Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/533

 APPENDIX 511 edit the historj' of Eutropius and add to it a continuation of his own in six Books (the compilation known as the Historia Miscella, see above, vol. iii. p. 489-90). Paul's family was involved in the ruin of the Lombard kingdom (a.d. 774) ; his brother was carried into captivity, and Paul undertook a journey to the court of Charles the Great, in order to win the grace of the conqueror. He was certainly successful in his enterprise, and his literary accomplishments were valued by Charles, at whose court he remained several years. When he returned to Ital}' he resumed his abode at Monte Cassino. His last years were devoted to the Historia Langobardorum. Beginning with the remote period at which his nation lived by the wild shores of the Baltic, Paul should have ended with the year in which the Lombards ceased to be an indej)endent nation ; but the work breaks oif in the year a.d. 744 ; and the interruption can have been due only to the author's death. Paul's Life of Gregory the Great has been mentioned above ; another extant work is his Lives of the Bi.shops of Metz. For the legendary "prehistoric" part of his work, Paul's chief source (apart from oral traditions) was the Origo gentis Langobardorum. This little work has been preserved in a Ms. of the Laws of King Rotharis, to which it is prefixed as an Introduction. 27 It was probably composed c. 670. (There is also a Proloffus to the Laws of Rotharis, containing a list of kings ; it is important on account of its relative antiquity.) For the early historj' Paul drew upon Secundus (see above) and Gregory of Tours. "When Secundus deserts him (Bk. iv. c. 41) he is lost, and for the greater part of the seventh century his history is very meagre. His chief sources for the period a.b. G12 to 744 are the Lives of the Popes in the Liber Pontificalis (from John III. to Gregory II. ) and the Ecclesiastical History of Bede. The sources of Paul have been thoroughly investigated by R. Jacobi, Die Quellen der Langobardengeschichte des Paulus Diaconus (1877).-'* [Best edition by Waitz in the M. G H. (Scr. rer. Lang. ), 1878 ; and small convenient edition by the same editor in the Scr. rer. Germ., 1878. German translation bj- O. Abel (in the Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit), 1849 (second edition, 1878). Three im- portant studies on Paul by L. Bethmann appeared in Pcrtz's Archiv, vol. vii. p. 274 sqq. ; vol. x. p. 247 sqq. and p. 335 sqq. The most recent edition of the Historia Romana (last six Books of the Hist. Miscella) is that of H. Droysen, 1879.] The chronicle which goes imder the name of Fredegarius, on which we have to fall back for Merovingian History when Gregory of Tours deserts us, has also notices which supplement the Lombard History of Paul the Deacon. The chronicle consists of four Books. Bk. 1 is the Liber Generationis of Hippolytus ; Bk. 2 consists of excerpts from the chronicles of Jerome and Idatius ; Bk. 3 is taken from the Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours ; Bk. 4, which is alone of importance, continues the history of Gregory (from Bk. vi. ; a.d. .583) up to a.d. 642. Two compilers can be distinguished ; to one is due Bk. 1, Bk. 2, Bk. 4, chaps. 1-39 ; to the other (= Fredegarius) Bk. 3 and Bk 4, chaps. 40 to end (a.d. 613-642). For the last thirty years the work is contemporary. The lack of other sources makes Fredegarius, such as it is, precious. But for this work we should never have known of the existence, during the reign of Heraclius, of the large Slavonic realm of Samo, which united for a decade or two Bohemia and the sur- rounding Slavonic countries. [Ed. B. Krusch, in the M. G. H. (Scr. Hist. Merov., ii.), 1888, along with the subsequent continuations of the work to a.d 568. Articles by Krusch in Neues Archiv, vii., p. 249 sqq. and p. 423 sqq., 1882.] 27 The text will be found in Pertz, Men. Germ. Hist. Legg. iv. p. 641-7; and in Waitz, Men. Germ. Hist., Scr. rerum Lang., p. 2-6. Cp. L. Schmidt, in Neues Archiv. xiii. p. 391 sqq. (1888); also his .'elteste Gesch. der Langobarden, 1884 ; A. Vogeler, Paulus Diaconus u. die Origo g. Lang. (1887). -8 Cp. also Waitz, Neues Archiv, v. p. 416 sqq. (1880) ; Wattenbach, Deutschlands Ge- schichtsquellen, ed. 6, p. 169-71. I