Western Emperor Valentinian III sends an embassy…

Western Emperor Valentinian III sends an embassy to Attila, the purpose being a long-running dispute over spoils of war during the Danube offensive (441–442).

Attila claims his lost property, but Valentinian and Flavius Aetius (magister militum) refuse this request.

Flavius Orestes, a Roman aristocrat, is sent to Attila's court and becomes a high-ranking secretary (notarius).

He is the father of the yet-unborn future emperor Romulus Augustulus.

Theodosius II also sends an embassy to Attila; Priscus of Panium, envoy for the Eastern Roman Empire, records one of few eyewitness accounts of Hun kingdom.

Priscus, who visits Attila's headquarters in Wallachia in company with the Roman embassy in 449, describes him as a short, squat man with a large head, deep-set eyes, flat nose, and a thin beard.

According to the historians, Attila, though of an irritable, blustering, and truculent disposition, is a very persistent negotiator and by no means pitiless.

When Priscus attends a banquet given by him, he notices that Attila is served off wooden plates and eats only meat, whereas his chief lieutenants dine off silver platters loaded with dainties.

No description of his qualities as a general survives, but his successes before the invasion of Gaul show him to have been an outstanding commander.