Lattimore, as a student of frontiers in general, quotes a scholar of the late Western Roman Empire who noted the same pattern there too, as “the pitiless collection of taxes and the helplessness of citizens before wealthy law-breakers” drove Roman citizens to seek the protection of Attila’s Huns.17 “In other words,” Lattimore adds, “there were times when the law and order of the barbarians was superior to those of civilization.”18
