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Home / Historical Periods / Fall of the Western Roman Empire / Aëtius and the Defence of the Western Roman Empire, 425–454

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Aëtius and the Defence of the Western Roman Empire, 425–454

425–454 CE

From 425 until his murder in 454, Flavius Aëtius became the dominant military figure in the Western Roman Empire. His power rested on command of the field armies, political influence at the court of Valentinian III and relationships with Huns, Goths, Franks and other federate groups.

Aëtius confronted civil rivals, the Vandal loss of North Africa, repeated warfare in Gaul and Attila’s invasion. The coalition victory at the Catalaunian Plains in 451 checked the Hunnic advance, but it did not reverse the West’s shrinking fiscal and military resources.

Ian Hughes’s biography uses Aëtius’s career to explain both the resilience and the fragility of the fifth-century West, including the dependence of imperial defence on personal command networks and negotiated alliances.

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