Barbarian interest in the Excerpta Latina Barbari emed_310 3..43 B G Joseph Justus Scaliger dubbed the text of Parisinus Latinus , the sole surviving witness to a Merovingian Latin translation of a now lost Greek world chronicle, the Excerpta Latina Barbari. The name was essentially a judgement on the linguistic abilities of the translator, but it is suggestive. What is there in the chronicle to appeal to the ‘barbarian’ inhabitants of Gaul? An answer to this question can offer some insight into the provenance of a neglected, but intriguing text. It will be proposed that the Greek original of the Excerpta was composed as a gift for the Austrasian king Theudebert I and was intended to elicit his aid in the war against the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy. The translation is another matter. It seems to have been undertaken about two centuries later in the context of the missionary push to the north and east from Frankish territory. The Excerpta Latina Barbari is one of those odd and intriguing docu- ments which late antiquity casts up to our attention. It is the Latin translation of a now lost Greek world chronicle. This Greek original was probably composed in Alexandria at the beginning of the fifth century and revised shortly after the reign of Anastasius (–). The Latin  The Excerpta Latina Barbari is preserved in a single manuscript of the seventh or eighth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the codex Parisinus ; see E. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts prior to the Ninth Century (Oxford, ), Part V (France: Paris), p. . The edited text is found in A. Schoene, Eusebi Chronicorum libri duo (Berlin, –) and C. Frick, Chronica Minora (Leipzig, ), I, pp. lxxxiii–ccx (preface) and –. We have followed Frick’s text, and all citations of the Excerpta refer to the page and line number in Frick.  The chronography ends in , and the latest event mentioned is the death of Theophilus, the archbishop of Alexandria in  (Frick .–), while the laterculus of Roman emperors continues to Anastasius (Frick .); see Frick lxxxiii–xc. Frick, lxxxv, supposes that the Greek chronicle was composed in the time of Anastasius, but, although the manuscript is lacunose at the line reporting the length of Anastasius’ reign, it does not differ markedly from the other entries in the laterculus and there is no indication that there was a notice that Anastasius was still on the throne at the time of writing. I would suggest that the interpolator brought the chronography up to date by including a recently completed reign, perhaps that of an emperor who had made an impression in Frankish Gaul (see below on the diplomatic relations between Early Medieval Europe   () – ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd,  Garsington Road, Oxford OX DQ, UK and  Main Street, Malden, MA , USA 4 Benjamin Garstad translation was made, according to Frick, the most conscientious editor, in the sixth or seventh century in Merovingian Gaul by someone whose knowledge of Greek and Latin was rather limited. Scaliger called the text the Excerpta Latina Barbari, and the name indicates his estimation of the translator’s ability in Greek and Latin. The many grammatical and lexical errors indicate that the translator’s task must have been an arduous one, and this quite naturally raises the question: why did he bother? But asking what it was about this text which made it worth the trouble brings us to the more fundamental question of how the Greek text came to be in Gaul in the first place. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to ask whether it is only the language of the Excerpta which is barbarous, as Scaliger would have it, or if we might not discern in the text some interests or intentions which could be identified with the mindset and culture of the Germanic peoples of post-Roman Gaul and its frontiers. The simple answer to this question is no; as far as we can tell the Excerpta is, on the whole, a faithful, if not particularly adept, translation of its Greek original, which is for the most part a typical representative of a Christian world chronicle. The qualifications and exceptions to this negative answer, however, are of great interest, and suggest something of a motive for the composition of the Excerpta’s Greek original, for its translation, and for the existence of the text we have. We shall examine the traces of ‘barbarian’ sensibility in the Excerpta, beginning with a false start (which will help us bear the limitations of our investigation in Clovis and Anastasius). It does not seem unlikely that the interpolator purposely selected Anastasius’ reign as an evocative end point. There is some evidence that the reign of Anas- tasius was remembered with reverence and nostalgia in the barbarian kingdoms of the west. The last two Ostrogothic kings, Totila and Teias, both issued coinage in their own names with an image of Anastasius on the reverse, even though the emperor had died well before either of them had begun to reign: W. Hahn, Moneta Imperii Byzantini (Vienna, ) I, p.  (nos. –, –); T. Burns, A History of the Ostrogoths (Bloomington and Indianapolis, ), p.  n. .  See Frick lxxxiii–lxxxvi; P. Siegmund, Die Überlieferung der griechischen christlichen Literatur in der lateinischen Kirche bis zum zwölften Jahrhundert (Munich, ), pp. –, –.  J. Scaliger, Thesaurus temporum (Leiden, ), II, p. , titulus: ‘EXCERPTA UTILISSIMA EX PRIORE LIBRO CHRONOLOGICO EUSEBII, ET AFRICANO, ET ALIIS LATINE CONVERSA AB HOMINE BARBARO, INEPTO, HELLENISMI ET LATINITATIS IMPERTISSIMO. Non parua autem pars consarcinata est ex deliriis Breviatoris, aut Interpretis qui, commenta sua in scripta aliena infulsit.’ Frick (lxxxv) considered this judgement unduly harsh and rated the translator’s Latinity equal to that of Gregory of Tours and the most learned men of the Merovingian period. Scaliger’s estimation of the Excerpta translator may be weighed against his judgements of other classical writing thanks to G. Robinson, ‘Joseph Scaliger’s Estimates of Greek and Latin Authors’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology  (), pp. –. For Scaliger’s work on the Excerpta, see A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, ), II, pp. –.  As Frick (lxxxiii) puts it, ‘. . . Barbarus archetypum tam religiose expressit, ut non solum chronographiam ipsam, sed etiam quae textui eius apposita erant accuratissime reddiderit.’ Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 5 mind), and carrying on to two passages in which the text seems to reveal an interest, respectively, in pagan Germanic religious practices and in the question of the ethnic origins of the Franks respectively. And then we will step back from the details to attempt to reconstruct the circumstances of the Excerpta’s composition, its arrival in Gaul, and its eventual translation. I. Details Solis confixus The false start comes with a mystifying phrase in the chronicle: ‘Et post haec Heli sacerdos iudicauit Israhel: quo tempore ille solis confixus est ab Acheis et Dardana mura confracta sunt.’ (‘And after these things Eli the priest judged Israel, in which time the sun was razed by the Achaeans and the Dardanian walls were broken down.’) The translator was apparently unaware of the Troy legend, and so has mistaken ’Iλ ον in the Greek original for λ ος. Nor is this an isolated mistake; Ilion appears as Solis throughout the Excerpta, and Troy (Troia) is never mentioned. It is also apparent that the translator knew of sol (or solis, as he rendered the nominative) as the word for ‘the sun’ from his notice on Caesar’s astro- nomical discoveries. The two usual senses of the verb configo are ‘to join’ (and so ‘to fasten together’) and ‘to pierce through, to transfix’ (and so ‘to render powerless or inactive’). It is, therefore, tempting to see the translator, encountering what was to him a strange and incomprehensible passage, falling back on some fable of the sun being shot with an arrow. Greek legend told of Heracles bending his bow at the sun, and examples of such a story are found throughout the world among the Meitheis of India, the Buriats of Siberia, the Miwok of California, and the Blackfoot of Alberta. There is, however, no evidence for a similar story in Germanic myth. And where Biblical history, which forms the spine of the chronicle, offers a compa- rable story of the sun being ‘fixed’ when Joshua commands the sun and the moon to stand still, the Excerpta shows no interest in it; this story is not included in the Excerpta’s account of Joshua. The close  Frick .–.  Frick ., ; .; .; ., , ; ..  Frick .–: ‘Iste est Gaius Iulius Cesar, qui et bisextum et solis cursum advenit.’  On Heracles, see Apollodorus, Biblioteca II... Meitheis: T. Hodson, The Meitheis (London, ), pp. –. Buriats: U. Holmberg, Siberian Mythology, The Mythology of All Races , ed. L. Gray (Boston, ), p. . Miwok: C. Merriam, The Dawn of the World: Myths and Tales of the Miwok Indians of California (Cleveland, ), pp. –. Blackfoot: M. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods (Calgary, ), pp. –.  Joshua X.–. Excerpta on Joshua: Frick .–.. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 6 Benjamin Garstad juxtaposition of the ‘piercing through of the sun’ and the ‘breaking down of the Dardan walls’, moreover, suggests that the translator did not have the sun in mind in this passage. Solis is clearly understood to be a city when the chronicle speaks of it being built: ‘In diebus autem illis solis aedificatus est, et mura Dardani scribuntur esse aedificata, in quo regnavit Darius et post istum Laomedus et Sarpidus et Siamus scolasticus rex.’ (‘In these days the sun [Ilium] was built, and it is recorded that the walls of Dardanus were built, in which Darius ruled and after him Laomedon and Sarpedon and Priam, the scholarly king.’) Rather than an interjection of barbarian folklore, solis confixus est is actually an example of the translator’s often inappropriate preference for translating certain Greek proper nouns which are usually transliterated in Latin. Several telling instances of this preference can be found in the geographic and ethnographic sections of the Excerpta. The African tribe of the ’Iχθυοϕ γοι , usually found as Ichthyophagi, is rendered Piscescomeduli. Astypalaea (’Aστυπλαια ), an island in the Sporades, becomes Astauetera in the Excerpta. And the ‘naked philosophers’ of India, the Gymnosophistae (Γυµνοσοϕιστα ), are termed Nudisapi- entes. These literal renderings demonstrate not only the translator’s neglect of such central works of the Latin canon of late antiquity as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pliny’s Natural History, and Isidore’s Etymologies, but also the sense he was attempting to convey with the phrase solis confixus est. As he understood it, a city called ‘Sun’ was overthrown in the time of Eli the high priest. We learn two things from a correct under- standing of this passage. First, the translation of the Greek chronicle which was the original of the Excerpta into Latin was the ambitious undertaking of an individual largely unschooled in Latin literature and classical culture in general, and ignorant of the Troy legend in particular. This insight will serve us well later on. Second, the use of configo to mean ‘to destroy’ must be added to our lexicon of early medieval Latin.  The fall of Troy, under the name of Solis, is also discussed with a less puzzling term, extermi- natio, at Frick .–: ‘In diebus autem Heli sacerdotis solis exterminatio facta est ab Acheis, in quibus memorantur Agamomnus et Menelaus et Achilleus et quanti alii Danei, de quo historiam posuit Omirus litterator et scriba.’  Frick .–..  Piscescomeduli: Frick .. Ichthyophagi: Pliny, Historia Naturalis VI.