Book 1

Chapter VIII.

At this point, the men of old tell a silly story that the Wandals coming to Godan (Wotan) besought him for victory over the Winnili and that he answered that he would give the victory to those whom he saw first at sunrise; that then Gambara went to Frea (Freja) wife of Godan and asked for victory for the Winnili, and that Frea gave her counsel that the women of the Winnili should take down their hair and arrange it upon the face like a beard, and that in the early morning they should be present with their husbands and in like manner station themselves to be seen by Godan from the quarter in which he had been wont to look through his window toward the east. And so it was done. And when Godan saw them at sunrise he said: "Who are these long-beards?" And then Frea induced him to give the victory to those to whom he had given the name.[1] And thus Godan gave the victory to the Winnili. These things are worthy of laughter and are to be held of no account.[2] For victory is due, not to the power of men, but it is rather furnished from heaven.

[1] A still livelier description of this scene is given in the '' Origo Gentis Langobardorum'' (see Appendix 11) from which Paul took the story. " When it became bright and the sun was rising, Frea, Godan's wife, turned the bed around where her husband was lying and put his face toward the east, and awakened him, and as he looked he saw the Winnili and their wives, how their hair hung about their faces. And he said: " Who are these longbeards?" Then spoke Frea to Godan: "My lord, thou hast given them the name, now give them also the victory." Mommsen remarks (pp. 65, 66) that Paul has spoiled the instructive story why one does better to put his business in the hands of the wife than of the husband, or rather that he has misunderstood the account. The fable rests upon this, that Godan, according to the position of his bed, looked toward the west upon awakening, and that the Wandals camped on the west side and the Winnili upon the east. The true-hearted god could then appropriately promise victory to his Wandal worshippers in the enigmatical sentence, that he would take the part of those upon whom his eyes should first fall on the morning of the day of the battle; but as his cunning wife turned his bed around, he and his favorites were entrapped thereby. This can be easily inferred from the Origo. It may be asked what the women's hair arranged like a beard has to do with Godan's promise. Evidently, the affair was so planned that the astonishment of the god should be noted when he looked upon these extraordinary long-beards in place of the Wandals he had supposed would be there; perhaps indeed his cunning wife thus drew from her husband an expression which put it beyond doubt that he actually let his glance fall in the morning upon the Winnili. That the account in the Origo was a Latin translation of a German alliterative epic poem—see Appendix II.
[2] Paul's narrative of the origin of the name of Langobards gives the best example of the manner in which he has treated the legends which have come down to him. The transposition of the direct speech into the indirect, the introduction of the phrase '' to preserve their liberty by arms," and similar classical phrases, the new style and historical character given to the story, speak for themselves ; but still the Langobard, in treating of the origin of the proud name could not disown his national character and even where "the ridiculous story told by the ancients " sets historical treatment at defiance, he still does not suppress it (Mommsen, 65).


Chapter IX.

It is certain, however, that the Langobards were afterwards so called on account of the length of their beards untouched by the knife, whereas at first they had been called Winnili; for according to their language "lang" means " long" and " bart " "beard." [1] Wotan indeed, whom by adding a letter they called Godan [2] is he who among the Romans is called Mercury, and he is worshiped by all the peoples of Germany as a god, though he is deemed to have existed, not about these times, but long before, and not in Germany, but in Greece.

[1] This derivation comes from Isidore of Seville. He says, " The Langobards were commonly so-called from their flowing and never shaven beards" (Etym., IX, 2, 94, Zeuss, 109). Schmidt, although he believes (p. 43) that the change of name was a historical fact, rejects (44, note 1) this definition, since he considers that the earlier name of the people was simply "Biards," to which "lang" was afterwards prefixed. Another proposed derivation is from the Old High German word barta, an axe, the root which appears in " halbert" and "partizan" (Hodgkin, V, 84). Another authority. Dr. Lennhard Schmitz (see Langobardi in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography) argues for its derivation from the root bord, which we have preserved in the word "sea-board" and he contends that the Langobards received their name from the long, flat meadows of the Elbe where they had their dwelling. As we adopt one or the other of these suggestions, the Langobards will have been the long-bearded men, the long-halbert-bearing men, or the long-shore-men. Kodgkin (V, 85) as well as Bruckner (p. 33) prefers the interpretation given in the text, " Long-beards." Bruckner remarks that the name of the people stands in close relation to the worship of Wotan who bore the name of the "long-bearded" or "gray-bearded," and that the Langobard name Ansegranus, " He with the beard of the Gods" showed that the Langobards had this idea of their chief deity. He further shows that the long halbert or spear was not a characteristic weapon of the Langobards. He also (p. 30) considers Koegel's opinion (p. 109) that the Langobards adopted the worship of Wotan from the surrounding peoples after their migration to the Danube is not admissable, since the neighboring Anglo-Saxons worshiped Wotan long before their migration to Britain as their highest god. [2] Or Guodan according to other MSS.


