When, four years ago, wealthy businesswoman Kelly Loeffler advertised herself as “more conservative than Attila the Hun” in a run-off election for a Georgia Senate seat (she held the seat for just three weeks — it’s complicated), she was doing the king of the Huns a disservice (unless she wanted to invade Mexico). Loeffler wasn’t the first to use the “right of Attila” line; it’s been either claimed by, or used against, linguist William Safire and conservative politicians such as Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. But in Attila’s time, “left” and “right” in politics didn’t mean much. Back then your politics essentially boiled down to, Were you an invader or a defender? Attila was an invader, no doubt, as opposed to the Romans, who were mostly occupied with defending their crumbling empire.

So who was Attila? We actually know very little about him, and what we do know is pretty tainted, since nearly all the sources we have for his life were written by his enemies, of whom there were many. History, it’s said, is written by the victors, but in this case, it was written by those who could write, in Latin and Greek.

What we know for sure is that Atilla was born early in the fifth century AD — probably 406 — and died about 47 years later, either from a hemorrhage while celebrating his latest marriage, or perhaps by assassination — in 453. Attila and his elder brother Bleda had succeeded their uncle, Rugila, as joint leaders of the Huns. After the early death of Bleda, Attila ruled alone, for a total of nearly 20 years as co-leader or sole leader. During his reign, he unified several other powerful tribes in Eastern and Central Europe, including the Ostrogoths, Bulgars and Alans, bringing them under his rule. In this, he seems to have been as much a statesman as he was a warlord. (Perhaps he inspired Otto von Bismark to do the same, over a thousand years later, when Bismark unified the Germanic independent states under the leadership of Prussia? )

Attila lived during the last days of the Western Roman Empire, a time when, increasingly, foreign mercenaries were employed by the state to protect the frontiers, and deals were made to pay what was essentially protection money to tribes that threatened the Pax Romana. At the time, Rome and its provinces were constantly under threat from Germanic tribes in the north and from nomadic tribes to the east, whose homeland was Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Huns seem to have been the most powerful of these, to the extent that Attila was able to threaten, first the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople, and later the Western Empire based in Rome. By all accounts, they were expert bowmen on horseback, giving them an edge over Roman infantry in battle. One Roman historian wrote that they “are almost glued to their horses” while another said they “live and sleep on their horses.”

Led by Attila and after many battles and skirmishes, they were finally defeated — or at least brought to a standstill — at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in northeastern France on June 20, 451, when the Huns faced a combined force of Romans and Visigoths. Within two years, Attila was dead and soon after the Huns disappeared from history. Almost. In the middle ages, several Hungarian writers portrayed the Huns positively as their “glorious ancestors.”

So, Scourge of God (as Attila was later referred to) or brilliant statesman? Either way, labeling him as an arch-conservative minimizes what we do know about him. Too bad almost all our information comes from those who had most to gain by vilifying him; I’d have been happy to buy him a beer and listen to his side of the story.