8. Leges Langobardorum.—We possess a fair amount of information on the origin of the last barbarian code, the laws of the Lombards. The first part, consisting of 388 chapters, is known as the Edictus Langobardorum, and was promulgated by King Rothar at a diet held at Pavia on the 22nd of November 643. This work, composed at one time and arranged on a systematic plan, is very remarkable. The compilers knew Roman law, but drew upon it only for their method of presentation and for their terminology; and the document presents Germanic law in its purity. Rothar’s edict was augmented by his successors; Grimoald (668) added nine chapters; Liutprand (713-735), fifteen volumes, containing a great number of ecclesiastical enactments; Ratchis (746), eight chapters; and Aistulf (755), thirteen chapters. After the union of the Lombards to the Frankish kingdom, the capitularies made for the entire kingdom were applicable to Italy. There were also special capitularies for Italy, called Capitula Italica, some of which were appended to the edict of Rothar.
At an early date compilations were formed in Italy for the use of legal practitioners and jurists. Eberhard, duke and margrave of Rhaetia and Friuli, arranged the contents of the edict with its successive additamenta into a Concordia de singulis causis (829-832). In the 10th century a collection was made of the capitularies in use in Italy, and this was known as the Capitulare Langobardorum. Then appeared, under the influence of the school of law at Pavia, the Liber legis Langobardorum, also called Liber Papiensis (beginning of 11th century), and the Lombarda (end of 11th century) in two forms—that given in a Monte Cassino MS. and known as the Lombarda Casinensis, and the Lombarda Vulgata.
There are editions of the Edictus, the Concordia, and the Liber Papiensis by F. Bluhme and A. Boretius in the Mon. Germ. hist., Leges, iv. Bluhme also gives the rubrics of the Lombardae, which were published by F. Lindenberg in his Codex legum antiquarum in 1613. For further information on the laws of the Lombards see J. Merkel, Geschichte des Langobardenrechts (1850); A. Boretius, Die Kapitularien im Langobardenreich (1864); and C. Kier, Edictus Rotari (Copenhagen, 1898). Cf. R. Dareste in the Nouvelle Revue historique de droit français et étranger (1900, p. 143).
(C. Pf.)
[1] The lacunae in these fragments have been filled in by the aid of the law of the Bavarians, where the chief provisions are reproduced.
GERMANICUS CAESAR (15 B.C.-A.D. 19), a Roman general and provincial governor in the reign of Tiberius. The name Germanicus, the only one by which he is known in history, he inherited from his father, Nero Claudius Drusus, the famous general, brother of Tiberius and stepson of Augustus. His mother was the younger Antonia, daughter of Marcus Antonius and niece of Augustus, and he married Agrippina, the granddaughter of the same emperor. It was natural, therefore, that he should be regarded as a candidate for the purple. Augustus, it would seem, long hesitated whether he should name him as his successor, and as a compromise required his uncle Tiberius to adopt him, though Tiberius had a son of his own. Of his early years and education little is known. That he possessed considerable literary abilities, and that these were carefully trained, we gather, both from the speeches which Tacitus puts into his mouth, and from the reputation he left as an orator, as attested by Suetonius and Ovid, and from the extant fragments of his works.
At the age of twenty he served his apprenticeship as a soldier under Tiberius, and was rewarded with the triumphal insignia for his services in crushing the revolt in Dalmatia and Pannonia. In A.D. 11 he accompanied Tiberius in his campaign on the Rhine, undertaken, in consequence of the defeat of Varus, with the object of securing the German frontier. In 12 he was made consul, and increased his popularity by appearing as an advocate in the courts of justice, and by the celebration of brilliant games. Soon afterwards he was appointed by Augustus to the important command of the eight legions on the Rhine. The news of the emperor’s death (14) found Germanicus at Lugdunum (Lyons), where he was superintending the census of Gaul. Close upon this came the report that a mutiny had broken out among his legions on the lower Rhine. Germanicus hurried back to the camp, which was now in open insurrection. The tumult was with difficulty quelled, partly by well-timed concessions, for which the authority of the emperor was forged, but chiefly owing to his personal popularity. Some of the insurgents actually proposed that he should put himself at their head and secure the empire for himself, but their offer was rejected with indignation. In order to calm the excitement Germanicus determined at once on an active campaign. Crossing the Rhine, he attacked and routed the Marsi, and laid waste the valley of the Ems. In the following year he marched against Arminius, the conqueror of Varus, and performed the last rites over the remains of the Roman soldiers that still lay there unburied, erecting a barrow to mark the spot. Arminius, however, favoured by the marshy ground, was able to hold his own, and it required another campaign before he was finally defeated. A masterly combined movement by land and water enabled Germanicus to concentrate his forces against the main body of the Germans encamped on the Weser, and to crush them in two obstinately contested battles. A monument erected on the field proclaimed that the army of Tiberius had conquered every tribe between the Rhine and the Elbe. Great, however, as the success of the Roman arms had been, it was not such as to justify this boastful inscription; we read of renewed attacks from the barbarians, and plans of a fourth campaign for the next summer.
But the success of Germanicus had already stirred the jealousy and fears of Tiberius, and he was reluctantly compelled to return to Rome. On the 26th of May 17 he celebrated a triumph. The enthusiasm with which he was welcomed, not only by the populace, but by the emperor’s own praetorians, was so great that the earliest pretext was seized to remove him from the capital. He was sent to the East with extraordinary powers to settle a disputed succession in Parthia and Armenia. At the same time Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, one of the most violent and ambitious of the old nobility, was sent as governor of Syria to watch his movements. Germanicus proceeded by easy stages to his province, halting on his way in Dalmatia, and visiting the battlefield of Actium, Athens, Ilium, and other places of historic interest. At Rhodes he met his coadjutor Piso, who was seeking everywhere to thwart and malign him. When at last he reached his destination, he found little difficulty in effecting the settlement of the disturbed provinces, notwithstanding Piso’s violent and persistent opposition. At Artaxata Zeno, the popular candidate for the throne, was crowned king of Armenia. To the provinces of Cappadocia and Commagene Roman governors were assigned; Parthia was conciliated by the banishment of the dethroned king Vonones.