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The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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THEIR WANDERINGS FROM THE ELBE TO THE DANUBE
Our authorities afford us scarcely any positive information concerning the departure of the Lombards from their possessions on the Lower Elbe; we are obliged to rely entirely on reasoning and conjecture. But the account in the Originj that hunger compelled the Lombards to leave Scoringa, may have been based on truth, as its pressure seems to have played no unimportant part at the time of the national migrations, especially in view of the rapid increase of the German races. Nevertheless, it was only a small portion of the people who then left their homes; this may be assumed from the appearance of power maintained by those who remained in their mother-country (the Bardi on the left bank of the Elbe and in Holstein) as well as from the histories in which the extraordinarily small number of roving Lombards is often commented on. We have then no further positive knowledge of the Lombards till they appear in Rugia, that is to say, north of the Danube, opposite to the Roman province of Noricum, in which region they must have arrived about the year 490. The fifth king of the Lombards, Gudeoc, was reigning at this period. The first, Agelmund, who was the first to be raised on a shield, must, as the people had already been wandering for some time, be placed somewhere in the middle of the fourth century, if we count four rulers to a century. As the Lombards were still regarded as dwelling on the lower Elbe in the year 165 A.D., the migration probably took place in the course of the third century. It is probable that the Semnones and the Burgundiones immediately bordering on them had just gone to the southwest, incited by the migrations of the Goths in the middle of the second century A.D., and the Lombards invaded the district to the right of the Elbe which had been deserted; that the Lombards proceeded west of the Elbe, as F. Bluhmek & and Förstemannl have asserted, resting their theory on quite uncertain and in part very arbitrary etymology, is improbable, as land for colonisation could scarcely have been won there without fighting powerful tribes.
The tradition of the Lombard folk-lore seems to point to the country east of the Elbe, but the story is very doubtful. Bluhme transfers the home of the Lombards to Moringen in Northeim, and connects it with a settlement of the Lombards in Westphalia.
In proof Bluhme brings forward the fact that Ptolemæuso knew the Lombards as neighbours of the Sugambri; but he overlooks the circumstance that these Lombards lived to the south of the Sugambri on the Rhine, and consequently not in Westphalia. Bluhme and after him Platner then alleges that the populations of Westphalia present coincidences in the names of families, the administration of the land and the later development of the law, with the Lüneburg district of the Elbe and Lübeck as likewise the ancient Soest-Lübeck law on many points recalls the Edictum Langobardorum. But it must be considered as a mistake to let the coincidence of individual principles of law and administration serve as arguments in ethnographical researches. For it is a known fact that for example the law and administration of the Anglo-Saxons and Lombards on many points, apart from the cases when a direct transmission may be supposed, show a similar development; whilst on the other hand, the language proves that the former belonged to the Low Germans and the latter to the High Germans, and therefore were not closely related peoples. In all these questions it is quite impossible for us to make a certain decision; Bluhme worked almost without the necessary materials to go upon, and the Saxon element which later invaded Westphalia and the lower Elbe had first to be identified and allowed for.
A Lombard Warrior
[400-491 A.D.]
It may be asserted with a degree of certainty that the migrating Lombards first spread themselves over the present mark of Brandenburg, and were then forced to go southwest by the Slavs who were advancing from the east, and to seek refuge in Bohemia, a land well protected on all sides by natural boundaries. It was here, perhaps, that the first king Agelmund, as the legend says, was raised on a shield. Now that an historically authenticated succession of kings begins, tradition also commences to assume a firmer character, and to approach more and more closely to real history. On the whole the story of Agelmund and his successor Lamissio is as yet completely wrapped in obscurity, for that which is related concerning the two kings is not a popular legend based on history, but nothing more than a fictitious development of the primitive myth of Skeaf which Leo has described in a very detailed and thorough manner. The gist of this widespread and variously localised myth is that a hero of unknown descent, arising from the water, comes to the assistance of a country in a time of great distress; and the story was transferred to Lombard history because in northern Italy the common Latin word lama (for piscina) was etymologically associated by the people with the name of Lamissio. These tales cannot be historically interpreted, and, for example, it would also be wrong to consider the battle with the Bulgarians recounted by Paulusp as an historical fact; but it is evident from this that the name of Bulgaria had not appeared before the end of the fifth century. We likewise learn nothing concerning the history of the Lombards under the next kings, Lethu and Hildeoc; under King Gudeoc, the fifth in succession, we find them again in the territory of the Rugii, where they had gone when the latter had been conquered and expelled by Odoacer in the years 487 and 488. This land of the Rugii extended, so far as we can gather from our scanty sources of information, somewhere between the modern Linz and Vienna, on the left bank of the Danube; the right bank of the river does not seem to have been included. Opposite lay Noricum, which at the same time was partly abandoned by Odoacer as untenable, and now, probably, immediately after the evacuation was occupied by the Boii established in Bohemia. The Lombards then had to content themselves with the far less inviting and more barren land of the Rugii—in all probability because they had formerly been established to the rear of Marcomannians, that is to say, in North Bohemia, and had proceeded southwards in their train.
THE LOMBARDS IN THE REGIONS OF THE DANUBE
[491-508 A.D.]
Unfortunately the history of the Lombard kingdom in Rugia is also shrouded in obscurity, inasmuch as our sources afford no positive information concerning it; for the story derived from the boastful Herulian account in Procopius,m according to which in the year 491 the Lombards had been tributary to the Heruli—which would have been during the sojourn in Rugia, as the Lombards first went there in 490 and are said to have lived there many years—must, according to Pallmann’sn convincing arguments, be regarded as a fiction. It may possibly be with truth that Procopius describes the Lombards as being already Arian Christians at this time, although the corrupted passages of the Gothic War can scarcely be considered as confirmation. According to the Origin,j the Lombards under King Tato wandered from Rugia to the distant plain called “Feld” by the barbarians, by which is probably meant the plains between the Theiss and Danube, as is shown by the remarkable passage in the Annales Einhardiq of the year 796. Here the Lombards remained for a period of about three years until war broke out between them and the Herulians, with whom they had formerly been on peaceful and friendly terms. We are well informed as to this war, through the Herulian account in Procopiusm and the Lombard account in the Origin; it is only to be regretted that legendary stories have intruded into both narratives. According to the former, the Herulians had only declared war out of sheer lust of doing and fighting; according to the Origin the strife was kindled because the daughter of King Tato had murdered a Herulian ambassador. It is remarkable that neither of the two nations attributed it to the enemy, but considered themselves as the originators; we must therefore assume that both reports have some truth in them, that both nations, Herulians as well as Lombards, were responsible for the outbreak of war. Further particulars are obscured by legend, and can no longer be ascertained. Both statements agree in the statement that the Herulians were completely defeated, and for the greater part destroyed; and we are further informed that their king, Rodulf, lost his life in the battle.