Aëtius

Flavius Aëtius was a powerful late Roman general and statesman in the western empire during the fifth century. He is best remembered for his role in resisting Attila’s Hunnic invasion of Gaul and for trying to hold together Roman authority as imperial power in the West weakened.

In William Napier’s Attila: The Scourge of God, the work sets his rise against the career of Aëtius, the Roman commander whose own survival and military skill make him Attila’s eventual opponent. In Tim Hodkinson’s Sword of the War God, Flavius Aetius turns to an enigmatic one-eyed warlord and a band whose stories echo later Germanic and Norse legend. Other novels featuring Aëtius include William Napier’s Attila: The Judgement and William Napier’s Attila: The Gathering of the Storm.

In non-fiction, Aëtius is discussed in John Man’s Attila the Hun and Nick Holmes’s Rome and Attila. In John Man’s Attila the Hun, he examines Attila’s rivalry with the Roman general Aëtius, the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, the meeting with Pope Leo I and the rapid fragmentation of Hunnic power after Attila’s death.