Attila the Hun Trivia
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69 free Attila the Hun trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Attila the Hun trivia quiz covers the ruler of the Huns from 434 to 453: the joint reign with his brother Bleda, the treaties that squeezed thousands of pounds of gold from Constantinople, the sieges of the Balkans, the princess whose engagement ring he treated as a marriage proposal, the great battle in Gaul, the meeting with a pope on the Mincio and the wedding feast at which he bled to death. The easy questions cover the outline: his nickname, his brother, the empire he ruled, the pope, and how he died. The harder half is for readers of Priscus and Jordanes: what his name probably means, the diplomat who described him, the tripling of the tribute, the ransom per prisoner, the battering rams of 443, the double walls that stopped him, the general who had once lived among the Huns, the saints who saved Paris and Troyes, the emperor who dreamed of a broken bow, the three coffins, the sons who wrecked the empire, the sword of Mars, Etzel in the Nibelungenlied, and the Turkish operation of 1974 named after him. Every answer was checked against Attila's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Roman Empire, Genghis Khan and medieval history quizzes next.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By what nickname was Attila widely known?
The Scourge of God
The Scourge of God, flagellum Dei in Latin, cast Attila as heaven's whip: Christian writers explained his raids as divine punishment for their own sins.
Q 02One long-held theory builds Attila's name from the Gothic word 'atta', giving what meaning?
Little father
Little father, from Gothic atta, 'father', plus a diminutive: on this view history knows the great Hun by a name from his Gothic-speaking subjects. Others argue for Turkic roots, and the matter is unsettled.
Q 03With which elder brother did Attila rule the Huns jointly until 445?
Bleda
Bleda shared the throne for about a decade; Roman and Gothic accounts say he was then killed through Attila's treachery, leaving his younger brother sole king of the Huns.
Q 04At an Italian siege, which rooftop-nesting birds, flying off with their young, reportedly convinced Attila the city would fall?
Storks
Storks were leaving their nests on the rooftops, Jordanes relates, and Attila told his weary army that the birds could foresee the city's ruin; the Huns renewed the assault and broke in.
Q 05At a banquet where his guests were served delicacies on silver, what did Attila himself eat?
Only meat
Only meat: the envoy who sat at that table noted that the king took none of the dainties and wore no gold or gems, unlike the chiefs around him.
Q 06In the description Jordanes passed down, what did Attila look like?
Short, broad-chested and large-headed
Short, broad-chested and large-headed, with small eyes, a flat nose and a thin greying beard: the same passage calls this lover of war restrained in action and gracious to suppliants.
Q 07From which region did the Huns emerge before sweeping into Europe around 370?
East of the Volga
East of the Volga is where they first enter the record; they soon overran the Alans and the Ostrogoths, and drove other Goths to seek refuge inside the Roman Empire.
Q 08What kind of fighters made the Huns so feared across Europe?
Mounted archers
Mounted archers: Huns shot accurately from the saddle, charged hard and melted away in sudden retreats, and the sheer speed of their movements left slower armies with no answer.
Q 09Which Roman emperor did Goths fleeing the Huns kill at Adrianople in 378?
Valens
Valens died with much of his army: the Goths had crossed the Danube two years earlier as refugees from the Huns, then rose in revolt after mistreatment by Roman officials.
Q 10How did Attila and his brother insist on negotiating their first treaty with Roman envoys?
On horseback
On horseback: a Roman historian records that the Huns thought it improper to confer dismounted, so the envoys stayed in the saddle too rather than talk up at them from the ground.
Q 11In Attila's first treaty with the Romans, what happened to their annual tribute of 350 pounds of gold?
It was doubled
It was doubled to 700 pounds of gold a year, yet it bought only a few years of quiet: in the 440s the Huns stormed across the Danube, sacked cities and tripled the price again.
Q 12What did Attila's Huns accuse a Roman bishop of doing, as their pretext for invading the Balkans?
Robbing Hun royal tombs
Robbing Hun royal tombs was the charge, and the bishop settled it his own way: afraid of being handed over, he betrayed his city to the Huns, which opened the main road into the Balkans.
Q 13What did Attila's Huns shock the Romans by bringing against Balkan fortress cities in the 440s?
Q 21Which city in today's Lorraine did Attila's Huns reportedly burn on Easter eve 451, sparing only a chapel of St Stephen?
