“The singular assertion in his style, that he was nurtured in Engaddi, where he certainly had never been, will be more easily understood on reference to the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, concerning the woman clothed with the sun, who was to bring forth in the wilderness—­’where she hath a place prepared of God’—­a man-child, who was to contend with the dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and rule all nations with a rod of iron.  This prophecy was at that time understood universally by the sincere Christians to refer to the birth of Constantine, who was to overwhelm the paganism of the city on the seven hills, and it is still so explained; but it is evident that the heathens must have looked on it in a different light, and have regarded it as a foretelling of the birth of that Great one who should master the temporal power of Rome.  The assertion, therefore, that he was nurtured in Engaddi, is a claim to be looked upon as that man-child who was to be brought forth in a place prepared of God in the wilderness.  Engaddi means a place of palms and vines in the desert; it was hard by Zoar, the city of refuge, which was saved in the Vale of Siddim, or Demons, when the rest were destroyed by fire and brimstone from the Lord in heaven, and might, therefore, be especially called a place prepared of God in the wilderness.”

It is obvious enough why he styled himself “By the Grace of God, King of the Huns and Goths,” and it seems far from difficult to see why he added the names of the Medes and the Danes.  His armies had been engaged in warfare against the Persian kingdom of the Sassanidae, and it is certain that he meditated the invasion and overthrow of the Medo-Persian power.  Probably some of the northern provinces of that kingdom had been compelled to pay him tribute; and this would account for his styling himself king of the Medes, they being his remotest subjects to the south.  From a similar cause he may have called himself king of the Danes, as his power may well have extended northward as far as the nearest of the Scandinavian nations, and this mention of Medes and Danes as his subjects would serve at once to indicate the vast extent of his dominion.[24]

The immense territory north of the Danube and Black Sea and eastward of Caucasus, over which Attila ruled, first in conjunction with his brother Bleda, and afterward alone, cannot be very accurately defined, but it must have comprised within it, besides the Huns, many nations of Slavic, Gothic, Teutonic, and Finnish origin.  South also of the Danube, the country, from the river Sau as far as Novi in Thrace, was a Hunnish province.  Such was the empire of the Huns in A.D. 445; a memorable year, in which Attila founded Buda on the Danube as his capital city, and rid himself of his brother by a crime which seems to have been prompted not only by selfish ambition, but also by a desire of turning to his purpose the legends and forebodings which then were universally spread throughout the Roman Empire, and must have been well known to the watchful and ruthless Hun.