History Of The Lombards. Paolo Diacono – Paulus Diaconus

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

       7.

       Under the guidance of Ibore and Aione the Winili left Scandinavia and arrived in a region called Scoringa, where they stayed for a few years. In those times Ambri and Assi, leaders of the Vandals, followed all the neighbouring populations with continuous wars. Emboldened by the many victories, they sent messengers to the Winili with a request for a tribute, giving war as an alternative. So, Ibore and Aione, driven by their mother Gambara, decided that it was better to defend freedom with weapons rather than accept the infamy of paying the tribute. So they sent messengers with the answer to the Vandals, this said they would fight rather than submit. In those times the Winili were all in the prime of their youth but scarce in number, as they were only a third of a people living on an island not very large.

       8.

       At this point the ancients tell a ridiculous tale. The Vandals went to Godan to ask for the victory over the Winili, but the God replied that he would give the victory to those he had seen first at sunrise. Gambara instead went to Freia, Godan's wife, and asked for the victory for the Winili, the Goddess gave her advice: she said that the women had to untie their hair and adjust it around the face like a beard, then they had to join the men and place themselves with the battle in a place where they were visible from that window from which Godan used to look to the east. So the Winili did and, at sunrise, Godan saw the women dressed like that and not seeing the ingot He did not ask his wife, "Who are those Lungibarbi?" Then Freia asked him to give the victory to those to whom he had just given the name. Thus the God gave the victory to the Winili. These are trivial and ridiculous things, where victory is not the merit of men but given by the gods.

       9.

       In any case, it is certain that, from that moment, the Winili were called Lombards because of the particularity of their long, never cut beard. Moreover, in their language "lang" means long, and "bard", beard.

       Wotan, who changed a letter becomes Gotan, is the same that the Romans call Mercury and is worshiped as God by all the peoples of Germany. It is said that in ancient times this God was not in Germany but in Greece.

       10.

       So the Winili, also called Longobards, attacked battle, with fury, fighting for the glory of being free, won the victory.

       Subsequently, affected by famine in that province called Scoringa, they lost much of their courage.

       11.

       Emigrating from those regions, while preparing to enter Mauringa, they found the road closed by Assipitti, these were determined not to grant transit to their lands under any conditions. The Lombards, given the large number of enemies and the small number of their army, dared not fight. Deciding what to do, in need, they devised a stratagem, made the enemies believe that they had in their field of Cynocephalic, dog-headed men who fight relentlessly and drink the blood of killed enemies or, in case they cannot grab an enemy, quench their thirst with their own. To give credit to these voices they expand the camp and tents, as well as lighting many fires. The enemies fell into deception and no longer dared to try their luck in the war that they were looking for before.

       12.

       The Assipitti, however, had among them a warrior considered very strong, and with this very strong champion they wanted to win. They therefore proposed to the Lombards to choose СКАЧАТЬ