For seven days they made their way into the heart of Hungary till they came to a village where their way joined the greater route by which Attila was coming. There they were forced to await the King, since they must follow and not precede him. It was in this place that they met another Roman embassy, that of the Emperor in the West, Valentinian III, who was quarrelling with Attila about the holy vessels of Sirmium. It seems that the Bishop of Sirmium in 441, seeing his city invested, had gathered his chalices and patens and plate, sacred vessels of his church, and had sent them secretly to a certain Constantius, a Gaul, at that time Attila’s minister. In case the city fell they were to be used as ransom, first of the Bishop, and in case of his death of any other captives. Constantius was, however, untrue to the trust placed in him by the Bishop, and sold or pawned the plate to a silversmith in Rome. Attila hearing of it when Constantius was beyond his reach claimed the booty as his own. It was upon this miserable business that Valentinian had sent an embassy to Attila from Ravenna. It is certainly a shameful and an amazing spectacle we have here. In that little village of Barbary the ambassadors of the Emperors, East and West, of the Courts of Constantinople and Ravenna, of New Rome and of Old, wait in a marsh the passage of a savage that they may be allowed to follow in his train and humbly seek an audience. Surely Attila himself had arranged that meeting, and as he rode on to his capital, the two embassies following in his dust, he must have enjoyed the outrageous insult to civilisation, the triumph of brute force over law. IV THE IMPERIAL EMBASSY AT THE COURT OF ATTILA The entry of Attila into his capital was witnessed by Priscus and has been recorded by him with much naive care, for it evidently excited his curiosity and interest. The Hun was met by a procession of maidens who passed in groups of seven under long veils of white linen, upheld by the matrons on either side of the way, singing as they passed Scythian songs. So they went on towards the palace past the house of the chief minister Onegesius, where the wife of the favourite, surrounded by her servants and slaves, awaited the King to present him with a cup filled with wine, which he graciously consented to receive at her hands. Four huge Huns lifted up a tray of silver loaded with viands that the King might eat also, which he did without alighting from his horse. Then he passed on to his own house. Maximin pitched his camp, it seems, between the house of Onegesius and the palace of the King.