Flavius Aetius
Flavius Aetius held the Western Roman Empire together for twenty years and stopped Attila in Gaul. Born around AD 391 at Durostorum on the Danube, the son of a cavalry commander, he spent part of his youth as a hostage among the Goths and then among the Huns — an experience that gave him personal relationships and an understanding of steppe warfare that no other Roman commander had. He used it. He repeatedly hired Hunnic forces for Roman campaigns, and it was Hunnic troops that made him indispensable and that he used to win the civil conflicts of the 420s and 430s against rivals for the position of magister militum. He effectively governed the west under the emperor Valentinian III, whose mother Galla Placidia distrusted him. His problem was insoluble: the western provinces were being occupied by Visigoths in Aquitaine, Burgundians on the Rhine, Sueves in Spain and Vandals in Africa, and he had neither the troops nor the revenue to expel them. His policy was to play them against one another, settle them as federates on Roman terms, and hold Gaul. The Vandals took Carthage in AD 439, removing the African grain and tax revenue, which was the decisive blow. Attila invaded Gaul in AD 451. Aetius assembled a coalition of Visigoths under Theodoric, Franks, Burgundians and Alans, and fought him at the Catalaunian Plains. Theodoric was killed and Attila withdrew — the only serious check he suffered. Valentinian, resenting his power, stabbed him to death in person in September AD 454. A courtier told the emperor he had cut off his right hand with his left.
- Lived: 391 CE – 454 CE
- Nationality: Roman
- Roles: military_leader
