and if we were sufficiently conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the municipal dialects of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin of many terms which might, perhaps, be rejected by the classic purity of Rome. A numerous army constitutes but a small nation, and the powers of the Lombards were soon diminished by the retreat of twenty thousand Saxons, who scorned a dependent situation, and returned, after many bold and perilous adventures, to their native country.* The camp of Alboin was of formidable extent, but the extent of a camp would be easily circumscribed within the limits of a city; and its martial inhabitants must be thinly scattered over the face of a large country. When Alboin descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke of Friuli, with the command of the province and the people; but the prudent Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office, unless he had been permitted to choose, among the nobles of the Lombards, a sufficient number of familiest to form a perpetual colony of soldiers and subjects. In the progress of conquest, the same option could not be granted to the dukes of Brescia or Bergamo, of Pavia or Turin, of Spoleto or Beneventum; but each of these, and each of their col

fully consulted; but his system is, in some parts, too intricate and perplexed.-ED.]

* Paul, De Gest. Langobard. 1. 3, c. 5-7.

Paul, 1. 2, c. 9. He calls these families or generations by the Teutonic name of Faras, which is likewise used in the Lombard laws. The humble deacon was not insensible of the nobility of his own race. See 1. 4, c. 39. [What Goth has not reason to be proud of his lineage? The term faras denoted, in primæval nomade times, those who wandered or fared together. Its root is the Gothic færa, whence the Anglo-Saxons had their repan, the Germans their fahren, the Dutch their vaaren, the Italians their Faro di Messina, and we our thoroughfare, way-farer, ferry, &c. It first signified the moving of the person, and was afterwards extended (see Somner's Lexicon) by the wild wanderer, to the conveyance of his chattels with him. In Ingram's Saxon Chronicle (p. 178), rende is erroneously translated "forded." The modern use of the term is unquestionable; and as the Germans employ gefährte, originally a fellow-traveller, to denote generally a companion, so of old the Lombards applied their faras, or bands of wanderers, to express companies or families. F. Wachter, a name of repute in such inquiries, has given a long and learned dissertation on the word far (Allgem. Encyc. 41. 391-399), in which he alludes briefly to the Lombard use of it, and to its occurrence in the Frank name of Faramund (the Protector of families or races).-ED.]

leagues, settled in his appointed district with a band of followers who resorted to his standard in war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was free and honourable resigning the gifts and benefits which they had accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the jurisdiction of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom was punished with death, as a crime of military desertion. The posterity of the first conquerors struck a deeper root into the soil, which, by every motive of interest and honour, they were bound to defend. A Lombard was born the soldier of his king and his duke; and the civil assemblies of the nation displayed the banners, and assumed the appellation, of a regular army. Of this army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of injustice and rapine. Many of the most wealthy Italians were slain or banished; the remainder were divided among the strangers; and a tributary obligation was imposed (under the name of hospitality), of paying to the Lombards a third part of the fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid tenure. Either the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong and insolent guest; or the annual payment, a third of the produce, was exchanged by a more equitable transaction for an adequate proportion of landed property. Under these foreign masters, the business of agriculture, in the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate skill and industry by the labour of the slaves and natives. But the occupations of a pastoral life were more pleasing to the idleness of the barbarians. In the rich meadows of Venetia, they restored and improved the breed of horses for which that province had once been illustrious, and the Italians beheld with astonishment a

* Compare No. 3 and 177 of the laws of Rotharis.

+ Paul, 1. 2, c. 31, 32; 1. 3, c. 16. The laws of Rotharis, promulgated A.D. 643, do not contain the smallest vestige of this payment of thirds; but they preserve many curious circumstances of the state of Italy and the manners of the Lombards. The studs

of Dionysius of Syracuse, and his frequent victories in the Olympic games, had diffused among the Greeks the fame of the Venetian horses; but the breed was extinct in the time of Strabo (1. 5, p. 325). Gisulf obtained from his uncle generosarum equarum greges. Paul,

foreign race of oxen or buffaloes. The depopulation of Lombardy, and the increase of forests, afforded an ample range for the pleasures of the chase.† That marvellous art which teaches the birds of the air to acknowledge the voice, and execute the commands, of their master, had been unknown to the ingenuity of the Greeks and Romans.

