ABSTRACT
The fourth century CE was a crucial but murky period in the history of Inner Asia. Recent scholarly reconceptualisation of the origins of the Huns has important implications for study of the later Roman Empire. I examine what the Romans of the fourth century knew about the Huns and when they learnt it. The Latin evidence for this problem has been neglected because of a scholarly consensus that Roman writings on nomads were based on little actual knowledge of them, and instead recycled literary tropes and ethnographic clichés. I discuss methodological problems with this consensus and show that the account of the Huns in Ammianus Marcellinus has been misrepresented. I conclude that later-Roman accounts of fourth-century nomads deserve much greater scrutiny from historians of Inner Asia.
