A strong invitation from a Roman princess gave him a pretext for the war, and threw an air of chivalric enterprise over his invasion. Honoria, sister of Valentinian III., the Emperor of the West, had sent to Attila to offer him her hand, and her supposed right to share in the imperial power. This had been discovered by Romans, and Honoria had been forthwith closely imprisoned, Attila now pretended to take up arms in behalf of his self-promised bride, and proclaimed that he was about to march to Rome to redress Honoria's wrongs. Ambition and spite against her brother must have been the sole motives that led the lady to woo the royal Hun for Attila's face and person had all the national ugliness of his race and the description given of him by a Byzantine ambassador must have been well known in the imperial courts. Herbert has well versified the portrait drawn by Priscus of the great enemy of both Byzantium and Rome:-- "Terrific was his semblance, in no mould Of beautiful proportion cast; his limbs Nothing exalted, but with sinews braced Of Chalybaean temper, agile, lithe, And swifter than the roe; his ample chest Was overbrowed by a gigantic head, With eyes keen, deeply sunk, and small, that gleam'd Strangely in wrath, as though some spirit unclean Within that corporal tenement installed Look'd from its windows, but with temper'd fire Beam'd mildly on the unresisting. Thin His beard and hoary; his flat nostrils crown'd A cicatrised, swart visage,--but withal That questionable shape such glory wore That mortals quail'd beneath him."