[114] [We may say here with Hodgkin[b] in using the word Lombards before its strict time, “it seems not worth while to encumber the text by the constant repetition of a long and somewhat uncouth race-name, but the reader is asked to remember that in strictness the form Langobardi should be preserved.” It is the 12th century before the words “Lombard” and “Lombardy” come into general use and then largely with a geographical reference to Northern Italy, rather than an historical reference to the Langobard conquerors of far more than Lombardy. The origin of the name “Langobard” has been discussed under the “Eastern Empire,” Chapter IV.]
[115] [Hodgkin,[b] however, says,“The war between King Tato and King Rodulph is narrated by Procopius as well as by Paulus and can be assigned without much risk of error to a definite date, 511 or 512.”]
[116] [The distaff story is told by Paulus[p] Diaconus, who wrote two centuries later and quoted a work a century earlier. Isidore of Seville,[v] however, who wrote only half a century after Narses’ recall, accuses him of calling in the Lombards. The story is none the less somewhat dubious.]
[117] [Hodgkin[b] says of the Lombards: “They are the anarchists of the Völkerwanderung, whose delight is only in destruction, and who seem incapable of culture. Yet this is the race from which, in the fullness of time, under the transmuting power of the old Italian civilisation, were to spring Anselm and Lanfranc, Hildebrand and Dante Alighieri.”]
[118] [This custom of making a drinking cup of an enemy’s skull originally came from Asiatic Scythia, and was widely diffused in northern Europe: nowhere was it more religiously observed than in Scandinavia, the cradle of the Lombards. Their historian avers that he had seen the cup with his own eyes: Hoc ne cui videretur impossibile,—veritatem in Christo loquor—ego hoc poculum vidi in quodam die festo, etc. Paulus Diaconus,[p] lib. ii. cap. 28.
A modern Italian historian (Botta), totally unacquainted with the manners of the north, expresses great surprise at this act of Alboin: La naturale ferocia pel vino e per la vittoria a oltraggio fatta insolente, lo menava a tal atto di cui non è memoria nelle storie delle piu barbare nazioni, etc. The thing was common enough, as abundantly appears from the Scandinavian records.]
