Book 1

Chapter XIV.

Meanwhile the leaders Ibor and Aio, who had conducted the Langobards from Scandinavia and had ruled them up to this time, being dead, the Langobards, now unwilling to remain longer under mere chiefs (dukes) ordained a king for themselves like other nations. [1] Therefore Agelmund, [2] the son of Aio first reigned over them [3] tracing out of his pedigree the stock of the Gungingi which among them was esteemed particularly noble. He held the sovereignty of the Langobards, as is reported by our ancestors, for thirty years.

[1] More likely the reason was that the unity of a single command was found necessary. Schmidt believes (p. 76) that the people like other German nations, were divided according to cantons, that the government in the oldest times was managed by a general assembly that selected the chiefs of the cantons who were probably, as a rule, taken from the nobility and chosen for life. In peace they acted as judges in civil cases, and in war as leaders of the troops of the cantons. As commander-in-chief of the whole army, a leader or duke was chosen by the popular assembly, but only for the time of the war. Often two colleagues are found together, as Ibor and Aio. As a result of their long-continued wars during their wanderings, the kingly power was developed and the king became the representative of the nation in foreign affairs, in the making of treaties, etc. (p. 77). But the influence of the people upon the government did not fully disappear.
[2] This name is found in a Danish song, and is written Hagelmund (Wiese, 3).
[3] Mommsen observes (68) that even those who recognize a genuine germ of history in this legend must regard as fiction this connection of the leaders Ibor and Aio with the subsequent line of kings; that we have no indication regarding the duration of this early leadership, and that it may as well have lasted centuries as decades. The events already described probably required at least a number of generations for their accomplishment, The words in the text, "Ibor and Aio who had . . . ruled them up to this time," appears to have been inserted by Paul upon conjecture to make a continuous line of rulers and is plainly an error (Waitz).


Chapter XV.

At this time a certain prostitute had brought forth seven little boys at a birth, and the mother, more cruel than all wild beasts, threw them into a fish-pond to be drowned. If this seems impossible to any, let him read over the histories of the ancients [1] and he will find that one woman brought forth not only seven infants but even nine at one time. And it is sure that this occurred especially among the Egyptians. It happened therefore that when King Agelmund had stopped his horse and looked at the wretched infants, and had turned them hither and thither with the spear he carried in his hand, one of them put his hand on the royal spear and clutched it. The king moved by pity and marveling greatly at the act, pronounced that he would be a great man. And straightway he ordered him to be lifted from the fish-pond and commanded him to be brought to a nurse to be nourished with every care, and because he took him from a fish-pond which in their language is called " lama" [2] he gave him the name Lamissio. [3] When he had grown up he became such a vigorous youth that he was also very fond of fighting, and after the death of Agelmund he directed the government of the kingdom. [4] They say that when the Langobards, pursuing their way with their king, came to a certain river and were forbidden by the Amazons [5] to cross to the other side, this man fought with the strongest of them, swimming in the river, and killed her and won for himself the glory of great praise and a passage also for the Langobards. For it had been previously agreed between the two armies that if that Amazon should overcome Lamissio, the Langobards would withdraw from the river, but if she herself were conquered by Lamissio, as actually occurred, then the means of crossing the stream should be afforded to the Langobards.[6] It is clear, to be sure, that this kind of an assertion is little supported by truth, for it is known to all who are acquainted with ancient histories that the race of Amazons was destroyed long before these things could have occurred, unless perchance (because the places where these things are said to have been done were not well enough known to the writers of history and are scarcely mentioned by any of them), it might have been that a class of women of this kind dwelt there at that time, for I have heard it related by some that the race of these women exists up to the present day in the innermost parts of Germany. [7]

[1] See Pliny's Natural History, Book VII. ch. 3, on monstrous births.
[2] Lama is not a German but a Latin word, found in Festus and meaning a collection of water (Waitz). It lived on in the romance languages. DuCange introduces it from the statutes of Modena, and Dante used it (Inferno, Canto XX, line 79). It meant, however, in Italian at this later period "a low plain." If Paul or his earlier authorities took it for Langobard this was because it was unknown to the Latin learning of that time, though it was a current peasant word in Northern Italy with which a discoverer of ancient Langobard tales could appropriately connect the indigenous king's name (Mommsen, 68).
[3] This name is called Laiamicho or Lamicho in the Origo and the form used here by Paul seems to have been taken from the Edict of Rothari (Waitz).
[4] This story of the origin of Lamissio is inconsistent with the statement in the Prologue of the Edict of Rothari and with the Madrid and Ea Cava manuscripts of the " Origo Gentis Langobardorum " which say that he was "of the race of Gugingus " (see Waitz, also Appendix II ; Mommsen, p. 68 ; Waitz, Neues Archiv, V, 423).
[5] This appears to be a transformation into classical form of some ancient German legend of swan-maidens or water-sprites (Schmidt, 17, note).
[6] Schmidt (p. 50) believes that the story of Lamissio is a fabulous expansion of the original myth of Skeaf. The germ of the myth is that a hero of unknown origin came from the water to the help of the land in time of need.
[7] Perhaps the Cvenas whom fable placed by the Baltic sea or gulf of Bothnia in '' The Land of Women '' (Zeuss, 686, 68y).


