Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/44

 99 THE DECLINE AND FALL Autharis, king of the LombardE. A.D. 584-5E0 [A.D. 585 or 587] [A.D. 58S] [A.D. 590] [Mutina] [Insula Com-
 * .clna]

confessed ; and Autharis, the .son of Clepho, had ah-eady attained the strength and reputation of a warrior. Under the standard of their new king, the coufjuerors of Italy withstood three successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert him- self, the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The first expedition was defeated by the jealous ani- mosity of the Franks and Alemanni. In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with more loss and dishonour than they had sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with accumu- lated force, and Autharis yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation less sensible of danger than of fatigue and delay soon murmured against the folly of their twenty commanders ; and the hot vapours of an Italian sun infected with disease those tramontane bodies which had already suffered the vicissitudes of intemperance and famine. The powers that were inadequate to the conquest, were more than sufficient for the desolation, of the country ; nor could the trembling natives distinguish be- tween their enemies and their deliverers. If the junction of the Merovingian and Imperial forces had been effected in the neighbourhood of Milan, perhaps they might have subverted the throne of the Lombards ; but the Franks expected six days the signal of a flaming village, and the arms of the Greeks were idly employed in the reduction of Modena and Parma, which were torn from them after the retreat of their Transalpine allies. The victorious Autharis asserted his claim to the dominion of Italy. At the foot of the Rheetian Alps, he subdued the re- sistance, and rifled the hidden treasures, of a sequestered island in the lake of Comum. At the extreme point of Calabria, he touched with his spear a coluntni on the sea-shore of Rhegium,*^ proclaiming that ancient land-mark to stand the immoveable i)oundary of his kingdom. ■*! •"'The Columna Regina, in the narrowest part of the Faro of Messina, one hundred stadia from Rhegium itself, is frequently mentioned in ancient geography. tHuver. Ital. Antiq. torn. ii. p. 1295. Lucas Holsten. Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 301. Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 106. ■'^ The Greek historians afford some faint hints of the wars of Italj' (Menander, in E.xcerpt. Legal, p. 124, 126 [F. H. G.. iv. p. 253, 263]. Theophylsct, 1. iii. c. 4). The Latins are more satisfactory; and especially Paul Warnefrid (1. iii. 13-34), who had read the more ancient hi.stories of Secundus and Gregory of Tours. Baronius produces some letters of the popes, tS:c. ; and the times are measured by the accurate scale of Pagi and Muratori. [The march of Auth.aris to Reggio is probably only a legend. Paul introduces it vi'whfama est (3, 32).]