This is the man that even contemporaries referred to as THE LAST ROMAN.  Only son of General Gaudentius, born in Durostorum, a frontier fortress on the Danube, Aetius, he wound up in the West after his father fought under Emperor Theodosius at the Frigidus.  From there he found himself on a fast track that would send him as a hostage to Alaric and the Goths, and from there to Uldin and the Huns where he would grow up amongst Rome's most fearsome enemies.  When he was released by the Huns in his early 30's and returned to Ravenna, there was no man that had the knowledge of those enemies like Aetius, something that the Empress, Galla Placidia, knew all too well, as did his enemies at court...