trich {11}. Later on, the legendary and the real hero were so firmly
welded together that, as early as the twelfth century, chroniclers are at
their wits' end how to reconcile facts and dates.

Ekkehard, in his Chronicon Universale {12}, which ends 1126 A.D., points
out the chronological contradiction between Jornandes, who places the
death of Ermanrich long before Attila, and the popular story which makes
him and Dietrich, the son of Dietmar, his contemporaries.

Otto von Freising {13}, in the first half of the twelfth century,
expresses the same perplexity when he finds that Theodoric is made a
contemporary of Hermanricus and Attila, though it is certain that Attila
ruled long after Hermanric, and that, after the death of Attila,
Theodoric, when eight years old, was given by his father as a hostage to
the emperor Leo.

Gottfried von Viterbo {14}, in the second half of the twelfth century,
expresses his difficulties in similar words.

All these chroniclers who handed down the historical traditions of
Germany were High-Germans, and thus it has happened that in Germany
Theodoric the Great became Dietrich, as Strataburgum became Strassburg,
or Turicum, Zurich. Whether because English belongs to the Low German
branch, it is less permissible to an English historian than to a German
to adopt these High-German names, I cannot say: all I wished to point out
was that there was a very intelligible reason why Kingsley should have
preferred the popular and poetical name of Dietrich, even though it was
High-German, either to his real Gothic name, Theodereik, or to its
classical metamorphosis, Theodoricus or Theodorus.

Some other mistakes, too, which have been pointed out, did not seem to me
so serious as to justify their correction in a posthumous edition. It
was said, for instance, that Kingsley ought not to have called Odoacer
and Theodoric, Kings of Italy, as they were only lieutenants of the
Eastern Caesar. Cassiodorus, however, tells us that Odoacer assumed the
name of king (nomen regis Odoacer assumpsit), and though Gibbon points
out that this may only mean that he assumed the abstract title of a king,
without applying it to any particular nation or country, yet that great
historian himself calls Odoacer, King of Italy, and shows how he was
determined to abolish the useless and expensive office of vicegerent of
the emperor. Kingsley guesses very ingeniously, that Odoacer's assumed
title, King of nations, may have be