(), VI.(); Isidore, Etymologiae IX...  Astauetera: Frick .. Astypalaea: Pomponius Mela II. (); Pliny, HN IV.(); Ovid, Metamorphoses VII.–.  Nudisapientes: Frick .. Gymnosophistae: Pliny, HN VII.(); Prudentius, Hamartigenia ; Isidore, Etym. VIII... The sages of India are referred to as sapientes . . . nudi by Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes V.(), but the Excerpta translator almost certainly did not borrow his term from a phrase used by Cicero.  A sense not found in Ducange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, for instance. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 7 Equorum hinnos There may be no traces of Germanic fable in the Excerpta, but there does seem to be a corollary to Germanic pagan ritual. A portion of the chronicle is devoted to a euhemeristic account of the gods, the so-called ‘Picus-Zeus narrative’, in which Cronus and his son Picus, also named Zeus, reign first in Assyria and then in Italy, and Picus-Zeus’ son, Faunus- Hermes, flees from Italy to rule in Egypt. Faunus-Hermes establishes himself in Egypt by impressing the inhabitants with his ability as a magician. The version of the Picus-Zeus narrative in the Excerpta lists the magic arts of Faunus-Hermes: Et sapiens uidebatur ab Egyptios, per magicas et maleficia eos decip- iebat, et suspitiones et diuinationes illos dicebat, auium narrationes et opupas adnuntiationes et equorum hinnos discebat et mortuorum diuinationes et alia plura mala (And he seemed wise to the Egyptians. He deceived them through magic arts and evil deeds. He spoke his ‘suspicions’ and prophesied to them, and taught them the speech of birds and the pronouncements of the hoopoe and the neighing of horses and the divination of the dead and many other evils). It is the ‘neighing of horses’ (the translator has mistaken hinnos for the proper form of hinnitus, an error which need not concern us here) in particular which demands our attention. There are classical references to both the Persians and the Germans employing horse augury of various sorts, and these could be the source of the hippomancy mentioned in this passage. The horse auguries might have been included in the original Picus-Zeus narrative as a reference to Persian custom in order to emphasize the eastern origins of the god-kings in the story. None of the specific examples of the magical practices of Faunus-Hermes, however, are found in the other early version of the Picus-Zeus narrative which survives in the Greek chronicle of John Malalas, and so we cannot ignore the possibility that the examples of Faunus-Hermes’ prophetic method were interjected by the translator.  Frick .–.. See B. Garstad, ‘The Excerpta Latina Barbari and the “Picus-Zeus Narra- tive” ’, Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik  (), pp. –.  Frick .–.  Herodotus, iii.– (cf. i.., vii..); Tacitus, Germania X.–; Justin, Epitome I..–. It is also worth noting that Xanthos, the chariot horse of Achilles, was known to speak prophecies (Iliad xix.–).  Malalas, Chronographia I.–. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 8 Benjamin Garstad The inclusion, however, of the hoopoe as well, a bird whose connections with magic in Egypt and the Near East are well attested, makes this unlikely. Whether retained or interpolated, the translator might have found in this reference to horse augury a timely resonance of the contemporary practices in certain recently Christianized parts of the Frankish realm. Appended to the capitulary of the Council of Liftinis (Estienne), held in /, and most likely contemporary with it, is a formula for declaring renunciation of the devil and his works and belief in the Trinity, as well as an abbreviated index of the signs of pagan practice, the Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum. With few exceptions scholars have agreed that the Indiculus is to be associated with the efforts of Boniface (at times in conjunction with the campaigns of Pippin and Carloman) to convert the Saxons and Thuringians from paganism to Christianity. Item  is of particular interest: ‘De auguriis vel avium vel equorum vel bovum ster- cora vel sternutationes’ (‘Concerning auguries either of birds or of horses or of cattle, in regard to their droppings or sneezes’). Sneezing could hardly refer to birds, and so perhaps it is only cattle, immediately pre- ceding mention of droppings and sneezes, which were thought to prog- nosticate by means of their droppings and sneezes. And while the sternutationes could be a commonplace in lists of pagan superstitions and  Notably, an Egyptian papyrus instructs that the heart of the hoopoe be employed in a memory spell (PGM II.–); see Papyri Graecae Magicae, ed. K. Preisendanz (Leipzig, ); nd edn A. Henrichs (Stuttgart, ), translation in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic spells, ed. H. Betz (Chicago, ; nd edn, ). Cf. Pliny, HN XXX.()  where a hoopoe’s heart is a remedy for side pains; PDM XIV., in which the head and blood of a hoopoe are cooked in performing a spell. The hoopoe also appears in Aelian, Natura animalium X., the Hieroglyphs of Horapollo I., and the widely popular Physiologus (composed sometime between the second and the fifth centuries), as an emblem of filial gratitude, and so might suggest in our text the debt of Faunus-Hermes to Picus-Zeus in magical learning. Hoopoes also figure in many later Near Eastern legends concerning the sorcery of King Solomon, and although he does not foretell the future by means of hoopoes, he is able to command them and they reveal hidden knowledge to him; see R. Curzon, Monasteries of the East: Embracing Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (New York, ), pp. –; J. Hanauer, Folklore of the Holy Land: Moslem, Christian and Jewish (London, ; enlarged; repr. Mineola, ), pp. –, ; M. Seton-Williams, Egyptian Legends and Stories (London,; repr. New York, ), pp. –.  