Aetius

Flavius Aetius (Latin, Flavius Aetius; c. 396-21/22 September 454) was a Roman general and the most influential man during the Roman Empire. final period of the Western Roman Empire, two decades, between 433 and 454, in which he led the defense of the Empire against attacks by barbarian peoples. Preceded by mediocre and ephemeral military chiefs, Aetius stands out in his position for being able to bring order to a chaotic and tottering Western Empire.

He was one of the most brilliant military geniuses in the history of Rome, prestige achieved by his great participation in the Battle of the Catalaunic Fields, where he achieved a strategic victory over Attila, ending the aura of invincibility of the Hunnic king, denying him definitively the battlefield and preventing the total invasion of the Roman territories.

The assassination of Aetius by Emperor Valentinian III in 454 would destroy the empire's hopes of recovery and doom it to failure, with no political leader like him appearing again until the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Biography

Early Years

Aetius was born in the last decade of the IV century in Durostorum, a town belonging to the Roman province of Scythia Minor, in what is now the Dobruja region, on the border between Romania and Bulgaria. His father, Flavio Gaudencio, came from a Roman military family of Scyrus, or Goth, origin, which became magister militum of Gaul, where he died in the 420s; while his mother, Aurelia^{[citation required]}, belonged to a wealthy senatorial family. His illustrious ancestry was precisely the cause of his spending part of his youth as a hostage, first to the Goths then led by Alaric, between 405 and 408, and later to the Huns, possibly between 411 and 414.

Military career

It is known that his father, Gaudentius, had managed to get Honorius to agree to an alliance with the Huns to attack the barbarians who threatened the Roman borders and as a guarantee of said pact, an exchange of hostages was made, as a result of which Aetius lived among the Huns for about three years, during which he became familiar with their customs and military tactics.

He served as magister equitum in Gaul during Felix's military leadership, until in 433 he himself rose to the magistracy of magister militum. From here, he became the most important person in the Western Empire. He protected Italy and stopped the expansion of the barbarians: he stopped the Visigoths in Gaul and cornered the Burgundians in Savoy. In the Battle of Mons Colubrarius in 438 he defeated the Goths, which was celebrated by the poet Merobaudes in one of the two panegyrics he dedicated to him. Other decisions are unwelcome but inevitable, such as recognition of the Vandal settlement in North Africa.

His most notable campaign, the one that will earn him the nickname "the last Roman" in history, will be the one he will lead against the Huns. Feeling insulted by his leader, Attila, by the Emperor Valentinian III because of the rejection of the request for the hand of his sister Honoria, he launches to destroy Rome. For this he summons a great confederation of Scythian, Sarmatian, Gepid, and Ostrogothic tribes, who join the Huns on their march. But Aetius, masterfully directing the Franks, Alans, Visigoths, and the remaining Roman troops, achieved a superficial strategic victory in the Catalaunic Fields in the year 451: it was the last great battle of the Western Empire.

In this battle, the powerful Visigothic king Theodoric I, a vital ally of Aetius, fell. This, fearing a dangerous increase in Visigothic power, encouraged Turismundo, son of Teodorico, to go to Tolosa to ensure the succession with the idea of embroiling the Visigothic kingdom in a war between rival claimants to the throne. The march of the important Visigothic contingent prevented Aecio from exterminating the invaders, allowing Attila to withdraw with the remains of his army. The Hunnic king, therefore, will be able to reorganize his troops and invade the Italian peninsula the following year, in 452, before the total impotence of Aetius. Arriving before the walls of Rome, it is said that Attila did not take the city thanks to the intervention of Pope Leo I, although it was more than likely due to the epidemics and famines that his army was suffering.

Death

Unfortunately for Aetius, his popularity, emphasized by his contemporary, the Hispano-Roman poet Merobaudes, who wrote two panegyrics in his honour, earned him the suspicion of the emperor, who, harboring suspicions of a hypothetical claim to the throne, had him They called to the palace, and after an intense discussion, he assassinated Aetius by surprise, running him through with a sword. The following year, two former officers of Aetius assassinated the emperor during a military parade, probably at the behest of the influential and wealthy Roman senator Petronius Maximus, who aspired to the throne.