is subjects.

Whether it was that the soil had too little rain, or that it was too
hard baked, the crops, as I have said, were slack, and the fields gave
but little produce; so that the land lacked victual, and was worn with
a weary famine. The stock of food began to fail, and no help was left
to stave off hunger. Then, at the proposal of Agg and of Ebb, it
was provided by a decree of the people that the old men and the tiny
children should be slain; that all who were too young to bear arms
should be taken out of the land, and only the strong should be
vouchsafed their own country; that none but able-bodied soldiers and
husbandmen should continue to abide under their own roofs and in the
houses of their fathers. When Agg and Ebb brought news of this to their
mother Gambaruk, she saw that the authors of this infamous decree had
found safety in crime. Condemning the decision of the assembly, she said
that it was wrong to relieve distress by murder of kindred, and declared
that a plan both more honourable and more desirable for the good of
their souls and bodies would be, to preserve respect towards their
parents and children, and choose by lot men who should quit the country.
And if the lot fell on old men and weak, then the stronger should offer
to go into exile in their place, and should of their own free will
undertake to bear the burden of it for the feeble. But those men who
had the heart to save their lives by crime and impiety, and to prosecute
their parents and their children by so abominable a decree, did not
deserve life; for they would be doing a work of cruelty and not of love.
Finally, all those whose own lives were dearer to them than the love
of their parents or their children, deserved but ill of their country.
These words were reported to the assembly, and assented to by the vote
of the majority. So the fortunes of all were staked upon the lot and
those upon whom it fell were doomed to be banished. Thus those who had
been loth to obey necessity of their own accord had now to accept the
award of chance. So they sailed first to Bleking, and then, sailing past
Moring, they came to anchor at Gothland; where, according to Paulus,
they are said to have been prompted by the goddess Frigg to take the
name of the Longobardi (Lombards), whose nation they afterwards founded.
In the end they landed at Rugen, and, abandoning their ships, began to
march overland. They crossed and wasted a great portion of the world;
an