Alrighty, it's been a week and I've had no side effects besides the arm soreness, which I did have for a bit longer than anyone else in my family but finally went away entirely a few days ago. Since then I've been able to complete the latest chapter, so here it comes! From now on I'll be returning to the usual schedule of updating every 3-5 days, and will of course let you guys know (as I did with the previous update) if something's coming up that might cause a delay.
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446 saw both halves of the Roman Empire continuing to undergo turmoil. In the Eastern half, the war with Persia continued as Shah Yazdgerd was not prepared to give up his conquests so easily, even as he had to redeploy large numbers of troops away from Syria to counter the Hephthalite threat bearing down on his eastern satrapies. For their part, the Eastern Roman legions had already been doubly battered by the Persians and Huns, and thus had to rule out any dramatic offensive to restore the antebellum border at a lightning pace. Instead, Aspar and Zeno spend the year grinding down the Persian garrisons left behind from Chalkis[1] to Callinicum in siege after siege, being constantly harassed by the Sassanids’ Lakhmid allies in the process, rather than crushing the Sassanid army in a grand field battle or two and simply compelling these garrisons to surrender.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the Persian Empire, in contrast to their new Roman allies the Eftals under Khingila were able to push deep into Sassanid Khorasan and Khwarazm, viciously pillaging and burning cities and the countryside alike as they went, and handily routing or encircling and then crushing the sparse garrisons and small response forces they encountered. At Aria[2], Khingila spared only the Christian townsfolk and their bishop as a favor to his Eastern Roman guests; Anthemius later informed him that these particular Christians were Nestorian heretics, and so neither he nor Anatolius particularly cared if he sought to put them to the sword or carry them off in chains instead, but by that point the Hephthalite king had already made his decision and stuck by it.
Khingila annihilated the first Sassanid army to seriously challenge his advance at Nishapur on June 10; there his victory was so thorough, and his horsemen so swift in their pursuit, that the Hephthalite army was able to chase the remnants of their Persian adversaries through the city gates and sack Nishapur itself immediately after their triumph on the battlefield. Using convoys of Bactrian camels to transport their supplies, he next crossed the Dasht-e Kavir spanning the central Iranian plateau, and though the Eftals were unable to crack the more formidable defenses of the cities beyond this desert they still managed to raid the Persian hinterland as far as Spahan[3]. It took until the autumn for the Persians to finally begin massing enough troops under the competent leadership of brothers Ashtat and Izad Gushnasp[4], who finally dealt Khingila a stinging defeat in the Battle of Yazd that October. Nevertheless, he defied the Gushnasps’ expectations by executing an orderly retreat across the Dasht-e Kavir before the year ended, even thwarting their attempt to pursue him in a cavalry battle on the eve of a seasonal rainstorm a month later.
Anatolius converses with Khingila, Šao of the Hephthalites, as they retreat eastward near the end of 446
In the Western Roman Empire, Romanus ramped up taxation and conscription as a continuation of his efforts to rebuild his bloodied armies. While the reforms his father had made to the Western civil service and the administrative ability of Avitus allowed for more thorough tax collection with less embezzlement, obviously neither the tax raise nor the draft were popular with the Roman people and
bagaudae activity increased throughout the year. Gaul and Italy, where the increased burdens fell hardest, experienced the most restlessness; Hispania (where the Visigoths had just smashed a major uprising) and Africa (where the Vandals and Moors assisted the Western Roman authorities in maintaining order) remained stable and provided what Ravenna asked of them with relatively little trouble in comparison. Fortunately for the emperor his able lieutenants, Majorian and Aetius, were there to aid him in nipping the brewing rebellions in the bud before they could rally behind seriously threatening usurpers.