Forma abrenuntionis diaboli. Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum, ed. G. Pertz, MGH Legum Sectio  (Hanover, ), pp. –; Forma abrenuntionis diaboli. Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum, ed. Boretius, MGH LL  (Hanover, ), pp. –. See W. Boudriot, Die altgermanische Religion in der amtlichen kirchlichen Literatur des Abendlandes vom . bis . Jahrhundert (Bonn, ), pp. –; A. Dierkens, ‘Superstitions, christianisme et paganisme à la fin de l’époque mérovingienne: A propos de l’Indiculus superstitionium et paganiarum’, in H. Hasquin (ed.), Magie, sorcellerie, parapsychologie (Brussels, ), pp. –, esp.  n.  for editions and studies; R. Markus, ‘From Caesarius to Boniface: Christianity and Paganism in Gaul’, in J. Fontaine and J. Hillgarth (eds), Le septième siècle changements et continuités: Actes du Colloque bilatéral franco-britannique tenu au Warburg Institute les – juillet  / The Seventh Century, Change and Continuity: Proceedings of a Joint French and British Colloquium held at the Warburg Institute – July  (London, ), p. ; Y. Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul A.D. – (Leiden, ), pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 9 methods of augury derived from Caesarius of Arles, as we find them in Martin of Braga, Eligius of Noyon, Pirmin of Reichenau, and an anony- mous sermon of the eighth century, horses are not mentioned in such compilations and are more likely to appear in the Indiculus because of observed practice. The Indiculus could, therefore, refer to auguries from the neighing of horses, which appear in the Excerpta, as a pagan ritual current in the translator’s time. Not only was the specific practice of hippomancy identified as pagan, and so under the interdict of the church and the Frankish authorities in the eighth century, but horses in general also had a sinister association in the Germanic world. Horses were sacrificed at pagan burials, and horse bones were found in the vicinity of the grave of Childeric, the father of Clovis, though their relation to the grave and significance are now dis- puted. In the literature of the medieval north, which inherited the superstitions of a time much closer to the Indiculus, horses were con- nected with the dark and destructive magic of the seiðr or witches. Vanlandi, one of the legendary kings of early Sweden, was supposed to have been trampled and killed by a seiðkona (a female witch) who troubled his sleep as a true ‘nightmare’. A witch in Iceland was tried for likewise ‘riding’ a man to death. And the queen of King Edgar, an accused witch, was reputed to transform herself into a horse and shame-  Caesarius of Arles, Sermo LIV.. Martin of Braga, De correctione rusticorum . Eligius: Ouen, Vita S. Eligii  (PL , col. A). Pirmin, Scarapsus (PL , col. B). W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, ), p.  and n. .  There is further evidence for horse auguries of various sorts among related peoples: see Bede, Historia ecclesiastica II.; Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI.(), ed. R. Holtzmann, Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Mereseburg und ihre korveier Überarbeitung, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, ns  (Berlin, ), pp. –; Saxo, Gesta Danorum XIV: see Saxo Grammaticus, Danorum Regum Heroumque Historia Books X–XVI, trans. and annotated by E. Christiansen, BAR International Series (i–ii) (), i.–, ii.; Henry of Livonia, Chronicon I.: see The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, trans. J. Brundage (Madison, ; New York, ), pp. –; H. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Harmondsworth, ), pp. –; V. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, ), pp. –; B. Griffiths, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic (Norfolk, ), p. .  J. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings (London, ), p. ; idem, The Frankish Church (Oxford, ), p. ; E. James, ‘Royal Burials among the Franks’, in M. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, ), pp. –; R. Brulet, ‘La tombe de Childéric et la topographie funéraire de Tournai à la fin du Ve siècle’, in M. Rouche (ed.), Clovis: histoire et mémoire (Paris, ), tome I, pp. –; R. Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (Berkeley, ), p. . B. Bachrach, ‘Procopius, Agathias and the Frankish Military’, Speculum  (), p. , apparently ignor- ing any possible religious significance, took the horse’s skull in the grave of Childeric to indicate that the Frankish army had fielded a larger proportion of cavalry to infantry than had previously been assumed on the basis of the Greek sources!  See Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, pp. –.  Snorri, Ynglinga Saga (Heimskringla) .  Eyrbyggja Saga ; cf. Landnámabók . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 10 Benjamin Garstad lessly cavort with such animals. The eating of horse flesh, moreover, was understood to be an important part of pagan ritual and a telling sign of adherence to paganism. As in the Excerpta, horses were connected in northern culture with black magic and ‘evil deeds’. Some caution, however, is required in taking the Indiculus as an indicator of actual contemporary practice; we do not know to what extent the index of paganiae was an artificial literary construct rather than a checklist of observed activities, or who was supposed to be engaged in these pagan practices: long-Christianized Franks who had not shaken off every objectionable folk custom, or newly converted Saxons who were still largely pagan in conduct and belief. The fact that the formula of renunciation and belief is in an Old Saxon dialect and the association with the mission of Boniface strengthen the idea that the activities of the Saxons were to be observed, but perhaps we are safest saying that