roman war to the years 423 to 425.^[7]

Name

The name occurs in Priscus only in this passage.^[9] It may be a Turkish diminutive meaning little captain. It counts the name among the Turkish names of the Huns.^[10] A second derives it from a Turkic word meaning feline-like.^[4] The words royal Scythians come from Herodotus. Priscus, it is noted, uses them of the ruling family and its great men, never of all the Huns.^[11]

References

^ a b c d e f g h i Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 90
^ Thompson 1948, p. 31
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 51–52
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 90
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 54
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 52
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 55
^ Thompson 1948, p. 30–31
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 382
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 405, 441
^ Thompson 1948, p. 10

Sources

Priscus

Literature

Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
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)