Part 2

We must now return to the Frankish chronicles, to Fredegar's and Gesta regum Francorum, where the theory of the descent from Troy of a Teutonic tribe is presented for the first time, and thus renews the agitation handed down from antiquity, which attempted to make all ancient history a system of events radiating from Troy as their centre. I believe I am able to point out the sources of all the statements made in these chronicles in reference to this subject, and also to find the very kernel out of which the illusion regarding the Trojan birth of the Franks grew.

As above stated, Fredegar admits that Virgil is the earliest authority for the claim that the Franks are descended from Troy. Fredegar's predecessor, Gregorius of Tours, was ignorant of it, and, as already shown, the word Franks does not occur anywhere in Virgil. The discovery that he nevertheless gave information about the Franks and their origin must therefore have been made or known in the time intervening between Gregorius' chronicle and Fredegar's. Which, then, can be the passage in Virgil's poems in which the discoverer succeeded in finding the proof that the Franks were Trojans? A careful examination of all the circumstances connected with the subject leads to the conclusion that the passage is in Æneis, lib. i., 242 ff.:

"Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis,
Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus
Regna Liburnorum, et fontem superare Timavi;
Unde per ora novem vasto eum murmere montis
It mare proruptum, et pelago premit arva sonanti.
Hic tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit
Teucrorum."

"Antenor having escaped from amidst the Greeks, could with safety penetrate the Illyrian Gulf and the inmost realms of Liburnia, and overpass the springs of Timavus, whence, through nine mouths, with loud echoing from the mountain, it bursts away, a sea impetuous, and sweeps the fields with a roaring deluge. Yet there he built the city of Padua and established a Trojan settlement."

The nearest proof at hand, that this is really the passage which was interpreted as referring to the ancient history of the Franks, is based on the following circumstances:

Gregorius of Tours had found in the history of Sulpicius Alexander accounts of violent conflicts, on the west bank of the Rhine, between the Romans and Franks, the latter led by the chiefs Markomir and Sunno (Greg., Hist., ii. 9).

From Gregorius, Gesta regum Francorum has taken both these names. According to Gesta, the Franks, under the command of Markomir and Sunno, emigrate from Pannonia, near the Moeotian marshes, and settle on the Rhine. The supposition that they had lived in Pannonia before their coming to the Rhine, the author of Gesta had learned from Gregorius. In Gesta, Markomir is made a son of the Trojan Priam, and Sunno a son of the Trojan Antenor.

From this point of view, Virgil's account of Antenor's and his Trojans' journey to Europe from fallen Troy refers to the emigration of the father of the Frankish chief Sunno at the head of a tribe of Franks. And as Gesta's predecessor, the so-called Fredegar, appeals to Virgil as his authority for this Frankish emigration, and as the wanderings of Antenor are nowhere else mentioned by the Roman poet, there can be no doubt that the lines above quoted were the very ones which were regarded as the Virgilian evidence in regard to a Frankish emigration from Troy.

But how did it come to be regarded as an evidence?

Virgil says that Antenor, when he had escaped the Achivians, succeeded in penetrating Illyricos sinus, the very heart of Illyria. The name Illyricum served to designate all the regions inhabited by kindred tribes extending from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube and from the Danube to the Adriatic Sea and Hæmus (cp. Marquardt Röm. Staatsverwalt, 295). To Illyricum belonged the Roman provinces Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia, and the Pannonians were an Illyrian tribe. In Pannonia Gregorius of Tours had located the Franks in early times. Thus Antenor, with his Trojans, on their westward journey, traverses the same regions from which, according to Gregorius, the Franks had set out for the Rhine.

Virgil also says that Antenor extended his journeys to the Liburnian kingdoms (regna Liburnorum). From Servius' commentary on this passage, the middle age knew that the Liburnian kingdoms were Rhetia and Vindelicia (Rhetia Vindelici ipsi sunt Liburni). Rhetia and Vindelicia separate Pannonia from the Rhine. Antenor, accordingly, takes the same route toward the West as the Franks must have taken if they came from Pannonia to the Rhine.

Virgil then brings Antenor to a river, which, it is true, is called Timavus, but which is described as a mighty stream, coming thundering out of a mountainous region, where it has its source, carrying with it a mass of water which the poet compares with a sea, forming before it reaches the sea a delta, the plains of which are deluged by the billows, and finally emptying itself by many outlets into the ocean. Virgil says nine; but Servius interprets this as meaning many: "finitus est numerus pro infinito".

We must pardon the Frankish scribes for taking this river to be the Rhine; for if a water-course is to be looked for in Europe west of the land of the Liburnians, which answers to the Virgilian description, then this must be the Rhine, on whose banks the ancestors of the Franks for the first time appear in history.

