Paolo Diacono – Paulus Diaconus - History Of The Lombards

7.

Rotari reigned for seventeen years, after him Ariperto reigned for nine years, and then Grimoaldo reigned. At that time the Emperor Constantine left Constantinople and came to the Campania region, then moved to Sicily and was killed by his own. Grimoaldo reigned for nine years and then Pertarito reigned.

English text

1.

The northern region, the further away it is from the heat of the sun and cold from the frost of the snow, the more it is healthy for the human body and suitable for spreading bloodlines. On the contrary, the regions located at midday, the closer they are to the sun, the more they are rich in diseases and less suitable for raising mortals. So it happens that many peoples are born under the bear, so that the whole region, from Tanai to the West, even if, in it, the individual localities have their own name, it is commonly called Germany. When the Romans occupied it, they called the two provinces beyond the Rhine, Upper Germany and Lower Germany.

From this populous Germany innumerable prisoners were led away and dispersed, sold as slaves to the southern peoples. But it is true that many bloodlines came out of it, because too many of them do not feed them, and in so doing they afflicted parts of Asia and especially neighbouring Europe. This is evidenced by the cities destroyed throughout Illyria and in Gaul, but above all those of the tried and tested Italy, which experienced the cruelty of almost all those peoples. From Germany came the Vandals, the Rugi, the Eruli, the Turcilingi and other ferocious barbarian populations. In the same way came the lineage of the Winili, or the Lombards, who then happily reigned in Italy. They too are Germanic, although some narrate that they came down from the Scandinavian island.

2.

Pliny Second also speaks of this island in his books On the nature of things. It, as those who visited the year tell us, is not on the sea, but is surrounded by marine waves, these penetrate into the land, favoured by the low level of its coasts. The populations who settled there, very prolific, not being able to live all of them together, are divided, as they say, into three parts, and with the draw they chose who was to leave the land of their fathers.

3.

So that part which fell to the fate of having to abandon the native soil and look for foreign lands, gave two leaders, Ibore and Aione. Two young brothers, flourishing and most vigorous of all. They all said goodbye to their loved ones and the land of their fathers, then set off to find new lands to live in and establish their home. Among them, there was the mother of the two leaders, she had the name Gambara, a keen woman of genius and provident in advising and giving wisdom. In moments of uncertainty, they made no difference to her.

4.

I do not think of moving away from the subject matter, if for a while I invert the order of the narration and I tell, in short, as long as my pen is wandering in Germany, of a prodigy, which is known there to all, besides to something else. In the extreme territories of Germany, to the north east, on the shores of the ocean, under a high cliff, you can see a cavity in which seven men, it is not known for how long, rest dormant in a long sleep, intact not only in the body but also in the guise, precisely because they have resisted without corrupting for so many years, they are the object of veneration, by those uncultivated and barbaric people. They, in clothes, look like Romans. A man pushed by greed wanted to strip one and, as it is said, his arms dried up immediately. This punishment frightened the others, so that no one dared to touch them anymore. You can imagine, why divine Providence keeps them intact for so many seasons, perhaps because one day, since it is believed that they could only be Christians, awakening, with their preaching they will bring salvation to those peoples.

5.

The Scritobini live near this place. This is the name of those people who are not free from snow and fairs even in summer. They feed only on raw meat of wild animals, and from their bristly skins they get what to cover. They derive their name from a word that in their barbaric language means "to jump", in fact they hunt the fairs, running in leaps, on woods curved with a certain art like a bow. A similar animal lives near them to the deer, I myself have seen a dress made with its skin, left bristly with hair as it was on the beast, it was similar to a tunic, knee-length as they use as I have been told. days of the summer solstice, even at night you can see a very clear light and the days are much longer than elsewhere. Conversely, around the winter solstice, although there is daylight, the sun is never seen and the days are very short, more than elsewhere, and longer nights. Moreover, the further you move away from the sun and the lower it is on the horizon and the shadows lengthen. In Italy, as the ancients wrote, on Christmas day , the shadow of the human body measures nine feet, I in the Gaul Belgica, in a place called Villa of Tatone, measuring my shadow I found it nineteen and a half feet. So, on the contrary, the more you are there approaching the sun, going southward the more the shadows become short, to the point that during the summer solstice, when the sun is in the middle of the sky, in Egypt, in Jerusalem and in the neighbouring regions, no shadows are seen. In Arabia, in the same period, the sun is seen over half the sky, towards the north, and consequently the shadows are facing south.

6.

Not very far from the coast we talked about before, to the west, where the ocean stretches endlessly, there is that deep chasm of water that is normally called the "navel of the sea", it is said that twice a day it swallows the waves of the sea, and twice you reject them, as is demonstrated by the rapidity of the tide on those beaches. A similar chasm or vortex is called by the poet Virgil, Charybdis; he places it in the Strait of Sicily and describes it thus:

Occupy the right side Scylla, the left the emplaced Charybdis, and three times from the deep eddy of the abyss swallows the vast waves in its abyss, and again in the air it re-invents them, and flails the stars with the wave.

Of the vortex we mentioned earlier, it is said that it drags ships violently, so quickly as to equal the flight of arrows through the air, so much so that sometimes they get lost in the hideous abyss without escape. Often, however, while they are already being submerged, they are rejected away from the water suddenly and with the same speed with which it sucked them. Another similar vortex is said to be located between the British island and Gaul, this is confirmed by what happens on the beaches of Sequania and Aquitaine. These two times a day are suddenly submerged, so much so that those who are caught a little far from the shoreline can barely escape it. The waters of the rivers of those regions can be seen rising rapidly towards the source for many miles and the sweet waters becoming bitter. The island of Evodia is thirty miles from the beaches of the Sequania but its inhabitants claim to hear the roar of the waters that pour into that of Cariddi. I have heard from a person who enjoys great esteem among the Gauls that many ships, which were overwhelmed by a storm, ended up swallowed by this vortex. Only one of those men who was on those ships escaped there, found himself still floating, unique among his own, dragged by the violent currents towards the precipice, arrived on the edge of that terrible abyss, already dead of fear, he saw that very deep endless chasm, when he had already lost hope, was thrown on a boulder, clung to it. All the water had flowed into the whirlpool leaving the bottom of the sea uncovered, and while he waited anxiously and full of fear for the inevitable end, suddenly, he saw large mountains of water coming, these rose from the bottom; he first saw the ships that had been swallowed up emerge, so when one was near him, he attacked it with all his might. In an instant, quickly, it flew close to the beach, so it escaped the cruel fate and could later tell the danger. Even our sea, the Adriatic, even if in a lesser way, invades the beaches of Venice and Istria, so there is to be thought that there are whirlpools, certainly small and hidden, which swallow and reject the Adriatic waters and of the other Italian seas. After reporting these things, it's time to resume the story.