While Romanus and Majorian led the Italian legions in suppressing scattered
bagaudae bands in the peninsula throughout the spring and summer (Romanus doing so in the south while Majorian handled rebels in the north), Aetius and Aegidius took the new Hun-trained Gallic cavalry formations raised over the last few years and put them through their baptism of fire in a campaign against Brutus of Augustoritum[5], who was emerging as the most charismatic and successful of the Gallic
bagaudae warlords. Aetius’ horsemen fell upon Brutus’ bandits before the latter could finish fortifying his largest encampments near his hometown and crushed them with great slaughter; the rebel chief himself abandoned his men in an attempt to save himself upon witnessing the few defenses he had set up failing, making their defeat a certainty, but was run down and killed by Aetius’ fastest riders. Shortly after this victory these two highest-ranking generals in Gaul also reinforced their friendship with marital ties, as Aegidius’ son Syagrius[6] married Aetius’ daughter Bonifacia before the year’s end.
In this case and all others, the defeated brigands who had been taken captive were consistently given a stark choice by the authorities; enlist the Western Roman army at half-pay for five years (to be raised to full pay for the rest of their fifteen-year contract if they exhibit good behavior, and of course if they survive that long) or be executed on the spot for treason. Many chose the former option over the latter, allowing the Western Romans to compensate for the losses they’d taken in the first place by having to suppress these
bagaudae to an extent. The new recruits they’d gained might be of dubious quality and reliability for obvious reasons, but Romanus and his generals decided this was better than nothing; at worst, they’d at least have some spare arrow-fodder on hand with which they could better preserve their core forces in the inevitable rematch with Attila.
Gallic bagaudae attempting to ambush a detachment of Western Roman troops under Aegidius
Speaking of which, while the Scourge of God basked in the shine of his greatly increased gold tributes from the Eastern Empire, he had not forgotten about the West. Hunnish horsemen raided the Noric and Italic borders fairly regularly, further straining the limited resources Majorian had available to him in these regions, and Attila happily sheltered and recruited those
bagaudae bands which managed to slip over the border into Dalmatia while the Western Romans could do little but watch and complain, lest they rouse his ire before they were ready to fight him. The
Comes Illyrici did have an avenue of retaliation opened to him by Attila’s own avarice, however; Orestes the Pannonian increasingly chafed at his inability to rise further within the Huns’ ranks, for he was not a particularly skilled warrior or commander and in general had no talents which could impress Attila beyond his literacy, numeracy and fluency in Latin, all of which were useful but did not greatly endear him to a ruler as violent at the core as the dreadful khagan.
When Orestes requested the hand of one of Attila’s daughters at a feast that autumn, Attila openly laughed in his face and asked if he was jesting; when the flustered bureaucrat responded that he was in fact completely serious, the khagan laughed once more, so raucously that Orestes himself privately noted that he thought the latter was going to die like the Hellenic philosopher Chrysippus. After settling down, Attila admonished him for thinking that he – an insignificant provincial gentleman who couldn’t outride or outfight even Attila’s youngest son Ernakh, and who the Hun warlord viewed as little more than an especially useful freedman – had any chance with any woman of the Attilid clan, and that he should be satisfied with how highly he had risen in Hunnish service already. The deeply drunken prince Ellac heaped insult upon insult, adding that his sisters’ horses would make more realistic husbands for them and that Orestes did not have it in him to satisfy even the meekest of them in bed. The Hun royals laughed further when Orestes departed without dueling or even insulting Ellac back to salvage his wounded pride, as (although they knew that Ellac, even drunk, was more than a match for the Roman bureaucrat) it apparently proved his lack of manliness in their eyes; but in truth the enraged and humiliated Roman turncoat had made his decision to turn his coat back in favor of the Western Empire in that yurt at that moment. Before the year had ended he had begun to secretly work with Majorian, helping the latter to build a spy network in Dalmatia and using his brother Paulus[7] & fellow Pannonian notaries loyal solely to him as his envoys to these new spies, to feed the
Comes Illyrici as much information about Attila’s military strength and movements as he could.
