Attila (Latin: Attila; Greek: Ἀττίλα; r. 434–453), the ruler of the Hunnic Empire from 434, when he became ruler of the Hun communities, until his death in 453. During his rule he expanded his empire to cover most of the Europe of the time. When he died, the lands under his rule extended to Germania in the west, the Ural River in the east, the Baltic Sea in the north, and the Black Sea in the south. During the period he was at the head of the empire, Attila led, besides the Huns, many Germanic and Iranian tribes, the Ostrogoths, the Bulgars, and the Alans.
During his rule Attila became one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans, but did not feel the need to capture Constantinople. After his campaign against the Persians, the success of the raid he made in 441 against the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire emboldened Attila to invade the West. He crossed the Rhine with the aim of seizing Gaul and succeeded in advancing as far as Aurelianum before he was stopped, with heavy losses, at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains by the forces under the command of Flavius Aetius.
He invaded Italy and plundered its northern provinces, but did not advance on Rome. In later times he planned new campaigns against Rome, but died suddenly in 453. After Attila's death, his close adviser, the Gepid king Ardaric, started a Germanic revolt against Hunnic rule, and in its wake the Hunnic Empire collapsed with the Battle of Nedao.
Because Attila and the Huns under his rule left deep marks on the Europe of the time, texts about Attila have been found from antiquity to the present day. The campaigns he waged did considerable damage to Western and Eastern Rome, and caused the collapse, shortly afterward, of the Western Roman Empire, which had already lost its resistance through the Migration Period that the Huns had earlier brought about. For these reasons, and also because of his ethnic origin and religion, he was given a frightening and glorious image by the Christian historians of the era. He was associated with cruelty and death, and was given names such as the Scourge of God and the Punishment of God. In other cultures, notably the Scandinavian and Germanic cultures, he also occupied a place in the sagas that took him as their subject and in epics such as the Nibelungenlied. Today he is remembered as a national and founding figure by the Hungarians and the Turks.