„The Last Great Roman” Is it from Silistra? There is no error. One of the greatest Roman generals, Flavius Aetius, actually came from our present-day Silistra. Then (4th – 5th century AD) the city was called Durostorum and was the main seat of the 11th “Conscious and Faithful Claudian Legion” – a legendary military unit created by Gaius Julius Caesar himself.
It was Flavius Aetius who defeated the invincible Huns of Attila in the spectacular battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451. Because of this victory, his moral qualities and his great other merits, he earned the nickname “the last Roman”. >
This is written on "Facebook" Rosen Petrov.
Even the script of a genius film like “Gladiator” pales in comparison to the story of Aetius. His mother was from a wealthy family from Italy and his father was most likely a Romanized Scythian from Lower Moesia or Dacia named Flavius Gaudentius. This “Scythian”, whom the famous Gothic historiographer Jordan calls “a noble Mysian”, became the head of the cavalry of the entire empire.
The life of young Aetius begins with adversity. He spent several years as a hostage with the Goths and Huns, and there he got to know the life, customs and military tactics of these powerful peoples. According to the historical sources, he became “swift in riding and skilled in the arrow with a bow”. Due to his skills and his father's positions, Aetius became the bodyguard of the emperor Honorius, and then became the head of the imperial guard, a distinguished military leader and three times consul of the empire and its de facto leader. He participated in the brutal Roman conflicts and dozens of wars with different tribes.
Aetius won many victories, but in 454 he was assassinated vilely and by his own hand by the emperor Valentinian III, who feared the fame of his general. An interesting detail is that the son of Aetius was betrothed to the daughter of the emperor Valentinian, i.e. in this case, a suitor kills his suitor. Hollywood and Bollywood cannot give birth to such a scenario. Only one year after the death of Aetius, the Vandals took over Rome, and after 20 years the Western Roman Empire itself perished.
There was a famous historian of ours who joked like this off the air: “What shall I tell you about Aetius and Attila? One Bulgarian stopped the other. His Bulgarian work!” and burst into infectious laughter, but that is another story, and I am telling you this for an entirely different reason. Aetius is a figure of immense importance in Roman and even European cultural history. For example, based on the legends about his battles with the Burgundians, the epic “Song of the Nibelungs” was born. Because of his encounter with the famous Attila, he is also extremely popular in popular culture as a character from movies, computer games, etc. And this man is proven to have been born on our present-day lands, and his father is defined as “a noble Mysian”.
And what do we do? In general – nothing. Would tourists, for example, not come from Varna to Silistra if they could see something related to Aetius – “the last great Roman”? In 2019, there was an idea in Silistra to build at least some modest monument or symbol to remind him, but then the intention sank into oblivion and silence, as happens with many good ideas in our country. The fate of Attila's conqueror, Flavius Aetius, born in Durostorum (Silistra), is actually another forgotten story from our present-day lands, waiting to be told to the world.