“A story was told in antiquity that when Attila the Hun captured Milan in 452, he noticed a painting…that showed the eastern and western Roman emperors on golden thrones with steppe nomads lying dead at their feet. The infuriated Hun king immediately summoned an artist to render a counter image: in the new painting he would be the man on the throne while servile emperors poured gold coins before him from leather money bags.”
If true, Attila was refuting the stereotypes that steppe tribes were inferior due to being less civilized, and wanted to show off the enormous sums he had extorted from the Roman emperors. However, it is very hard to determine if this painting ever existed. If it did, surely the Romans would have destroyed it afterwards. “Attila’s painting, if it ever existed, would have been a scandalous outrage to a Roman viewer, and that is precisely what the Roman writer who described this episode wanted to convey. He meant to shock his readers with an intimation of a world where Roman claims of universal victory were successfully challenged and mocked by an uncivilized Hun.”
That world where the Empire no longer was invincible was clearly coming true for the Romans in the West though. Whether this is true or a literary tale, I do not know. However, I wish that both images had survived if they were ever real…sounds pretty cool to see.
SOURCE:
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila – Chapter 1 Reversals of Fortune: An Overview of the Age of Attila by Michael Maas. Artwork is by Leon King.
shadowsofconstantinople.com 