While the West gained Orestes’ allegiance, the East was also able to find their own allies within the Hunnish empire. Theodosius, rattled by the speed and ferocity with which Attila had rampaged against the Eastern Empire, increasingly fell under the sway of the militantly anti-Hun court faction led by his sister and tasked Chrysaphius with finding ways to subtly undermine the Scourge of God, even while still being at war with Persia. Though annoyed at his new directive, the eunuch complied in hopes of regaining his master’s favor and found his job to be easier than he thought, for the khagan had not lightened the burden of tribute on his myriad subjects despite being greatly enriched by his victory over the Eastern Empire – instead continuing to demand the same sums of valuable goods and slaves from them as he always had. Disgruntled chieftains and kings within the Hunnic Empire proved receptive to Chrysaphius’ clandestine efforts to contact them throughout 446; the most prominent of these budding insurgents was Vandalarius[8], the king of the Ostrogoths. Alas, with the geographic divides and rivers of bad blood between them, neither empire cared to coordinate their growing intelligence efforts behind the borders of Attila’s realm.
Whether they struck West or East, after 446 Hunnish raiding parties increasingly found the Roman defenders better-prepared for their arrival, as if they had rats in their midst leaking information to their enemies...
Come 447, Attila decided to take more proactive measures both to further expand his empire and put pressure the Western Romans. He attacked the remaining Germanic tribes between his domain and the Rhine once more, this time with no intent of stopping until he reached the river. The Thuringians, Ripuarian Franks and Alamanni felt his wrath throughout the year, and indeed those few who did not bend the knee or die beneath Hunnish lances & arrows were forced to mass at the Western Romans’ frontier in preparation for an invasion of their own.
But Aetius led the Western Roman response in such a way that he undercut Attila’s plans. Instead of fighting the Thuringians and Alamanni who began to storm over the Rhine or through the Alps, he advised the Emperor to open negotiations with them and work out a mutually beneficial deal. These barbarians would be temporarily billeted on Roman territory, not quite as contracted
foederati under Western Roman suzerainty but as recognized independent allies: their agreement was to last not indefinitely, as was usually the case with the federates’
foedus, but only until their mutual enemy Attila was dealt with, after which they would return to their liberated homelands. All these tribesmen and their families were exclusively settled in border regions: the Ripuarian Franks with their Salian kin in Belgica, the Thuringians in the Rhineland from Novaesium[9] to Borbetomagus where they would be supervised from Augusta Treverorum by the
Comes Arbogast, and the Alamanni in the northernmost reaches of Maxima Sequanorum (particularly near the abandoned ruins of Augusta Raurica[10]) and northwestern Rhaetia.
These arrangements were tested almost immediately. The borderlands settled by the new arrivals were still exposed to Hunnish raids, which Attila of course duly mounted in an effort to drive them further westward and break down Aetius’ scheme. Under the pressure of Hunnish harrying and in search of safer, more fertile lands, the Thuringians and Alamanni tried to leave the lands assigned to them, forcing the Western Romans to fight them toward the end of 447 anyway. Aetius and Arbogast defeated the Thuringians on the Nava River[11] and forced them back to their allotment, where the pair stayed to help them fight off further Hunnic attacks; Arbogast led the Gallic legions and Thuringian federates to victory over a particularly large raid on Borbetomagus that Christmas Eve led by one of Attila’s cousins, Laudaricus[12]. The Alamanni meanwhile were bottled up in the Alpine passes by the Burgundians and Rugians, who were in no hurry to hand over their own territories, and eventually forcefully subjugated by Romanus himself, who took hostages from several of their most prominent clans to assure their loyalty. Only the Ripuarian Franks were generally content, and that was because they were integrating quite easily into the Salians’ ranks, further increasing the latter’s power.
