Charaton

Charaton (Olympiodorus of Thebes: ''Χαράτων'') was one of the first kings of the Huns.

History

In the end of 412 or beginning of 413, Charaton received the Byzantine ambassador Olympiodorus sent by Honorius. Olympiodorus travelled to Charaton's kingdom by sea, but does not record whether the sea in question was the Black Sea or the Adriatic Sea. As the ''History'' deals exclusively with the Western Roman Empire, it was probably the Adriatic, and Olympiodorus visited them somewhere in the Pannonian Basin. Olympiodorus recounts;

"''Donatus and the Huns, and the skillfulness of their kings in shooting with the bow. The author relates that he himself was sent on a mission to them and Donatus, and gives a tragic account of his wanderings and perils by the sea. How Donatus, being deceived by an oath, was unlawfully put to death. How Charaton, the first of the kings, being incensed by the murder, was appeased by presents from the emperor.''"

Although some scholars such as E. A. Thompson and Hyun Jin Kim have read Donatus as being a previous ruler, others, such as Franz Altheim and Otto Maenchen-Helfen, reject this assumption. Maenchen-Helfen argues that the name ''Donatus'' was common in the Roman Empire and that Donatus may have been a Roman who fled the empire to live with the Huns, as others are known to have done.

Etymology

The name is found in Greek as Χαράτων (''Kharatōn''). Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen notes that the ''-ton'' element might be an artifact of the Greek transcription, and the name may actually have ended in ''-tom'', ''-ton'', ''-to'', ''-ta'', or ''-t''.

Omeljan Pritsak, following an earlier suggestion by A. Vámbéry, derived the root ''Chara-'' from Altaic ''xara'' - ''qara'', with the meaning of "black" and "great; northern". He derived the second part ''-ton'' from a Saka loanword into Turkic, > ''*taun'' > ''tōn'', "garment, clothing, mantel". Pritsak concluded that the name ''Qara-Ton'' (black clad; with black coat) was an intentionally cryptic term for horse, possibly related to Hunnic totemism.

Maenchen-Helfen noted that the above proposal is "phonetically sound", but questioned whether the word ''ton'' had been loaned into Turkic in the fifth century. He suggests that if Charaton did in fact mean "black coat", then it could have been the name of Charaton's clan or tribe rather than his personal name; he compares the Kyrgyz tribal name ''Bozton'' (Gray Coats).

F. Altheim suggested that the name is a title from ''*qara-tun'', meaning "black people", with black referencing the direction north.

Maenchen-Helfen also suggests an Iranian etymology as an potential alternative, with ''chara-'' deriving from a word akin to Parthian ''hara, xara'' (dark), as in the Parthian name Charaspes. He further notes that the ''-ton'' element is also found in the Scythian name Sardonius and the Ossetian name Syrdon.

References

Sources

*
*
*
*

{{Huns

Hunnic rulers
5th-century monarchs in Europe
5th-century Hunnic rulers