[76] The fashion of long hair was among the Franks for a time, the somewhat exclusive privilege of the royal family; the members of which wore their locks hanging down in flowing ringlets on their back and shoulders; while the rest of the nation were obliged to shave the hind part of the head, and to comb the hair over the forehead.
[77] Elevation on a buckler was the ceremony by which the Franks invested their chosen leader with military command.
[78] According to some historians and geographers, Duisburg, on the right bank of the Rhine.
[79] Most historians make Meroveus, the younger of the two sons of Clodion; and, after his father’s death, they send him to Rome to implore the protection of Ætius. Now, it is next to impossible that the beardless youth, whom Priscus states to have seen at Rome (about 449 or 450), could have been Meroveus, since the son of that prince, Childeric, was within ten years after exiled by the Franks on account of his excesses and his despotic sway. The young man whom Priscus saw was most probably Childeric, who may have been sent to Rome by his father, Meroveus, to renew the alliance which Clodion had made with Ætius.
[80] The kingdom of the Burgundians, which had been established in 407 (see [page 93]), was divided, in 470, among the four sons of king Gonderic; Hilperic, or Chilperic, the father of Clotilda, fixed his residence at Geneva; Gundobald at Lyons; Godegesil at Besançon, and Godemar at Vienne (in Dauphiné). A war broke out between the brothers, in which Gundobald conquered and took prisoner Hilperic and Godemar; the latter committed suicide; the former was put to death by his inhuman brother Gundobald, and his wife and his two sons shared his fate; his two daughters were spared, and one of them, Clotilda, was brought up at the court of Lyons; and, as chance would have it, in the Catholic faith, though Gundobald himself, like most of the Christian princes of the time, professed the Arian doctrine, Gundobald would gladly have refused Clovis the hand of his niece, had he dared to brave the anger of the powerful Frankish chief. Clotilda, on her part, was overjoyed at the prospect of an alliance with a King, whose ambition might be turned to good account for the pursuit of her own vengeful projects against the murderer of her father; with a pagan, whose conversion to the Nicean creed would gain her beloved Catholic church a formidable champion against the hated Arian heretics. Gundobald had scarcely parted with his niece, and her father’s treasures, when the pious princess displayed her Christian spirit, by ordering her Frankish escort to burn down the Burgundian villages through which they were passing, and when she saw the flames rising, and heard the despairing cries of the unfortunates who were thus being deprived of their homes, she lifted up her voice, and praised the God of Athanasius—the holy Chlotildis!
[81] The Alemanni were also, like the Franks, a league of several Germanic nations, among whom the Teneteri, the Usipetes, and most probably a portion of the Suevi, were the most important. The favorite etymology of the name, Allemanni or All-Men, as meant to denote at once the various lineage, and the common bravery of the component members of the league, is a little fanciful perhaps, yet not more so, or rather not quite so much so, as some other etymologies of the name indulged in by the learned.
[82] The invocation as given by Gregory of Tours, is rather naïve. Jesu Christe, quem Chlotildis prædicat esse filium Dei vivi, qui dare auxilium laborantibus, victoriamque in te sperantibus tribuere diceris, tuæ opis gloriam devotus efflagito: ut si mihi victoriam super hos hostes indulseris, et expertus fuero illam virtutem, quam de te populus tuo nomine dicatus probasse se prædicat, credam tibi et in nomine tuo baptizer. Invocavi enim deos meos, sed ut experior, elongati sunt ab auxilio meo: unde credo eos nullius potestatis, qui tibi obedientibus non succurrunt. A pretty plain hint: no victory, no belief, no baptism!
[83] Theodoric had lately married Albofleda (Audofleda, or Andefleda), the sister of Clovis.
[84] Lex Gudebalda—“La loy Gombette.”—Drawn up by Aredius.
[85] Alaric was married to Theodoric’s daughter Theudogotha, or Theodichusa.