Metz
Metz burned on the eve of Easter, Gregory of Tours relates, and only the oratory of St Stephen escaped the flames; the city's cathedral still bears the saint's name.
Q 22Which saint is said to have saved Paris from Attila with her prayers?
Genevieve
Genevieve talked panicking Parisians out of fleeing and led the city's women in days of fasting and prayer; the Huns passed Paris by, and the city later took her as its patron saint.
Q 23At which battle in 451 was Attila stopped by a Roman-Visigothic alliance?
The Catalaunian Plains
Battering rams and rolling siege towers
Battering rams and rolling siege towers let horse nomads crack walled cities that had once fallen only to treachery; Naissus, birthplace of Constantine the Great, was left deserted.
Q 14What stopped Attila from taking Constantinople during his Balkan campaigns?
The city's double walls
The city's double walls held even after an earthquake threw part of them down in 447: the chariot-racing factions supplied thousands of men and rebuilt them within weeks, before the Huns arrived.
Q 15A Roman plot to assassinate Attila failed when the Hun envoy they had bribed did what?
Told Attila everything
Told Attila everything: the envoy Edeco revealed the plot, and Attila sent the bag that had held the bribe back to Constantinople hung round a messenger's neck, to shame the emperor in his own court.
Q 16In his 447 campaign Attila's forces rampaged through the Balkans as far south as which pass?
Thermopylae
Thermopylae, where Leonidas had held off the Persians nearly a thousand years earlier, marked the limit of the raid; one contemporary wrote that the Huns took more than a hundred cities on the way.
Q 17Which Western Roman princess sent Attila her ring in 450, which he chose to read as a marriage proposal?
Honoria
Honoria had been caught in an affair with a member of her household and promised to a dull senator against her will; her plea for rescue handed Attila a ready-made excuse to invade the West.
Q 18What did Attila demand as dowry for marrying the emperor's sister?
Half of the Western Empire
Half of the Western Empire was his price for a bride who may never have proposed; the emperor refused, and the next year Attila led his army into Gaul.
Q 19Which Roman general, once a hostage among the Huns, led the alliance that faced Attila in Gaul in 451?
Flavius Aëtius
Flavius Aëtius had for years won his own power struggles with hired Hun armies; in 451 he had to turn and fight the people who had made his career.
Q 20To roughly what size did Jordanes exaggerate Attila's army when it arrived in Belgica in 451?
Half a million
It included Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Scirians, Heruls, Thuringians, Alans and Burgundians.
The Catalaunian Plains ended with Attila penned inside his wagon camp, where Jordanes says he piled up saddles for a funeral pyre, ready to leap into the flames rather than be taken alive.
Q 24Which Visigothic king was killed fighting alongside the Romans against Attila in 451?
Theodoric I
Theodoric I went down in the thick of the fight, either thrown and trampled by his own charging men or speared by an Ostrogoth, Jordanes says; his body was found only the next day.
Q 25Which city on the Loire was Attila besieging in 451 when an approaching Roman-led army forced him to pull back?
Orléans
Orléans was close to falling: Gregory of Tours has the walls already shaking while its bishop sent watchers up to the ramparts three times before they saw the relief army's dust.
Q 26Which city owes its origins partly to people fleeing Attila's 452 invasion?
Venice
Venice grew from refugees who sheltered on marshy islands that Hun horsemen had no way to reach; Gibbon remarked that the great destroyer had, without meaning to, founded a republic.
Q 27Which northern Italian city did Attila raze so completely its site was hard to recognise afterwards?
Aquileia
Aquileia was one of the richest and strongest cities on the Adriatic; Jordanes says its resistance had the Hun army eager to go home, and that once it fell they left scarcely a trace of it.
Q 28Which pope met Attila near Mantua in 452 and won his promise to withdraw from Italy?
Leo I
Leo I did not go alone: a former consul and a former prefect travelled with him as the emperor's envoys, yet tradition gave the pope the whole credit for the retreat.
Q 29Superstitious fear of whose fate reportedly gave Attila pause about marching on Rome?
Alaric's
Alaric's death within months of sacking Rome in 410 was the warning Attila's own men pressed on him, Jordanes says; he was still wavering over the march when Rome's peace embassy arrived.
Q 30At which river did Attila's 452 invasion of Italy finally halt?
The Po
The Po was as far as he got: famine and disease were wasting his army and Eastern Roman troops had crossed the Danube to raid his homeland, so Rome's embassy found him ready to leave.