Romanus' legionaries attack the Alamanni in the Alps during the winter of 447
Romanus and his advisers also took the time to come to an accord of sorts with the Romano-British this year. Since it was patently obvious that the empire could not retake Britannia in its current shape and Attila had yet to drop dead despite their fervent wishes, the
Augustus decided to instead extend an olive branch of Londinium and officially recognize that the province was lost. In exchange for Romano-British would make commitments to drop their imperial pretensions; to allow an orderly evacuation of the remaining Nicene Christians from Britain with their property intact; and to provide the Western Empire with whatever aid they can against the Huns when the time to do battle with Attila again came.
For his part, ‘Augustus’ Ambrosius was still struggling to further expand his realm against the native Britons and also had to contend with not just mounting Irish raids (mostly from Leinster to Cornwall and Dumnonia) but also the Saxons, who first crossed into his lands and pillaged as far as the half-rebuilt walls of Lindum in July, and so he was receptive to Romanus’ terms – in these circumstances he had no chance of pursuing his father’s and grandfather’s imperial claim anyway, and he absolutely did not want to have to worry about another Western Roman invasion while he was battling his many enemies in Britain. So on November 27, 447 members of the Western Senate and the
Consilium Britanniae watched as their rulers signed the peace treaty in Rotomagus, after which Western Roman chroniclers and officials ceased referring to Ambrosius as a rebel and began to instead treat him as a foreign monarch bearing the title
Riothamus[13] – the Latin translation of the Britonnic
Rigotamos, or ‘great king’, which his indigenous vassals had been calling him since he subjugated them and which he had now adopted for himself in place of
Augustus.
Out east, Constantinople managed to finally bring Ctesiphon to the peace table this year. Aspar and Zeno evicted the last Persian troops still on traditional Roman soil by the end of July, even soundly thrashing a significant Sassanid-Lakhmid army near Amida with the help of their own Ghassanid allies. Around the same time, Khingila renewed his offensive in the east and defeated an even larger Persian army at Tus[14], where the Eftals even captured Yazdgerd’s eldest son and crown prince Hormizd[15] after he foolishly charged too deeply into their lines. This defeat brought the Shahanshah to his knees and forced him to sue for peace: in the west the Eastern Romans and Persians restored their old pre-420 border, allowing the latter to retain Nisibis (which Aspar had been unable to recapture) in exchange for an immediate payment of 2,500 pounds of gold and an annual tribute of 500 more pounds of gold, spices and bolts of silk. The Hephthalites were the big winners of the war, getting to keep all of their territorial conquests – Bactria, Sakastan, Khwarazm and large parts of Abarshahr and Hyrcania – and also acquiring a massive ransom of 7,000 pounds of gold and 1,000 of Yazdgerd’s most prized slaves, mostly eunuchs and concubines, for the safe return of Hormizd, followed by a yearly tribute of 1,000 pounds of gold bullion to keep them at bay.
Even further east, 447 proved to be another triumphant year for the Guptas. Skandagupta completed his war of vengeance against the Pushyamitras, comprehensively crushing them across the length of the Narmada River and even capturing their king (who he used as a footstool for several months before finally executing via elephant). Those Pushyamitra tribesmen who were not felled by Gupta blades and arrows sought refuge with the Vakatakas, a Brahmin dynasty hailing from the Deccan Plateau who were the only major obstacle still standing in the way of total Gupta rule over central India. Naturally, the Vakataka
raja Pravarasena II’s[16] decision to shelter these Pushyamitra refugees (no doubt in hopes of using them to shore up their own army against the Guptas) provided Skandagupta with a convenient
casus belli against them.
Skandagupta having a difficult time deciding whether to execute the Pushyamitra king via elephant or tiger
In early 448, Attila grew suspicious toward Orestes after Majorian began to effectively counter Hunnish raids into Italy and Noricum, to the extent that it seemed the Western Romans had foreknowledge of where and how many raiders would be striking each time – which, of course, they did thanks to Orestes. To deflect suspicion, the wily Pannonian outed Vandalarius of the Ostrogoths as a traitor, having procured evidence of the latter’s communications with the (Eastern) Romans through his bureaucratic position; he could not care less about the Ostrogoths’ importance to the Eastern court’s schemes, being concerned solely with not getting arrested and put to a torturous death by the Scourge of God at this point. Vandalarius for his part could not disprove the allegations, backed as they were with a trove of messages from Constantinople’s spies, so he instead challenged Orestes to a duel to prove his innocence; however Attila had flown into a rage at the revelation and stepped up to fight Vandalarius himself, smiting the Ostrogoth king with his Sword of Mars and having his corpse quartered so the pieces could be sent to every corner of his empire.