Chapter X.

The Winnili therefore, who are also Langobards, having joined battle with the Wandals, struggle fiercely, since it is for the glory of freedom, and win the victory. And afterwards, having suffered in this same province of Scoringa, great privation from hunger, their minds were filled with dismay.


Chapter XI.

Departing from this place, while they were arranging to pass over into Mauringa, [1] the Assipitti [2] block their way, denying to them by every means a passage through their territories. The Langobards moreover, when they beheld the great forces of their enemies, did not dare engage them on account of the smallness of their army, and while they were deciding what they ought to do, necessity at length hit upon a plan. They pretend that they have in their camps Cynocephali, that is, men with dogs' heads. They spread the rumor among the enemy that these men wage war obstinately, drink human blood and quaff their own gore if they cannot reach the foe. And to give faith to this assertion, the Langobards spread their tents wide and kindle a great many fires in their camps. The enemy being made credulous when these things are heard and seen, dare not now attempt the war they threatened.

[1] Mauringa is mentioned by the Cosmographer of Ravenna (I, 11) as the land east of the Elbe. Maurungani appears to be another name of the great country of the Elbe which lies '' in front of the Danes, extends to Dacia and includes Baias, Baiohaim." Or perhaps Mauringa was merely the name of the maurland or moorland east of the Elbe (Zeuss, 472). In the Traveler's Song, which had its origin in the German home of the Angles about the end of the 6th century, a Suevian race in Holstein bears the name of Myrginge, and this song also mentions the Headhobards (perhaps identical with the Langobards) who fight with the Danes in Zealand (Schmidt, 34, 47). See also Waitz.
[2] Hodgkin (V, 92) conjectures that possibly the Assipitti are the Usipetes mentioned in Tacitus' Annals (I, 51). See Caesar B. G. IV, l, 4. Bluhme (see Hodgkin, V, 141) places them in the neighborhood of Asse, a wooded height near Wolfenbuttel. Such identifications of locality are highly fanciful.


Chapter XII.

They had, however, among them a very powerful man, to whose strength they trusted that they could obtain without doubt what they wanted. They offered him alone to fight for all. They charged the Langobards to send any one of their own they might wish, to go forth with him to single combat upon this condition, to wit; that if their warrior should win the victory, the Langobards would depart the way they had come, but if he should be overthrown by the other, then they would not forbid the Langobards a passage through their own territories. And when the Langobards were in doubt what one of their own they should send against this most warlike man, a certain person of servile rank offered himself of his own will, and promised that he would engage the challenging enemy upon this condition : that if he took the victory from the enemy, they would take away the stain of slavery from him and from his offspring. Why say more? They joyfully promised to do what he had asked. Having engaged the enemy, he fought and conquered, and won for the Langobards the means of passage, and for himself and his descendants, as he had desired, the rights of liberty.


Chapter XIII

Therefore the Langobards, coming at last into Mauringa, in order that they might increase the number of their warriors, confer liberty upon many whom they deliver from the yoke of bondage, and that the freedom of these may be regarded as established, they confirm it in their accustomed way by an arrow, uttering certain words of their country in confirmation of the fact.[1] Then the Langobards went forth from Mauringa and came to Golanda, [2] where, having remained some time, they are afterwards said to have possessed for some years Anthaib [3] and Banthaib, [4] and in like manner Vurgundaib, [5] which we can consider are names of districts or of some kinds of places. [6]