1. 2, c. 9. The Lombards afterwards introduced caballi sylvatici—wild horses. Paul, 1. 4, c. 11. [See in ch. 40 (vol. iv, p. 301) the note on the Veneti of the circus, and that on Sicilian horses, ch. 41 (Ib. p. 370).—ED.] *Tunc (A.D. 596) primum, bubali in Italiam delati Italiæ populis miracula fuere (Paul Warnefrid, 1. 4, c. 11). The buffaloes, whose native climate appears to be Africa and India, are unknown to Europe, except in Italy, where they are numerous and useful. The ancients were ignorant of these animals, unless Aristotle (Hist. Animal. 1. 2, c. 1, p. 58, Paris, 1783), has described them as the wild oxen of Arachosia. See Buffon (Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi, and Supplement, tom. vi. Hist. Générale des Voyages, tom. i, p. 7. 481; ii, 105; iii, 291; iv, 234. 461; v, 193; vi. 491; viii, 400; x, 666. Pennant's Quadru peds, p. 24. Dictionnaire d'Hist. Naturelle, par Valmont de Bomare, tom. ii, p. 74). Yet I must not conceal the suspicion that Paul, by a vulgar error, may have applied the name of bubalus to the aurochs, or wild bull, of ancient Germany. [The vulgar error of giving the name of bubalus to the urus, was as old as the time of Pliny (8. 15). This animal is again mentioned by him (11. 45) as supplying the barbarians of the North with drinking-cups made from its horns. His urus was the urochs of the early Germans, now altered to auerochs (Adelung Wört. 1. 419). Ur was a primitive term in use among them (Goth. Jör. Ang.-Sax. eop) to mark pre-eminence in antiquity, greatness, strength, courage, &c. Macrobius confounded the names of countries when he wrote (Saturn. 6. 4) "Uri enim Gallica vox est, qua feri boves significantur." Gallia never had either the name or the animal. When Charlemagne wished to hunt it, he went to the Hartz mountains for the sport. It is now unknown in Germany, but still found in parts of former Poland. See ch. 41, vol. iv, p. 427.--ED.]

Consult the twenty-first Dissertation of Muratori.

Their ignorance is proved by the silence even of those who professedly treat of the arts of hunting and the history of animals. Aristotle (Hist. Animal. 1. 9, c. 36, tom. i, p. 586, and the notes of his last editor, M. Camus, tom. ii, p. 314), Pliny (Hist. Natur. 1. 10, c. 10), Ælian (De Natur. Animal. 1. 2, c. 42), and perhaps Homer (Odyss. 22. 302-306), describe with astonishment a tacit league and common chase between the hawks and the Thracian fowlers. [Gibbon cannot here mean that the art of employing falcons in the chase of other birds was unknown to the ancients; but that it was not carried by them to the degree of perfection in which it was practised by later generations. Beckmann (Hist. of Inventions, edit. Bohn, i. 200) quotes a passage in a work ascribed to Aristotle (De Mirabilibus Auscultat. c. 128), in which the sport is clearly described. From Elian's account, it appears that the Greeks had received their knowledge of this art

Scandinavia and Scythia produce the boldest and most tractable falcons:* they were tamed and educated by the roving inhabitants always on horseback and in the field. This favourite amusement of our ancestors was introduced by the barbarians into the Roman provinces; and the laws of Italy esteem the sword and the hawk as of equal dignity and importance in the hands of a noble Lombard.†

