Gepids in the context of "Sava"

The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time. By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, causing the westwards movement of Goths and Alans. By 430, they had established a vast, but short-lived, empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman empire in Europe. Either under Hunnic hegemony, or fleeing from it, several central and eastern European peoples established kingdoms in the region, including not only Goths and Alans, but also Vandals, Gepids, Heruli, Suebians and Rugians.

The Huns, especially under their King Attila, made frequent and devastating raids into the Eastern Roman Empire. In 451, they invaded the Western Roman province of Gaul, where they fought a combined army of Romans and Visigoths at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, and in 452, they invaded Italy. After the death of Attila in 453, the Huns ceased to be a major threat to Rome and lost much of their empire following the Battle of Nedao (c. 454). Descendants of the Huns, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighboring populations to the south, east, and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia from about the 4th to 6th centuries. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.

Attila (/əˈtɪlə/ ə-TIL-ə or /ˈætɪlə/ AT-il-ə; c. 406 – 453), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in early 453. He was also the leader of an empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Gepids, among others, in Central and Eastern Europe.

As nephews to Rugila, Attila and his elder brother Bleda succeeded him to the throne in 435, ruling jointly until the death of Bleda in 445. During his reign, Attila was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans but was unable to take Constantinople. In 441, he led an invasion of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, the success of which emboldened him to invade the West. He also attempted to conquer Roman Gaul (modern France), crossing the Rhine in 451 and marching as far as Aurelianum (Orléans), before being stopped in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

The Heruli (also Eluri, Eruli, Herules, Herulians) were one of the smaller Germanic peoples of Late Antiquity, known from records in the third to sixth centuries AD. The best recorded group of Heruli established a kingdom north of the Middle Danube, probably including the area north of present day Vienna. This kingdom was a neighbour to several other small and short-lived kingdoms in the late 5th century and early 6th century, including those of the Sciri, Rugii, Danubian Suebi, and Gepids. After the conquest of this Heruli kingdom by the Lombards in 508, splinter groups moved to Sweden, Ostrogothic Italy, and present-day Serbia, which was under Eastern Roman control.

The Danubian Heruli are generally equated to the "Elouri" who lived near the Sea of Azov during the late 3rd or early 4th century, and are believed to have migrated westwards. In 267-270 these Elouri took part together with Goths and other eastern European peoples in two massive raids into Roman provinces in the Balkans and Aegean Sea, attacking not only by land, but notably also by sea. The equation of these "ELuRi" with the "ERuLi" was made by several Byzantine authors, and is still widely accepted although some scholars such as Ellegård consider this equation uncertain, and propose that the Heruli homeland lay elsewhere. For example, because a group of 6th century Heruli moved from the Danube to Scandinavia, some scholars believe that the Heruli had their earliest origins in Scandinavia. There are also proposals that there were Heruli kingdoms in several parts of Europe, already in the 3rd and 4th century, perhaps with common origins in the north. One proposal, based upon indirect evidence, is that there was a "Western Heruli" settlement based near the Lower Rhine, because in 286 AD, only a few years after the eastern raids, the Heruli were defeated in an attack on Roman Gaul.

The barbarian invasions of the third century (212–305) constituted an uninterrupted period of raids within the borders of the Roman Empire, conducted for purposes of plunder and booty by armed peoples belonging to populations gravitating along the northern frontiers: Picts, Caledonians, and Saxons in Britain; the Germanic tribes of Frisii, Saxons, Franks, Alemanni, Burgundians, Marcomanni, Quadi, Lugii, Vandals, Juthungi, Gepids and Goths (Tervingi in the west and Greuthungi in the east), the Dacian tribes of the Carpi and the Sarmatian tribes of Iazyges, Roxolani and Alans, as well as Bastarnae, Scythians, Borani and Heruli along the Rhine-Danube rivers and the Black Sea.

Since the time of Marcus Aurelius during the Marcomannic Wars (166/167-189), Germanic-Sarmatian tribes had not exerted such strong pressure along the northern borders of the Roman Empire.

The Avar–Byzantine wars were a series of conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and the Avar Khaganate. The conflicts were initiated in 568, after the Avars arrived in Pannonia, and claimed all the former land of the Gepids and Lombards as their own. This led to an unsuccessful attempt to seize the city of Sirmium from Byzantium, which had previously retaken it from the Gepids. Most subsequent conflicts came as a result of raids by the Avars, or their subject Slavs, into the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine Empire.

The Avars usually raided the Balkans when the Byzantine Empire was distracted elsewhere, typically in its frequent wars with the Sassanid Empire in the East. As a result, they often raided without resistance for long periods of time, before Byzantine troops could be freed from other fronts to be sent on punitive expeditions. This happened during the 580s and 590s, where Byzantium was initially distracted in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 572–591, but then followed up by a series of successful campaigns that pushed the Avars back.

Hungary in its modern (post-1946) borders roughly corresponds to the Great Hungarian Plain (the Carpathian Basin) in Central Europe.

During the Iron Age, it was located at the crossroads between the cultural spheres of Scythian tribes (such as Agathyrsi, Cimmerians), the Celtic tribes (such as the Scordisci, Boii and Veneti), Dalmatian tribes (such as the Dalmatae, Histri and Liburni) and the Germanic tribes (such as the Lugii, Marcomanni). In 44 BC, the Sarmatians, Iazyges moved into the Great Hungarian Plain. In 8 AD, the western part of the territory (the so-called Transdanubia) of modern Hungary formed part of Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire. Roman control collapsed with the Hunnic invasions of 370–410, the Huns created a significant empire based in present-day Hungary. In 453 they reached the height of their expansion under Attila the Hun. After the death of Attila, the empire collapsed in 455, and Pannonia became part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom. The western part of the Carpathian Basin was occupied by the Longobards and the eastern part by the Gepids. In 567, the Avars occupied the territory ruled by the Gepids. In 568, the Longobards moved to Italy from Transdanubia, and the Avars also occupied that territory, Khagan Bayan I established the Avar Khaganate. The Avars were defeated by the Franks and Bulgars, and their steppe-empire ended around 822.