ling 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.

The year 445 of our era completed the twelfth century from the
foundation of Rome, according to the best chronologers. It had always
been believed among the Roman