So rapid was the influence of climate and example, that the Lombards of the fourth generation surveyed with curiosity and affright the portraits of their savage forefathers. Their heads were shaven behind, but the shaggy locks hung over their eyes and mouth, and a long beard represented the name and character of the nation. Their dress consisted of loose linen garments, after the fashion of the AngloSaxons, which were decorated, in their opinion, with broad stripes of variegated colours. The legs and feet were clothed in long hose, and open sandals; and even in the security of peace a trusty sword was constantly girt to their side. Yet this strange apparel, and horrid aspect, often concealed a gentle and generous disposition; and as through the Persians, from the Indians. Its early use in Oriental lands is thought by some to be intimated in the Book of Baruch (3. 17), where mention is made of "those who have their pastime with the fowls of the air." One of the first notices of it among the Gothic races, is in the Annals of the Franks, where it is recorded that Merovæus ordered his dogs, horses, and birds, to be taken to the Abbey of Tours for his amusement. In the twelfth century the emperor Frederic II. wrote a book in Latin, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus. This curious MS. was first printed at Augsburg in 1596, and in 1788-9 it was reprinted at Leipzig, with an elaborate commentary by J. G. Schneider. There is a MS. in the Bibl. Mazarine, which contains two-thirds more than has yet been published.-ED.] * Particularly the gerfaut or gyrfalcon, of the size of a small eagle. See the animated description of M. de Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. xvi, p. 239, &c.

Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i, part 2, p. 129. This is the sixteenth law of the emperor Lewis the Pious. His father, Charlemagne, had falconers in his household as well as huntsmen. (Mémoires sur l'Ancienne Chevalerie, par M. de St. Palaye, tom. iii, p. 175.) I observe in the laws of Rotharis a more early mention of the art of hawking (No. 322), and in Gaul, in the fifth century, it is celebrated by Sidonius Apollinaris among the talents of Avitus (202-207).

The epitaph of Droctulf (Paul, 1. 3, c. 19) may be applied to many of his countrymen :

Terribilis visu facies, sed corde benignus

Longaque robusto pectore barba fuit.

The portraits of the old Lombards might still be seen in the palace of Monza, twelve miles from Milan, which had been founded or restored

*

soon as the rage of battle had subsided, the captives and subjects were sometimes surprised by the humanity of the victor. The vices of the Lombards were the effect of passion, of ignorance, of intoxication; their virtues are the more laudable, as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social manners, nor imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. I should not be apprehensive of deviating from my subject, if it were in my power to delineate the private life of the conquerors of Italy; and I shall relate with pleasure the adventurous gallantry of Autharis, which breathes the true spirit of chivalry and romance. After the loss of his promised bride, a Merovingian princess, he sought in marriage the daughter of the king of Bavaria; and Garibald accepted the alliance of the Italian monarch Impatient of the slow Impatient of the slow progress of negotiation, the ardent lover escaped from his palace and visited the court of Bavaria in the train of his own embassy. At the public audience, the unknown stranger advanced to the throne, and informed Garibald, that the ambassador was indeed the minister of state, but that he alone was the friend of Autharis, who had trusted him with the delicate commission of making a faithful report of the charms of his spouse. Theudelinda was summoned to undergo this important examination; and after a pause of silent rapture, he hailed her as the queen of Italy, and humbly requested, that, according to the custom of the nation, she would present a cup of wine to the first of her new subjects. By the command of her father she obeyed: Autharis received the cup in his turn, and, in restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and drew his own finger over his face and lips. In the evening, Theudelinda imparted to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of the stranger, and was comforted by the assurance, that such boldness could proceed only from the king her husband, who by his beauty and courage, appeared worthy of her love. The ambassadors were dismissed; no sooner did they reach the confines of Italy, than Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted his battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and dexterity.

by queen Theudelinda (1. 4. 22, 23). See Muratori, tom. i, dissertaz. 23, p. 300. *The story of Autharis and Theudelinda is related by Paul, 1. 3, c. 29. 34, and any fragment of Bavarian antiquity excites the indefatigable diligence of the count de Buat. Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. xi, p. 595—635; tom. xii, p. 1–53.