THE NIGHT ATTILA DIED: Solving an Ancient Murder Mystery
By Michael A. Babcock, Ph.D.
Berkley (2005)

Historians have written that Attila the Hun died in 453 from natural causes. The standard story is that Attila died on his wedding night from a burst blood vessel in his nose—a bad nosebleed—after a long day of gluttonous drinking and eating. However, in THE NIGHT ATTILA DIED: Solving an Ancient Murder Mystery, author and philologist Michael A. Babcock presents a new, compelling theory that Attila was assassinated by order of Marcian, the Roman Emperor of the East.

Using the method of textual analysis known as philology, Babcock unravels an international mystery which takes the reader from Constantinople to Greenland and points in between. Not only is THE NIGHT ATTILA DIED the story of how Marcian plotted the assassination of Attila over several years, it is also the tale of an elaborate cover-up of the assassination that has gone untold for over 1,500 years.

At its core, THE NIGHT ATTILA DIED is a compelling intellectual detective story, where chapter by chapter, the reader takes part in the process of discovering a new explanation for Attila’s death. At the same time, readers painlessly learn how philologists reconstruct lost histories from ancient manuscripts, languages, and myths. This highly readable tale of intrigue will captivate every reader who loves well crafted popular history as well as viewers of such shows as "History’s Mysteries," yet stand up to the toughest scholarly scrutiny.

Michael A. Babcock is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has a Ph.D. in Germanic Philology from the University of Minnesota and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina. He is a recognized authority on the historical and legendary material surrounding the life and death of Attila the Hun and is the author of The Stories of Attila the Hun’s Death: Narrative, Myth, and Meaning (2001, The Edwin Mellen Press). He has lectured before audiences from Harvard University to the University of Hawaii.

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