dence in your
bounty." Their presumption was excused by the mode of revenge which
Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting the rights of a sovereign for
the protection of his subjects, the emperor invited a strange people to
invade and possess the Roman provinces between the Danube and the Alps
and the ambition of the Gepidae was checked by the rising power and
fame of the Lombards. This corrupt appellation has been diffused in the
thirteenth century by the merchants and bankers, the Italian posterity
of these savage warriors: but the original name of _Langobards_ is
expressive only of the peculiar length and fashion of their beards. I am
not disposed either to question or to justify their Scandinavian origin;
nor to pursue the migrations of the Lombards through unknown regions and
marvellous adventures. About the time of Augustus and Trajan, a ray of
historic light breaks on the darkness of their antiquities, and they are
discovered, for the first time, between the Elbe and the Oder. Fierce,
beyond the example of the Germans, they delighted to propagate the
tremendous belief, that their heads were formed like the heads of dogs,
and that they drank the blood of their enemies, whom they vanquished in
battle. The smallness of their numbers was recruited by the adoption of
their bravest slaves; and alone, amidst their powerful neighbors, they
defended by arms their high-spirited independence. In the tempests of
the north, which overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark
of the Lombards still floated on the surface: they gradually descended
towards the south and the Danube, and, at the end of four hundred years,
they again appear with their ancient valor and renown. Their manners
were not less ferocious. The assassination of a royal guest was executed
in the presence, and by the command, of the king's daughter, who
had been provoked by some words of insult, and disappointed by his
diminutive stature; and a tribute, the price of blood, was imposed on
the Lombards, by his brother the king of the Heruli. Adversity revived
a sense of moderation and justice, and the insolence of conquest was
chastised by the signal defeat and irreparable dispersion of the Heruli,
who were seated in the southern provinces of Poland. The victories of
the Lombards recommended them to the friendship of the emperors; and
at the solicitations of Justinian, they passed the Danube, to reduce,
according to their treaty, the cities of Noricum a