[1] Complete emancipation appears to have been granted only among the Franks and the Langobards (Schmidt, 47 note 3). This system of incorporating into the body of their warriors and freemen, the peoples whom they subjugated in their wanderings, made of the Langobards a composite race, and it may well be that their language as well as their institutions were greatly affected by this admixture of foreign stock (Hartmann, II, pp. 8,9), and that their High-German characteristics are due to this fact. This system of emancipation also had an important effect in furthering the union of the two races, Langobard and Roman, after the Italian conquest (Hartmann, II, 2, 15). [2] Schmidt thinks this was further east, perhaps on the right bank of the Oder (p. 49). He considers (see Hodgkin, V, 143) that the name is the equivalent of Gotland and means simply '' good land.'' Colanda is generally considered, however, to be Gothland, and as the Langobards were found in Pannonia in the year 166 at the time of the war with Marcus Aurelius, and as the Goths emigrated to the Euxine probably about the middle of the second century, Hodgkin (V, 101) considers it probable that the Langobards at this time were hovering about the skirts of the Carpathians rather than that they had returned to Bardengau. The fact that when they were next heard from, they were occupying Rugiland east of Noricum, on the north shore of the Danube, confirms this view. Zeuss takes an alternative reading for Golanda not well supported by manuscript authority, "Rugulanda," and suggests that it may be the coast opposite the isle of Rugen (Hodgkin, 141).
[3] Anthaib, according to the improbable conjecture of Zeuss, is the pagus or district of the Antae who, on the authority of Ptolemy and Jordanes were placed somewhere in the Ukraine in the countries of the Dniester and Dnieper (Hodgkin, p. 141). Schmidt (p. 49) connects Anthaib through the Aenenas of the " Traveler's Song" with Bavaria. These are mere guesses.
[4] Schmidt connects Banthaib with the Boii and Bohemia (49, 50).
[5] Zeuss connects Vurgundaib or Burgundaib with the Urugundi of Zosimiis which he seems inclined to place in Red Russia between the Vistula and Bug. These names, he thinks, lead us in the direction of the Black Sea far into the eastern steppes and he connects this eastward march of the Langobards with their alleged combats with the Bulgarians (Hodgkin, V, p. 141). Bluhme in his monograph (Gens Langobardorum Bonn, 1868) thinks that Burgundaib was the territory evacuated by the Burgundians when they moved westward to the Middle Rhine (Hodgkin, V, p. 142), and instead of the eastern migration he makes the Langobards wander westward toward the Rhine, following a passage of Ptolemy which places them near the Sigambri. He believes that this is confirmed by the Chronicon Gothanum which says that they stayed long at Patespruna or Paderborn and contends for a general migration of the tribe to Westphalia, shows the resemblance in family names and legal customs between Westphalia and Bardengau. Schmidt opposes Bluhme's Westphalian theory which indeed appears to have slender support and he more plausibly connects Burgundaib (p. 49) with the remnant of the Burgundians that remained in the lands east of the Elbe. Luttmersen (Die Spuren der Langobarden, Hanover, 1889) thinks that Burgundaib means '' the valley of forts,'' and was perhaps in the region of the Rauhes Alp in Wurtemberg; he notes the fact that the Swiss in Thurgau and St. Gall called an old wall built by an unknown hand "Langobardenmauer" and he claims that the Langobards were members of the Alamannic confederacy which occupied Suabia. No historical evidence of this appears (Hodgkin, V, 145).
[6] Names which have a termination aib are derived from the Old-High-German eiba (canton), the division of a state or population (Schmidt, 49). The Latin word pagus, a district, canton, was here used by Paul to designate these subdivisions instead of the word aldonus or aldones of the Origo from which Paul took this statement. This word aldonus comes from aldius or aldio the "half-free," referring to the condition of serfdom or semi-slavery in which the people dwelt in these lands. Hodgkin thinks (V, 94) the Origo means that the Langobards were in a condition of dependence on some other nation, when they occupied these districts. It seems more probable that these districts were so called because their inhabitants were subjected by the Langobards to a condition of semi-servitude, tilling the land for the benefit of their masters as was afterwards done with the Roman population of Italy (Schmidt, 50). The migrations described by modern German scholars are mostly hypothetical. The fact is, it is idle to guess where were the different places mentioned by Paul or when the Langobards migrated from one to the other. That people however may well have taken part (Hodgkin, V, 88) in the movement of the German tribes southward which brought on the Marcommanic war under Marcus Aurelius, for in a history written by Peter the Patrician, Justinian's ambassador to Theodahad (Fragment, VI, p. 124 of the Bonn. ed.) we are informed that just before that war 6,000 Langobards and Obii having crossed the Danube to invade Pannonia were put to rout by the Roman cavalry under Vindex and the infantry under Candidus, whereupon the barbarians desisted from their invasion and sent as ambassadors to Aelius Basaus, who was then administering Pannonia, Vallomar, king of the Marcommani, and ten others, one for each tribe. Peace was made, and the barbarians returned home. These events occurred about A. D. 165. (Hodgkin, V, 88.) It is clear from this that the Langobards had left the Elbe for the Danube as allies or subjects of their old masters, the Marcommani. Where the home was to which they returned can hardly be determined. Hodgkin believes that they withdrew to some place not far distant from Pannonia, while Zeuss (p. 471), Wiese (p. 38) and Schmidt (35, 36) believe that they did not depart permanently from their original abodes on the Elbe until the second half of the fourth century so that according to this view they must have returned to these original abodes. It is evident that a considerable number of the Langobards must have lived a long time on the lower Elbe - the names and institutions which have survived in Bardengau bear evidence of this. It is, however, highly probable that when the bulk of the nation migrated, a considerable part remained behind and afterwards became absorbed by the Saxon tribes in the neighborhood, while the emigrants alone retained the name of Langobards (Hartmann, II, part I, 5). After the Marcommanic war, information from Greek or Roman writers as to the fortunes of the Langobards is entirely lacking and for a space of three hundred years their name disappears from history.