UNNI. — Sparse and uncertain are the accounts of Western writers concerning this people, nor do Chinese sources, which in earlier times had some knowledge of them, provide much more reliable information.
Chinese sources, which call them Hùng-nu, and Western writers, who describe their physical characteristics, assure us that they were of Mongol stock: small, slender bodies, broad faces with very small eyes. They led a nomadic life in Central Asia and attempted to break into Chinese territories; to defend against them, the Great Wall was built in the 3rd century B.C., which united and fortified earlier defensive works. Around the middle of the 4th century A.D., the Huns reached the land inhabited by the Alans, north of the Caspian and Volga, and shortly afterward arrived at the Don, which they crossed, pushing the Ostrogoths westward.
Dragging with them the populations of the invaded territories and sowing terror through massacres and destruction, they pushed the Visigoths onto the Danube, who sought to be admitted as federates within the borders of the Roman Empire. Taking advantage of the victory of these at Adrianople in 378, disastrous for the Empire, the Huns continued in their own way to infiltrate in more or less large, strong, and organized groups into the territories laid waste by their stormy advance, even fighting for the Empire against their own kinsmen, without failing to plunder and kill. Toward the end of the 4th century, some chieftains appear, around whom the main mass of the Huns gathered.
Their principal seat became Pannonia, from which they continued to spread in wild raids. Their king Uldino fought against Gainas, a barbarian general in rebellion against Emperor Arcadius, and sent his head to Constantinople, receiving in return an annual tribute of 350 pounds of gold. As a Roman ally, he was present at Fiesole in the battle against Radagaisus and his Goths.
The power of the Huns continued to grow under Rua, his successor, and especially under his nephew Attila (q.v.). Attila gave firmer structure to his state, concentrated all authority in himself, and pursued a notably strong and active policy with Emperor Theodosius II of the East; he succeeded in having the tribute obtained by his predecessors increased to 700 pounds, and later tripled it; he demanded that all fugitives from his lands be handed over, even if they were Roman citizens. In the West, all lands north of the Alps as far as the Rhine were under Attila’s control.
The credit for a nearly peaceful coexistence was largely due to the action of the *magister utriusque militiae* Aetius, who had for a time lived among the Huns as a hostage and, through shrewd politics, alternately favored one or another of the barbarian states, aiming to set them against each other. But the violent and proud nature of Attila could not be satisfied with a tranquil status quo. Defeated on the Catalaunian Fields (between Châlons and the Argonne) and returned to his capital, probably in Pannonia, he turned his forces toward Italy, where his encounter with Pope Leo the Great, and no less effective, the diseases and hunger of his rapacious army, dissuaded him from attempting a march on Rome. Returning to his domains, Attila soon died in one of his usual orgies (453), and within a few years the power of the Huns vanished. Later, the Avars (q.v.) were designated by the name of Huns.