After killing Vandalarius, Attila’s first instinct had been to exterminate the Ostrogoths, but as they were the largest and most important of the subordinate tribes under his rule he decided to instead assure the loyalty of the former’s heir Valamir[17] by taking his brother Videmir[18] as a hostage in the Hunnish court and also claiming their sister Ildico[19] as his newest concubine. Since his bedding of the latter went smoothly without any lethal incidents, despite his wounds from the duel with her father and heavier-than-usual drinking that night, Attila next turned his sights on the treacherous Eastern Romans – his failing raids against the West and suspicion of Orestes temporarily forgotten amid his fury at the East’s scheming to turn his vassals against him – and after claiming their annual tribute, sent the emissaries who bore it to him back to Emperor Theodosius with a blunt message: ‘the Scourge of God is coming for you’.
The Huns struck even before this diplomatic party had returned to Constantinople, obliterating Singidunum and Sirmium in their opening attacks so thoroughly that few ruins were left standing after each whirlwind of violence. Attila’s horde burned and pillaged their way as far as Thessalonica before turning east toward Constantinople, devastating yet more cities and towns in their path and completely annihilating every legion sent against them down to the last man; the Huns took no prisoners for ransom this time, but instead struck off every Eastern Roman’s head to add to the ghastly trophy collection their khagan intended to present to Theodosius. Zeno the Isaurian’s own head was added to the pile when he was killed and his army almost totally wiped out in the Battle of Adrianople that August – his co-commander Anthemius, who had just become father to his first daughter with Licinia Eudoxia days before, escaped that same disastrous defeat by the skin of his teeth.
Attila and his sons driving Valamir and the Ostrogoths before them, so that they might serve as arrow fodder against the Eastern Romans
Attila laid siege to Constantinople from the end of August onward, staking most of the thousands upon thousands of heads (many having rotted until only the skulls remained by this time) before his camp to intimidate the defenders and catapulting the other heads over the Theodosian Walls with the onagers he was building, and also calling upon Theodosius to come forth and fight him man-to-man: the Eastern
Augustus, in probably the single wisest decision he had made all his reign up to that point, elected to cower in the Great Palace instead. Attila spent the next three months first on trying to cut the city’s waterborne supply routes, but the Eastern Roman navy easily sank every ramshackle fleet he put together and resupplied Constantinople by sea day after day; since this failed, he decided to once again aggressively try to break through the Theodosian Walls in a series of assaults, from escalades and onslaughts with siege towers to ramming attacks on the gates to night-time tunneling efforts, putting all he had learned from Eastern Roman engineers in the past to use against his former teachers.
Not once did Attila succeed in breaching Constantinople’s defenses, but in the end, he didn’t even have to do that to prevail. Theodosius’ nerves frayed a little bit more with each bloody assault on the walls and each volley of severed heads into the city; he finally cracked after a 15,000-strong relief army under Aspar and the Gothic mercenary general Arnegisclus[20] was kicked back over the Hellespont by Attila’s two eldest sons at Callipolis[21] on November 14, after which the emperor began to ask for terms. At first it seemed nothing would sate Attila short of the emperor’s own blood, but by mid-December the khagan had ‘graciously’ moderated his demand to another 6,000 pounds of gold up front and the handover of whoever was responsible for intriguing with Vandalarius in the first place. Chrysaphius managed to frame a dozen unfortunate minor officials, bureaucrats and eunuchs with Theodosius’ own connivance (he was after all still the emperor’s favorite eunuch), and when Attila left he also left these twelve men crucified before Constantinople.
