by yielding up his crown; such, in
truth, were the only terms of escape offered him in his defeat. Forced,
therefore, by the injustice of a brother to lay down his sovereignty, he
furnished the lesson to mankind, that there is less safety, though more
pomp, in the palace than in the cottage. Also, he bore his wrong so
meekly that he seemed to rejoice at his loss of title as though it were
a blessing; and I think he had a shrewd sense of the quality of a king's
estate. But Lother played the king as insupportably as he had played the
soldier, inaugurating his reign straightway with arrogance and crime;
for he counted it uprightness to strip all the most eminent of life or
goods, and to clear his country of its loyal citizens, thinking all his
equals in birth his rivals for the crown. He was soon chastised for his
wickedness; for he met his end in an insurrection of his country; which
had once bestowed on him his kingdom, and now bereft him of his life.

SKIOLD, his son, inherited his natural bent, but not his behaviour;
avoiding his inborn perversity by great discretion in his tender years,
and thus escaping all traces of his father's taint. So he appropriated
what was alike the more excellent and the earlier share of the family
character; for he wisely departed from his father's sins, and became a
happy counterpart of his grandsire's virtues. This man was famous in his
youth among the huntsmen of his father for his conquest of a monstrous
beast: a marvellous incident, which augured his future prowess. For he
chanced to obtain leave from his guardians, who were rearing him very
carefully, to go and see the hunting. A bear of extraordinary size
met him; he had no spear, but with the girdle that he commonly wore he
contrived to bind it, and gave it to his escort to kill. More than
this, many champions of tried prowess were at the same time of his life
vanquished by him singly; of these Attal and Skat were renowned and
famous. While but fifteen years of age he was of unusual bodily size
and displayed mortal strength in its perfection, and so mighty were the
proofs of his powers that the rest of the kings of the Danes were called
after him by a common title, the SKIOLDUNG'S. Those who were wont to
live an abandoned and flaccid life, and to sap their self-control by
wantonness, this man vigilantly spurred to the practice of virtue in
an active career. Thus the ripeness of Skiold's spirit outstripped
the fulness of his strength