Again, Virgil tells us that Antenor settled near this river and founded a colony - Patavium - on the low plains of the delta. The Salian Franks acquired possession of the low and flat regions around the outlets of the Rhine (Insula Batavorum) about the year 287, and also of the land to the south as far as to the Scheldt; and after protracted wars the Romans had to leave them the control of this region. By the very occupation of this low country, its conquerors might properly be called Batavian Franks. It is only necessary to call attention to the similarity of the words Patavi and Batavi, in order to show at the same time that the conclusion could scarcely be avoided that Virgil had reference to the immigration of the Franks when he spoke of the wanderings of Antenor, the more so, since from time out of date the pronunciation of the initials B and P have been interchanged by the Germans. In the conquered territory the Franks founded a city (Amminan. Marc., xvii. 2, 5).

Thus it appears that the Franks were supposed to have migrated to the Rhine under the leadership of Antenor. The first Frankish chiefs recorded, after their appearance there, are Markomir and Sunno. From this the conclusion was drawn that Sunno was Antenor's son; and as Markomir ought to be the son of some celebrated Trojan chief, he was made the son of Priam. Thus we have explained Fredegar's statement that Virgil is his authority for the Trojan descent of these Franks. This seemed to be established for all time.

The wars fought around the Moeotian marshes between the emperor Valentinianus, the Alamanni, and the Franks, of which Gesta speaks, are not wholly inventions of the fancy. The historical kernel in this confused semi-mythical narrative is that Valentinianus really did fight with the Alamanni, and that the Franks for some time were allies of the Romans, and came into conflict with those same Alamanni (Ammian. Marc., libs. xxx., xxxi.). But the scene of these battles was not the Moeotian marshes and Pannonia, as Gesta supposes, but the regions on the Rhine.

The unhistorical statement of Gregorius that the Franks came from Pannonia is based only on the fact that Frankish warriors for some time formed a Sicambra cohors, which about the year 26 was incorporated with the Roman troops stationed in Pannonia and Thracia. The cohort is believed to have remained in Hungary and formed a colony, where Buda now is situated. Gesta makes Pannonia extend from the Moeotian marshes to Tanais, since, according to Gregorius and earlier chroniclers, these waters were the boundary between Europe and Asia, and since Asia was regarded as a synonym of the Trojan empire. Virgil had called the Trojan kingdom Asia: Postquam res Asiæ Priamique evertere gentem, &c., (Æneid, iii. 1).

Thus we have exhibited the seed out of which the fable about the Trojan descent of the Franks grew into a tree spreading its branches over all Teutonic Europe, in the same manner as the earlier fable, which was at least developed if not born in Sicily, in regard to the Trojan descent of the Romans had grown into a tree overshadowing all the lands around the Mediterranean, and extending one of its branches across Gaul to Britain and Ireland. (The first son of the Britons, "Brutus," was, according to Galfred, great-grandson of Æneas, and migrated from Alba Longa to Ireland!)

So far as the Gauls are concerned, the incorporation of Cis-Alpine Gaul with the Roman Empire, and the Romanising of the Gauls dwelling there, had at an early day made way for the belief that they had the same origin and were of the same blood as the Romans. Consequently they too were Trojans. This view, encouraged by Roman politics, gradually found its way to the Gauls on the other side of the Rhine; and even before Cæsar's time the Roman senate had in its letters to the Æduans, often called them the "brothers and kinsmen" of the Romans (fratres consanguineique - Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., i. 33, 2). Of the Avernians Lucanus sings (i. 427): Averni ... ausi Latio se fingere fratres, sanguine ab Iliaco populi.

Thus we see that when the Franks, having made themselves masters of the Romanised Gaul, claimed a Trojan descent, then this was the repetition of a history of which Gaul for many centuries previously had been the scene. After the Frankish conquest the population of Gaul consisted for the second time of two nationalities unlike in language and customs, and now as before it was a political measure of no slight importance to bring these two nationalities as closely together as possible by the belief in a common descent. The Roman Gauls and the Franks were represented as having been one people in the time of the Trojan war. After the fall of the common fatherland they were divided into two separate tribes, with separate destinies, until they refound each other in the west of Europe, to dwell together again in Gaul. This explains how it came to pass that, when they thought they had found evidence of this view in Virgil, this was at once accepted, and was so eagerly adopted that the older traditions in regard to the origin and migrations of the Franks were thrust aside and consigned to oblivion. History repeats itself a third time when the Normans conquered and became masters of that part of Gaul which after them is called Normandy. Dudo, their chronicler, says that they regarded themselves as being ex Antenore progenitos, descendants of Antenor. This is sufficient proof that they had borrowed from the Franks the tradition in regard to their Trojan descent.