Heaping injury upon injury, the Scourge of God creatively interpreted his agreement with Theodosius to mean he’d only leave Constantinople itself; his Huns continued to roam across the Diocese of Dacia, northern Macedonia and western Thrace while their subject tribes began to squat in these lands, with the Scirians of Edeko[22] in particular settling in Dacia (where they established their capital in the ruins of Naissus) and Macedonia while Sclaveni (Slavs) from the northernmost reaches of the Hunnic Empire were among those who settled in Thrace. When the court of Constantinople demanded to know why the Huns were still occupying their territory, Attila bluntly replied that treachery begets treachery: why should he honor his word with a pit of vipers that offered him tribute with one hand (after he twisted the arm attached to that hand) while trying to stab him with the other? If the Eastern Romans so badly wished to make him honestly live up to the terms of their peace, they were welcome to try to enforce it, if they dared.
An equestrian of Dardania kneels before his new Scirian overlord
Attila’s decided lack of magnanimity in victory, which recalled the haughty words of Brennus when he first sacked Rome nearly a thousand years before, outraged virtually everyone in Constantinople. Pulcheria, Paulinus, Anthemius and the rest of the militantly anti-Hun faction were now firmly ascendant over that of Chrysaphius; even the eunuch himself, humiliated and discredited by the recent disaster, was now set against Attila. The only problem all involved had was that the Huns had just proven that the Eastern Empire could not defeat them on the field, at least not alone, and that Vandalarius’ death had understandably dampened any other prospective rebel’s enthusiasm for a Roman alliance, making it much harder for them to weaken the Huns from within as Chrysaphius had initially tried. Pulcheria persuaded her purple-clad brother, who was seething at Attila’s embarrassing victory over himself but also too terrified to fight the Huns head-on again, of the need to reconcile with the Occident – at least long enough to eliminate their mutual enemy in the Huns.
In this same year Skandagupta went to war with the Vakatakas, citing their provision of refuge to the Pushyamitras as his cause. The vastly larger Gupta army defeated its Vakataka adversary all along the southern banks of the Narmada over the spring and summer, then drove south to Nandivardhana[23] and sacked the city just days after Pravarasena II and his family fled ahead of their advance. Pravarasena himself and the rest of the Vakatakas were now willing to cede much of their northern territory to the Guptas and also hand over the surviving Pushyamitras, who had proven far less helpful to their war effort than they’d promised; but Skandagupta had gotten the impression that the Vakatakas were weak enough for him to subjugate entirely and so instead demanded their total submission, which they were not willing to give. Thus did this war in central India continue on.
As 449 dawned, the Eastern Roman court decided that the latest christological controversy would provide the perfect cover for their attempt at rebuilding bridges with the West, which had spent the entire past year loudly laughing at the Orient’s misfortune while quietly continuing to rebuild their strength. A certain archmandrite (high abbot) named Eutyches was so offended at the fallen Patriarch Nestorius’ teachings on the nature of Christ that he drove into the opposite extreme and spent the past decade preaching that Christ had only one nature – a perfect and total fusion of his divinity and humanity – which also rendered the Messiah inconsubstantial with mankind, something which orthodox dyophysites perceived to be a denial of Christ’s human nature. He had garnered enough of a following, particularly among the Egyptian Church, that the Emperor could now justify convening an ecumenical council to address his position, which Theodosius did starting in February of that year. Time was generously allotted to the Western bishops to attend this synod, which was to be held in Ephesus (like the earlier one which had condemned Nestorius) and presided over by Patriarch Flavian of Constantinople, known to be a zealous dyophysite and critic of Eutyches himself.