the compiler of the Indiculus and the translator of the Excerpta worked from some of the same assumptions about paganism. If horse augury was understood to reflect paganism in Frankland or on its borders, it may be only the first sign of the broader applicability of the Excerpta’s Picus-Zeus narrative in the Christian polemic against pagan- ism. Such euhemeristic explanations of the gods were not unknown in the battery of arguments Christians used to bring about the conversion of the Franks and their neighbours. According to Gregory of Tours, when Clothilda urged Clovis to have their first son baptized she claimed that his gods were ineffectual not merely because they were idols, but because their names were those of men, not gods. The remainder of her denun- ciation is a recounting of the flight of Saturn from his son, the wanton  Liber Eliensis II., ed. E. Blake, Camden Society, rd ser.  (London, ), pp. –; see C. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, ), pp. –.  See, e.g., Boniface, Epistula , Die Briefe de heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. M. Tangl, MGH Epistolae Selectae  (Berlin, ), p. ; Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, ‘A Piece of Horse Liver and the Ratification of Law’, in A Piece of Horse Liver: Myth, Ritual and Folklore in Old Icelandic Sources, trans. T. Gunnell and J. Turville-Petre (Reykjavík, ), pp. –.  See Markus, ‘From Caesarius to Boniface’, pp. –. The question of the prevalence of pagan practice in Frankish Gaul has long exercised scholars and remains unsettled; see E. Vacandard, ‘L’Idolatrie en Gaule’, Revue des questions historiques  (), pp. –. Y. Hen, ‘Paganism and Superstitions in the Time of Gregory of Tours: une question mal posée!’, in K. Mitchell and I. Wood (eds), The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden, ), pp. –, addresses the manner in which the anti-Merovingian slant of Carolingian propaganda has distorted our impression of the earlier period through later sources.  Historia Francorum II.; Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis Libri Historiarum X, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH SRM . (Hanover, /), pp. –. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, p. , seems to presume from this passage that Clovis worshipped a pantheon of gods under their Roman, rather than Germanic, names. G. Scheibelreiter, ‘Clovis, le païen, Clotilde, la pieuse: À propos de la mentalité barbare’, in Rouche (ed.), Clovis: histoire et mémoire, tome I, pp. –, characterizes such rhetoric as ineffectual and unlikely to reflect the real efforts of Clothilda. I. Wood, ‘Pagans and Holy Men, –’, in P. Ní Chatháin and M. Richter (eds), Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien un Mission / Ireland and Christendom: The Bible and the Missions (Stuttgart, ), pp. –, sees no reason to doubt the essential authenticity of the Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 11 lasciviousness of Jupiter, and the magical arts of Mars and Mercury. The gods may appear in a thoroughly Roman guise, recognizable to Gregory and his well-schooled readers, but it must have been supposed that the main points of Clothilda’s diatribe would have had meaning to a pagan Frank like Clovis. And each of these points has a parallel in the most prominent incidents in the Picus-Zeus narrative: the deferential depar- ture of Cronus (Saturn) before Picus-Zeus in both Assyria and Italy, the numerous seductions of Picus-Zeus (Jupiter), and the sorcery of Faunus- Hermes (Mercury). In his advice to Boniface on evangelizing the heathen, Bishop Daniel of Winchester urged him not to contradict the pagans in regard to the genealogies of their gods, but rather to take their assertion that the gods were born from the intercourse of male and female as the starting point of his discourse. If the gods were born in the manner of men, they were men; if they had a beginning, so must the world. Why do the gods not go on reproducing? And how is the most powerful of these gods to be identified? An account of the origins of the gods which laid stress on their family tree, their profligacy, their powers, and their humanity, all of which the Picus-Zeus narrative did, could contribute to such a strategy of missionary preaching. The account of the gods in the Excerpta has affinities with at least two attested Christian approaches to paganism in Francia and its border regions. But we are left with a problem not unlike that posed by com- parison with the Indiculus: the Picus-Zeus narrative is comparable to material from both the early conversion of the Franks and the substan- tially later Frankish efforts to convert the Saxons. The Picus-Zeus narrative might have been particularly appropriate to the missionary approach to the Saxons if Hauck’s theory concerning their iconography is correct. The gold bracteate medallions found in Saxon sites and depicting figures modelled on the numismatic image of a late antique Roman emperor with all of his attributes indicate, according to Hauck, that the Saxons imagined their victorious conquering chief god as account, and takes it as evidence that missionaries in their preaching could overestimate the capacity and literacy of their audiences.  Boniface, Ep. , ed. Tangl, pp. –. See Wood, ‘Pagans and Holy Men, –’, pp. , .  A. Faulkes, ‘Descent from the Gods’, Mediaeval Scandinavia  (/), pp. –, notes that those Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian genealogies which traced certain lineages back to the gods all do so on the assumption of a euhemeristic understanding of the nature of the gods and all appear to be products of a Christian culture. Perhaps it is not simply that the euhemerism introduced by Christian teachers defused the religious significance of the gods enough to allow them to be included in these genealogies, but that Christian proselytizers encouraged such genealogies in order to prove the humanity of the gods. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 12 Benjamin Garstad if he were an emperor after the fashion of the Roman emperor. This conception of divinity in Saxon polytheism might have made the Picus- Zeus narrative, which depicts the gods as wide-ranging world rulers and the first lords of the Roman imperial seat, especially effective in address- ing Saxon paganism. Similar gold bracteates from Scandinavian sites, also taking imperial iconography as a model for the gods, suggest that such an image of the gods was rather widespread among various Germanic peoples. According to the Old Saxon baptismal formula found alongside the Indiculus, the candidates are to declare that they forsake the Devil and all his works and ‘words’: Thunaer and Uuoden and Saxnote. The ‘words of the Devil’ are recognizable as the names of the Germanic gods Donar (Thor) and Woden (Odin), with the addition of the specifically Saxon god, Saxnote. In their long progress from the Baltic the Saxons seem to have retained the names of their principal gods from the common stock of Germanic religious culture, but it is very difficult to say what else they held on to. It is practically impossible, for instance, to say anything certain about even the outline of Saxon myth, or Frankish myth for that matter. Our best literary sources for Germanic myth, the Icelandic eddas and sagas, were composed at some remove in time and space. Neverthe- less, it seems plainly obstructive to insist that there were no affinities between the Icelandic literature we have and the Saxon myth which is lost to us; that the former cannot, with due caution and supplementary evidence, be used to attempt a reconstruction of the latter. We may further assume that in order to be effective in a missionary context a euhemeristic narrative cannot offer just any account of the gods, but one that contains recognizable similarities to the myth of the people being proselytized. It is remarkable, therefore, that the material in the Excerpta which we have assumed might be intended to address the problem of paganism bears a striking resemblance to our records of Norse myth.  K. Hauck, Goldbrakteaten aus Sievern (Munich, ), pp. –; idem, ‘Karl als neuer Konstantin : die archäologischen Entdeckungen in Paderborn in historischer Sicht’, Früh- mittelalterliche Studien  (), pp. –. See also Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, p. ; H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the Imperial Coronation of ’, English Historical Review  (), pp. –.  M. Axboe, ‘Guld og guder i folkevandringstiden: Brakteaterne som kilde til politisk/religiøse forhold’, in C. Fabech and J. Ringtved (eds), Samfundsorganisation og Regional Variation: Norden i romersk jernalder og folkevandringstid (Århus, ), pp. –; A. Andrén, ‘Guld och makt – en tolkning av de skandinaviska guldbrakeaternas funktion’, in Fabech and Ringtved (eds), Samfundsorganisation og Regional Variation, pp. –.  See A. Lasch, ‘Das altsächsische Taufgelöbnis’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen  (), pp. –; G. Baesecke, Die althochdeutschen und altsächsischen Taufelgelöbnisse (Göttingen, ); H. Mettke, Älteste deutsche Dichtung und Prosa (Frankfurt, ), pp. –; G. Dumézil, Apollon sonore et autres essais: Vingt-cinq esquisses de mythologie (Paris, ), pp. –; J. Banaszkiewicz, ‘Origo et religio: versio germano-slavica’, in Rouche (ed.), Clovis: histoire et mémoire, tome II, pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 13 The Picus-Zeus narrative in the Excerpta reflects the accounts of the Germanic gods found in the literature of medieval Scandinavia, both in the Poetic Edda and in the euhemerizing narratives of Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson. The Norse gods are said to originate in the east (Asia or Byzantium); they make wide-ranging journeys to the more open lands of the north; on their way and once they arrive they seduce numerous women and produce prodigious numbers of offspring; they engage in various magical practices, particularly necromancy and proph- ecy, and thereby impress the people they visit; these people also attribute their prosperity to the ‘gods’ and revere them as divinities; and these gods initiate priesthoods and the erection of both idols of themselves and memorial stones. The wanderings, seductions, and magical practices of the gods, especially Odin, are attested in the Edda, and we might assume that they were attributed to the gods in genuine pagan myth, perhaps as it was known to exist among the Franks and Saxons. As for the other points of comparison, their value is less certain, because of the rather dubious relationship of the euhemeristic accounts in which they are found to unadulterated myth on the one hand, and to the Excerpta on the other. The euhemerized narratives of Saxo and Snorri must have borne some resemblance to the original myths in order for them to be plausible and convincing, and so fulfil their apologetic and explanatory purpose. They must, therefore, reflect to some extent the substance of Germanic myth, and perhaps contain details which the translator recognized in the Picus-Zeus narrative. It is, however, just possible that the Excerpta con- tributed to the source material of these later euhemeristic accounts and that, as a result, some points of comparison with the Scandinavian material are derived from the Excerpta itself. We can say, at least, that beyond the single detail of prognostication by the neighing of horses  Origin in the east: Saxo, Gesta Danorum I., III.; Snorri, Prose Edda, prologue; Snorri, Ynglinga Saga (Heimskringla) , . Journeys: Rigsþula; Saxo, Gesta Danorum I., III.; Snorri, Prose Edda, prologue; Snorri, Ynglinga Saga , ,. Seductions: Rigsþula; Havamal ; Harbard- zljod –, ; Saxo, Gesta Danorum III.; Snorri, Ynglinga Saga . Magic: Harbardzljod –; Lokasenna ; Baldrs draumar ; Saxo, Gesta Danorum I., III., VI.; Snorri, Prose Edda, prologue; Snorri, Ynglinga Saga , , . Eliciting worship: Saxo, Gesta Danorum I., VI.; Snorri, Prose Edda, prologue; Snorri, Ynglinga Saga , , , , . Priesthoods, idols, memorial stones: Saxo, Gesta Danorum I.; Snorri, Ynglinga Saga , , .  