This act seems to symbolise at the outset the character of Attila and his reign. He was then, we may suppose, between thirty and forty years old, and although the younger always the master of his brother Bleda, whom he was soon to murder. Of the place of his birth we know nothing,[8] but he grew up on the Danube and there learned the use of arms, perhaps in the company of the young Aetius, who had been a Roman hostage of Roua and who was one day to conquer Attila. If we look for a portrait of him we shall unhappily not find it in any contemporary writer; but Jornandes, probably repeating a lost passage of some earlier writer, perhaps Priscus himself, tells us that he was short, with a mighty chest, a large head, eyes little and deep-set, a scant beard, flat nose and dark complexion. He thrust his head forward as he went and darted his glances all about, going proudly withal, like one destined to terrify the nations and shake the earth. Hasty and quarrelsome, his words, like his acts, were sudden and brutal, but though in war he only destroyed, and left the dead unburied in their thousands for a warning; to those who submitted to him he was merciful, or at least he spared them. He dressed simply and cleanly, ate as simply as he dressed, his food being served on wooden dishes; indeed his personal temperance contrasted with the barbaric extravagance he had about him. Nevertheless he was a Barbarian with the instincts of a savage. Constantly drunk he devoured women with a ferocious passion, every day having its victim, and his bastards formed indeed a people. He knew no religion but surrounded himself with sorcerers, for he was intensely superstitious.[9] As a general he was seldom in the field, he commanded rather than led and ever preferred diplomacy to battle.[10] His greatest weapon was prevarication. He would debate a matter for years and the continual embassies of Theodosius amused without exhausting him and his patience. He played with his victims as a cat does with a mouse and would always rather buy a victory than win it. He found his threat more potent than his deed, and in fact played with the Empire which had so much to lose, very much as Bismarck played with Europe. Like Bismarck too his business was the creation of an Empire. His idea, an idea that perhaps even Roua had not failed to understand, was the creation of an Empire of the North, a Hunnish Empire, in counterpoise against the Roman Empire of the South, to the south that is of the Rhine and the Danube. For this cause he wished to unite the various Barbarian tribes and nations under his sceptre, as Bismarck wished to unite the tribes of the Germans under the Prussian sword. He was to be the Emperor of the North as the Roman Emperors were Emperors of the South. Had he lived in our day he would have understood that famous telegram of the Kaiser to the Tsar of Russia--“the Admiral of the Atlantic....”