Chapter XVI

Therefore after passing the river of which we have spoken, the Langobards, when they came to the lands beyond, sojourned there for some time. Meanwhile, since they suspected nothing hostile and were the less uneasy on account of their long repose, confidence, which is always the mother of calamities, prepared for them a disaster of no mean sort. At night, in short, when all were resting, relaxed by negligence, suddenly the Bulgarians, rushing upon them, slew many, wounded many more and so raged [1] through their camp that they killed Agelmund, the king himself, and carried away in captivity his only daughter.

[1] Read for dibachati, debacchati.


Chapter XVII.

Nevertheless the Langobards, having recovered their strength after these disasters, made Lamissio, of whom we have spoken above, their king. And he, as he was in the glow of youth and quite ready for the struggles of war, desiring to avenge the slaughter of Agelmund, his foster-father, turned his arms against the Bulgarians. And presently, when the first battle began, the Langobards, turning their backs to the enemy, fled to their camp. Then king Lamissio seeing these things, began in a loud voice to cry out to the whole army that they should remember the infamies they had suffered and recall to view their disgrace ; how their enemies had murdered their king and had carried off in lamentation as a captive, his daughter whom they had desired for their queen. [1] Finally he urged them to defend themselves and theirs by arms, saying that it was better to lay down life in war than to submit as vile slaves to the taunts of their enemies. Crying aloud, he said these things and the like and now by threats, now by promises, strengthened their minds to endure the struggles of war; moreover if he saw any one of servile condition fighting he endowed him with liberty, as well as rewards. At last inflamed by the urging and example of their chief who had been the first to spring to arms, they rush upon the foe, fight fiercely and overthrow their adversaries with great slaughter, and finally, taking victory from the victors, they avenge as well the death of their king as the insults to themselves. Then having taken possession of great booty from the spoils of their enemies, from that time on they become bolder in undertaking the toils of war.[2]

[1] Abel (p. 251) infers from this the right of succession to the throne in the female line.
[2] Schmidt (50) regards this struggle with the Bulgarians as having no authentic basis in history since the name of the Bulgarians does not occur elsewhere before the end of the fifth century.


Chapter XVIII

After these things Lamissio, the second who had reigned, died, and the third, Lethu, ascended the throne of the kingdom, and when he had reigned nearly forty years, he left Hildeoc his son, who was the fourth in number, as his successor in the kingly power. And when he also died, Gudeoc, as the fifth, received the royal authority. [1]

[1] Mommsen calls attention (p. 75) to the close relation of the Gothic and Langobard legends. The Goths wandered from the island of Scandia, where many nations dwell (Jordanes, Ch. 3), among them the Vinoviloth, who may be the Winnili. From there the Goths sailed upon three vessels under their king Berich to the mainland (Ch. 4, 17). The first people they encountered in battle were the Vandals (Ch. 4). Further on the Amazons were introduced, and Mommsen concludes (p. 76): "It may be that these Langobard and Gothic traditions are both fragments of a great legend of the origin of the whole German people or that the Gothic story-teller has stirred the Langobard to the making of similar fables. The stories of the Amazons are more favorable to the latter idea." Hodgkin (V, 98) also notices the similarity of Langobard history to that of the Goths, as told by Jordanes. But Jordanes exhibits a pedigree showing fourteen generations before Theodoric, and thus reaching back very nearly to the Christian era, while Paul gives only five links of the chain before the time of Odoacar, the contemporary of Theodoric, and thus reaches back, at furthest, only to the era of Constantine. This seems to show that the Langobards had preserved fewer records of the deeds of their fathers. Hodgkin (V, 99) adds that it is hopeless to get any possible scheme of Lombard chronology out of these early chapters of Paul; that his narrative would place the migration from Scandinavia about A. D. 320, whereas the Langobards were dwelling south of the Baltic at the birth of Christ; that he represents Agelmund, whose place in the narrative makes it impossible to fix his date later than 350, as slain in battle by the Bulgarians, who first appeared in Europe about 479.