While bishops from Lutetia to Nikiou[24] and even Vagharshapat in Armenia gathered to debate the nature(s) of Christ once more, Patriarch Flavian and the Eastern imperial court worked to sway Pope Leo to their side and get him to work as their intermediary with the Western court. Through the Bishop of Rome, the Eastern and Western Romans hammered out terms for their cooperation against Attila as spring turned to summer and summer to autumn: the chief issue of contention, Illyricum, would be split in a way that mostly favored the Occident, as the Orient agreed to concede the Diocese of Dacia to them ‘in perpetuity’ while retaining only the Diocese of Macedonia out of the entire prefecture. To further mend bridges between the two Romes a betrothal was also arranged between the Western
Caesar Honorius, now nearly fourteen years old, and Theodosius’ one-year-old granddaughter Euphemia.
The Second Council of Ephesus itself reinforced this sense of renewed (however fleeting) Roman unity. With the support of both imperial courts, the dyophisitic united front presented by the Latin and Greek patriarchates prevailed over the monophysite-sympathetic Egyptian one: two weeks before Christmas the Council denounced Eutyches as a heretic and monophysitism as a heresy, and further reaffirmed the dyophysitic position that Christ had two natures, divine and human, coexisting in a perfect and inseparable hypostatic union – that he was simultaneously ‘truly God and truly man’ at his core – in addition to the usual condemnations of Arianism and other earlier heresies[25]. Although the Egyptian clerics were able to accept the first decision, however reluctantly, they perceived this new 'Ephesian' definition of the Savior's nature as a direct attack on the miaphysitic position of the late Cyril of Alexandria, which held that Christ had one nature with unmixed human and divine aspects.
This outcome enraged Dioscorus, the Patriarch of Alexandria and champion of the miaphysites, who incited a mob of both miaphysites and monophysites to try to forcibly reverse the Council’s judgment; however two legions under Anthemius who were on standby to prevent such an outcome violently dispersed the mob and arrested the Egyptian Patriarch, after which the Council spent its last days deposing Dioscorus for heresy on top of his more obvious violation of the law and looking for an appropriately orthodox replacement for him. Though Chrysaphius had been sympathetic to the monophysite position himself and allowed Dioscorus to believe he’d back the mob, the eunuch ended up allowing the Egyptian to fail for the temporal ‘greater good’ of facilitating an anti-Hun alliance between East and West. No others immediately challenged the Council’s decision, with even the Armenian clergy present (who were previously inclined toward the monophysite position) having come round to it over the months, hence why they elected not to support Dioscorus’ actions – and why the Persian government increasingly viewed them with suspicion for apparently aligning with the Roman authorities[26]. However, the Church of Egypt continued to oppose the Ephesian creed and refused to recognize Dioscorus' Ephesian replacement, effectively entering into schism with the rest of the Roman Church.
Dioscorus of Alexandria animatedly debating supporters of the dyophysite orthodoxy in the presence of Theodosius & Aelia Eudocia, some months before he decided more aggressive tactics were needed to win the argument
Meanwhile, the Western bishops returned to Ravenna not only to publicly give Emperor Romanus there the good news, but also to privately inform him of the East’s terms for an alliance against Attila, which he grudgingly assented to (despite his own complete lack of any positive sentiment toward Theodosius) in light of the threat the Huns posed to them both. Now the two Romes stood united again by blood (or rather the promise of it, to be fulfilled in fourteen or fifteen years’ time) and creed, however briefly and even if only for the sake of convenience, and hurried to prepare for another major confrontation with their mutual scourge.
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[1] Qinnasrin.
[2] Herat.
[3] Isfahan.
[4] The Gushnasps were historically among the named leaders of the Persian army which defeated a major Christian Armenian rebellion at Avarayr, 451. Some sources indicate they were brothers, others that they were father and son instead.
[5] Limoges.
[6] Syagrius historically preserved his father Aegidius’ autonomous Gallo-Roman realm, centered on Soissons, for twenty-four years after the latter’s death (and ten years after the demise of the WRE itself) before he was defeated by Clovis of the Franks. He initially fled to the Visigoth court, but was handed over to Clovis for execution by the Gothic king Alaric II by no later than 494.