Perhaps the most basic and compelling similarity between the Excerpta and the euhemerism of the medieval Scandinavian authors is that these texts, as Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p. , says of Snorri, ‘explained the existence of the old legends, firmly rejecting the idea that the ancient divinities were devils’. Moreover, in the same way that Picus-Zeus is succeeded by Faunus-Hermes in the Picus-Zeus narrative, in the Prose Edda the earthly kingship of Thor, identified with Zeus or Jupiter (dies Iovis = Thursday), is followed at length by that of Odin, who was identified with Hermes or Mercury (dies Mercurii = Wednes- day), and these are the only god-kings whose reigns are described at any length. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 14 Benjamin Garstad there was more in the Excerpta’s Picus-Zeus narrative which recalled the stuff of Germanic paganism – precisely how much more we may only say after further detailed study. As a Christian document, the Picus-Zeus narrative, certainly as it appears in the Excerpta, does not have a merely antiquarian intent. It is also a polemical attack on the gods and cults of paganism. When it was composed in the fourth century, the Mediterranean paganism against which it was directed was a living and active rival to Christianity. The Latin translation of the Excerpta is consistent with its original inasmuch as it might also have found a vigorous target for its criticisms on the borders of the Frankish kingdom in which that translation was carried out. Perhaps this is more than coincidental. It is possible that the Excerpta might have been translated – just as the original Picus-Zeus narrative was composed – in order to address a lively paganism. It is true that the Picus-Zeus narrative forms only a small part of the chronicle, but perhaps the translator believed that the full historical context confirmed the nature of the ‘gods’ as historical personages rather than divinities. Francus Undoubtedly the most significant, as well as the most puzzling, indica- tion of barbarian interest in the Excerpta Latina Barbari is the appearance of one ‘Francus’ in the Alban king-list. The Excerpta’s Alban king-list itself is an arrestingly distinct example of such documents, and its diver- gences from the rest of the tradition raise questions of why and by whose hand it came to have its separate form. Is an Alexandrian Greek author of the fifth century or a Frankish translator of later centuries responsible for the inclusion of Francus? And while other apparent attempts in the  On the particularly anti-pagan tone of the Excerpta version as compared to other versions of the Picus-Zeus narrative, see Garstad, ‘The Excerpta Latina Barbari and the “Picus-Zeus Narra- tive” ’, pp. –.  In this case we might expect the names of the god-kings to be rendered in some recognizably Germanic form, as they are, for instance, in Wulfstan’s homily De falsis deis (D. Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, ), pp. –), but perhaps the translator preferred to discuss the gods under their universally recognizable and applicable Roman names, as found in Martin of Braga’s De correctione rusticorum (c. ) or Isidore’s Etymologiae (VII.). Other scholars have seen much more in the application of classical names to presumably Germanic gods. Wallace- Hadrill, The Frankish Church, pp. –, has suggested that the Franks were content to worship their ancestral gods under the names of Romano-Celtic deities. On this authority I. Wood, ‘Missionaries and the Christian Frontier’, in Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, and Helmut Reimitz (eds), The Transformation of Frontiers: From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians (Leiden, ), p. , has made the rather more daring proposal that there was little difference between Roman and Germanic paganism.  One of the most recent critics of the Excerpta, J.-L. Jouanaud, ‘Barbarus, Malalas et le bissextus’, in J. Beaucamp, et al. (eds), Recherches sur la Chronique de Jean Malalas, I (Paris, ), p. , is emphatic that the inclusion of Francus tells against our text representing an unadulterated Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 15 Excerpta to draw the barbarian peoples who had come to rule the west into a scheme of world history or world empires are not nearly so loaded, the very name of Francus is pregnant with allusions to the legend of the Trojan origin of the Franks, and the Excerpta must be examined in the context of the evidence for this legend. The first version of the Alban king-list in the Excerpta comes after an account of Aeneas and Ascanius, which follows the inclusion of the Picus-Zeus narrative: Reges autem qui regnauerunt ab Alba in occiduum sunt isti. Albas Siluius Eneae nepus annos XXXVI. Tittus Siluius regnauit annos XXXVIII. Francus Siluius regnauit annos LIII. Latinus Siluius regnauit annos LVI. Procnax Siluius regnauit annos XLVI. Tarcyinius Siluius regnauit annos XVIII. Cidenus Siluius regnauit annos XXXII. Abintinus Siluius regnauit annos XXI. Rimus Siluius regnauit annos XXVIIII Post istos regnauit Romulus in Roma It might be something of a relief to dismiss all of this as a badly mangled victim of the misfortunes of textual transmission, but the Alban king-list is found repeated in the second half of the Excerpta, which half is a collection of the king-lists of different nations and other raw materials for the initial chronography (making the Excerpta as a whole similar to the two-part composition of Eusebius’ Chronicle and Canons). This second Alban king-list is consistent with the first in all particulars: I. Eneas Siluius annos XXXVIII. II. Ascanius Siluius annos XXXV. III. Albas Siluius annos XXXVI. import from Alexandria, but rather suggests a Gallic manipulation: ‘la mention histo- riographique indirecte qui permet de donner une origine troyenne aux rois francs . . . ne milite pas dans le sens d’une pure et simple importation alexandrine. À tout le moins, il faut imaginer une interprétation gauloise.’  