It was the business of Theodosius to prevent the realisation of this scheme, nor did he hesitate to break the treaty of Margus to achieve this. His emissaries attempted to attach to the Empire the Acatziri, a Hunnish tribe that had replaced the Alani on the Don. Their chief, however, fearing for his independence, or stupidly handled, sent word to Attila of the Roman plot. The Hun came down at the head of a great army, and though he spared the Acatziri, for their chief was both wily and a flatterer, he brought all the Barbarians of that part within his suzerainty and, returning, soon found himself master of an Empire which stretched from the North Sea to the Caucasus, and from the Baltic to the Danube and the Rhine, an Empire certainly in extent comparable with that of Rome. It was in achieving this truly mighty purpose that Attila exhibits two of his chief characteristics, his superstition and his cruelty. It seems that the ancient Scythians on the plain to the east of the Carpathians had for idol and perhaps for God a naked sword, its hilt buried in the earth, its blade pointed skyward. To this relic the Romans had given the name of the sword of Mars. In the course of ages the thing had been utterly forgotten, till a Hunnish peasant seeing his mule go lame, and finding it wounded in the foot, on seeking for the cause, guided by the blood, found this sword amid the undergrowth and brought it to Attila who recovered it joyfully as a gift from heaven and a sign of his destined sovereignty over all the peoples of the earth. So at least Jornandes relates.[11] The other episode exhibits his cruelty. In founding his empire Attila had certainly made many enemies and aroused the jealousy of those of his own house. At any rate he could not remember without impatience that he shared his royalty with Bleda. To one of his subtlety such impatience was never without a remedy. Bleda was accused of treason, perhaps of plotting with Theodosius, and Attila slew his brother or had him assassinated; and alone turned to enjoy his Barbary and to face Rome. FOOTNOTES: [3] In the thirty-first book of his History of Rome: see Appendix I. [4] The Prussian student is even to-day famous for the scars on his face inflicted in the duels at the Universities. [5] Cf. the physique of the ordinary Prussian at its most characteristic in Von Hindenberg, who really seems to have been hewn out of wood. [6] It was a modern and famous German who not long since declared that the Prussians were such quarrelsome and disagreeable brutes that it was only their propensity to drink beer and that continually that mollified them sufficiently to be regarded as human beings. [7] It is curious to remember that this first encounter of Attila with the Imperial power took place in what is now Servia only fifty miles further down the Danube than Belgrade.