[7] Historically Paulus led the last Western Roman army in an ill-fated defense of Ravenna, and with it the rule of his nephew Romulus, after Orestes had been killed by Odoacer.
[8] Known to have been the father of Valamir, who was historically the king of the Ostrogoths from 447 to 465, and thus the maternal grandfather of Theodoric the Great (Valamir’s nephew through his brother-in-law Theodemir).
[9] Neuss.
[10] Augst.
[11] The Nahe River.
[12] Noted to be a kinsman of Attila’s in the 511
Chronica Gallica, he was historically killed in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.
[13] ‘Riothamus’, as noted, was the Latin translation of a term that meant ‘great king’ to the native Celtic Britons. Historically a Romano-British warlord called Riothamus led an army over the Channel to assist Emperor Anthemius against the Visigoths in 469-470, but was defeated and possibly killed by the latter’s king Euric in the Battle of Déols. It is unclear whether Riothamus was actually his name or just a title, as it is ITL for Ambrosius.
[14] Near Mashhad.
[15] Historically the Shahanshah from 457 to 459, this Hormizd was usurped by his own brother Peroz with the help of the Hephthalites.
[16] The historical king of the northern branch of the Vakataka dynasty between 420 and 455, Pravarasena was also Skandagupta’s cousin (his mother was the princess Prabhavatigupta, the latter’s aunt) and seems to have parlayed his dynastic ties to the Guptas to assure peace between their realms. However, near the end of his reign he took a more hostile stance against his northern neighbor, and appears to have tried to back a usurper against Skandagupta.
[17] Eldest son and successor of Vandalarius as one of the earliest attested kings of the Ostrogoths in Hunnish service. He fought for Attila at the Catalaunian Plains, probably stood among the rebel tribes at Nedao, and died in a riding accident while responding to a Scirian raid in the anarchic years following the Hunnic Empire’s collapse brought about by the latter battle.
[18] A younger son of Vandalarius’, who co-ruled the Ostrogoths with Valamir and was also present at the Catalaunian Plains but appears to have predeceased the latter.
[19] Historically Attila died from a nosebleed on the night of his wedding to an Ostrogothic princess bearing this name, whose relation to the ruling Amali dynasty is unclear. As you can see, for this timeline I’ve settled on making her a daughter of Vandalarius.
[20] A Gothic general who led the Eastern Roman army in the hard-fought Battle of the Utus in 447 and fathered Anagast, another general in their service. Historically, it was he who died fighting the Huns around this time rather than Zeno the Isaurian.
[21] Gallipoli.
[22] The father of Odoacer and his less-known brother Onoulphus, who ruled the Scirians before them and most likely fought for Attila at the Catalaunian Plains. After Attila’s death, he joined the Gepids and other rebels at the Battle of Nedao and was later defeated by the Ostrogoths at Bolia.
[23] Near Nagpur.
[24] Zawyat Razin.
[25] This is pretty much the polar opposite of what happened at the historical Second Council of Ephesus, which was a victory for the Monophysite faction (thanks in large part to Chrysaphius rigging it in their favor every step of the way) and even included a mob led by Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria deposing & fatally injuring Flavian of Constantinople. That council was denounced as a ‘robber synod’ by Pope Leo, nearly causing an East-West schism and necessitating the Council of Chalcedon two years later which reversed all of its judgments and imposed the Chalcedonian Definition; ITL, the Council of Ephesus has instead come to the same conclusions Chalcedon did and shored up East-West unity at the cost of antagonizing Egyptian Christians.
[26] Historically the Armenian bishops were present for the 2nd Council of Ephesus but not the Council of Chalcedon, on account of being embroiled in a major rebellion against Persia in 451. That was the primary reason why they eventually chose not to follow the latter church council’s judgments, though they did not make this decision until a century later.