Thiudimer served as a soldier for
the empire of his brother Valamir, and Valamir bade
honors be given him, while Vidimer was eager to serve
them both. Thus regarding one another with common
affection, not one was wholly deprived of the kingdom
which two of them held in mutual peace. Yet, as has
often been said, they ruled in such a way that they respected
the dominion of Attila, king of the Huns. Indeed
they could not have refused to fight against their kinsmen
the Visigoths, and they must even have committed parricide
at their lord's command. There was no way whereby
any Scythian tribe could have been wrested from the
power of the Huns, save by the death of Attila,--an
event the Romans and all other nations desired. Now his
death was as base as his life was marvellous.

[Sidenote: DEATH OF ATTILA 453]

XLIX Shortly before he died, as the historian Priscus 254
relates, he took in marriage a very beautiful girl named
Ildico, after countless other wives, as was the custom of
his race. He had given himself up to excessive joy at
his wedding, and as he lay on his back, heavy with wine
and sleep, a rush of superfluous blood, which would ordinarily
have flowed from his nose, streamed in deadly
course down his throat and killed him, since it was hindered
in the usual passages. Thus did drunkenness put a
disgraceful end to a king renowned in war. On the following
day, when a great part of the morning was spent,
the royal attendants suspected some ill and, after a great
uproar, broke in the doors. There they found the death
of Attila accomplished by an effusion of blood, without
any wound, and the girl with downcast face weeping
beneath her veil. Then, as is the custom of that race, 255
they plucked out the hair of their heads and made their
faces hideous with deep wounds, that the renowned warrior
might be mourned, not by effeminate wailings and
tears, but by the blood of men. Moreover a wondrous
thing took place in connection with Attila's death. For
in a dream some god stood at the side of Marcian, Emperor
of the East, while he was disquieted about his
fierce foe, and showed him the bow of Attila broken in
that same night, as if to intimate that the race of Huns
owed much to that weapon. This account the historian
Priscus says he accepts upon truthful evidence. For so
terrible was Attila thought to be to great empires that
the gods announced his death to rulers as a special boon.

We shall not omit to say