y attained the strength and reputation of a warrior.
Under the standard of their new king, the conquerors of Italy withstood
three successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert himself,
the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The first
expedition was defeated by the jealous animosity of the Franks and
Alemanni. In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with
more loss and dishonor than they had sustained since the foundation of
their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with
accumulated 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 vapors 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 between their
enemies and their deliverers. If the junction of the Merovingian and
Imperial forces had been effected in the neighborhood 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 Rhaetian Alps, he subdued the resistance, and rifled the
hidden treasures, of a sequestered island in the Lake of Comum. At the
extreme point of the Calabria, he touched with his spear a column on the
sea-shore of Rhegium, [32] proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand
the immovable boundary of his kingdom. [33]

[Footnote 32: The Columna Rhegina, in the narrowest part of the Faro of
Messina, one hundred stadia from Rhegium itself, is frequently mentioned
in ancient geography. Cluver. Ital. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 1295. Lucas
Holsten. Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 301. Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 106.]

[Footnote 33: The Greek historians afford some faint hints of the wars
of Italy (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 124, 126. Theophylact, l. iii.
c. 4.) The Latins are more satisfactory; an