Young Folks' History of Rome

by Charlotte M. Yonge

563—800.

No sooner was Narses called home than another terrible nation of Teutones, who had hitherto dwelt in the North, began to come over the Alps. These were the Longbeards, or Lombards, as they were more commonly called; fierce and still heathen. Their king, Alboin, had carried off Rosamond, the daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, another Teutonic tribe. There was a most terrible war, in which Kunimund was killed and all his tribe broken up and joined with the Lombards. With the two united, Alboin invaded Italy and conquered all the North. Ravenna, Verona, Milan, and all the large towns held out bravely against them, but were taken at last, except Venice, which still owned the Emperor at Constantinople. Alboin had kept the skull of Kunimund as a trophy, and had had it set in gold for a drinking-cup, as his wild faith made him believe that the reward of the brave in the other world would be to drink mead from the skulls of their fallen enemies. In a drunken fit at Verona, he sent for Rosamond and made her pledge him in this horrible cup. She had always hated him, and this made her revenge her father's death by stabbing him to the heart in the year 573. The Lombard power did not, however, fall with him; his nephew succeeded him, and ruled over the country we still call Lombardy. Rome was not taken by them, but was still in name belonging to the Emperor, though he had little power there, and the Senate governed it in name, with all the old magistrates. The Prætor at the time the Lombards arrived was a man of one of the old noble families, Anicius Gregorius, or, as we have learned to call him, Gregory. He had always been a good and pious man, and while he took great care to fulfil all the duties of his office, his mind was more and more drawn away from the world, till at last he became a monk of St. Benedict, gave all his vast wealth to build and endow monasteries and hospitals, and lived himself in an hospital for beggars, nursing them, studying the Holy Scriptures, and living only on pulse, which his mother sent him every day in a silver dish—the only remnant of his wealth—till one day, having nothing else to give a shipwrecked sailor who asked alms, he bestowed it on him.