In the Excerpta (Frick .), the Germans appear in their accustomed place in the Table of Nations among the tribes of Shem, as in the Liber Generationis (Frick .) and Syncellus (c. ). The list of Germanorum gentes (Frick .–) is obviously based on classical sources. Germania is also one of the territories bequeathed by Alexander: Germaniam autem totam Tripolemo donauit (Frick .). ‘Triptolemus’ is corrupted from Tlepolemos, and ‘Germania’ likewise represents a misunderstanding of Carmania (see Arrian, Anabasis VI..). This is an instance of the translator adapting unrecognized names to contemporary terms, as when one of the Moorish peoples, the Μωσουδαµο , is rendered as Mosulmani (Frick .).  Frick, .–.. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 16 Benjamin Garstad IIII. Tittus Siluius annos XXXVIII. V. Francus Siluius annos LIII. VI. Latinus Siluius annos LVI. VII. Procnax Siluius annos XLVI. VIII. Tarcinius Siluius annos XVIII. VIIII. Cidensus Siluius annos XXXII. X. Abintinus Siluius annos XXI. XI. Rimus Siluius annos XXVIIII. ... Post hunc autem regnauit Romulus The similarity of the two lists tells us at least that the uniqueness of the Excerpta’s version from the rest of the tradition is the result of purposeful manipulation rather than meaningless accident. The Alban king-list from Aeneas to Romulus survives in a number of different versions in Latin, Greek and Armenian (see Table ), and while they all contain minor discrepancies, they are united by a general con- sistency which the Excerpta does not share. As a rule, there is a sequence of sixteen or seventeen rulers from Aeneas to Romulus, all with names more or less recognizable from one version to the next, and all in a more or less consistent order. The king-list in the Excerpta has no striking affinities with any one version and varies significantly from all of the others. The first noticeable difference is that there are only twelve rulers. Albas and Latinus, as well as Procnax and Abintinus (derived from Proca and Aventinus), have obviously been taken over from some canonical list, but their order is jumbled. Tarcinius (i.e. Tarquinius) Silvius has been imported from Rome’s regal period, and Tittus and Cidensus, along with Francus, are completely novel. Numitor and Amulius have been removed, and an independent reign has been added for Remus (Rimus). The reasons for most of these divergences are beyond our grasp, but at least the last item offers us a clue about where the changes were made to the canonical Alban king-list. The Excerpta’s king-list altogether ignores Numitor and Amulius and grants an unprecedented importance to Remus. This must seem odd to any reader of the central accounts of  Frick, .–.  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae I.., ., ., ; Livy I.; Appian (De regibus/ΕΚ ΤΗΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗΣ) I. (Photius, Bibliotheca, p. b  Bekk.); Ovid, Met. XIV.– , –; Ovid, Fasti IV.–; Jerome, Chronici Canones (anno Abraham  ff.); Eusebius, Armenian Chronicle (Diodorus Siculus VII. frags.); George Syncellus, Ecloga Chro- nographica , , –, – (Georgii Syncelli Ecloga chronographica, ed. Alden A. Mosshammer (Leipzig, ), pp. , , –, ). See Table  for an overview and comparison of these king-lists. See C. Trieber, ‘Zur Kritik des Eusebios. I. Die Königstafel von Alba Longa’, Hermes  (), pp. –; H. Sanders, ‘The Chronology of Early Rome’, Classical Philology  (), pp. –; N. Horsfall, ‘Virgil’s Roman Chronography: A Recon- sideration’, Classical Quarterly, ns  (), pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  Table  A comparative table of various versions of the Alban king-list Dion. Hal. – Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae I.., ., .,  Livy – Livy, I. Appian – Appian (De regibus/⌭⌲ ⌻⌯S 〉〈S⌱L⌱⌲⌯S) I. (Photius, Bibliotheca, p. b  Bekk.) Ovid, Met. – Ovid, Metamorphoses XIV.–, – Ovid, Fasti – Ovid, Fasti IV.– Jerome – Jerome, Chronici Canones (anno Abraham  ff.) Eus. Arm. – Eusebius, Armenian Chronicle (Diodorus Siculus, VII. frags.) Syncellus – George Syncellus, Ecloga Chronographica , , –, – (ed. Mosshammer, pp. , , –, ) Excerpta – Excerpta Latina Barbari (ed. Frick .–.; .–) The Excerpta Latina Barbari D. H. L A O, MET. O, FASTI J E. A. S EXCERPTA  Aeneas  yrs Aeneas Aeneas Aeneas Aeneas Aeneas  yrs Aeneas Aeneas  yrs Eneas Siluius  yrs  Ascanius  Ascanius Eurylaon Ascanius Iulus Ascanius  Ascanius  yrs Ascanius  Ascanius S.  Ascanius  Silvius, son of Aeneas Silvius Silvius Silvius Silvius, son of Silvius  Silvius  Albas S.  Aeneas  Silvius Postumus Aeneas   Aeneas  Latinus S. Aeneas S. Latinus Latinus Aeneas S.  Aeneas Silvius  Tittus S.  Silvius +  Latinus  Alba Latinus S. Alba Alba Latinus S.  Latinus S.  Aeneas  Francus S.  ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd Early Medieval Europe   ()  Alba  Atys Capys Epytus Epytus Alba S.  Alba S.  Silvius  Latinus S.   Capetus  Capys Capetus Capys Capys Aegyptus S.  Epitus S.  Anchises  Procnax S.   Capys  Capetus Tiberinus Capetus Calpetus Capys S.  Capys  Aegyptius S.  Tarcinius S.   Calpetus  Tiberinus Agrippa Tiberinus Tiberinus Carpentus S.  Calpetus  Capys. S.  Cidensus S.   Tiberinus  Agrippa Romulus Remulus Agrippa Tiberinus S.  Tiberius S.  Tiberius  Abintinus S.   Agrippa  Romulus S. Aventinus Acrota Remulus Agrippa S.  Agrippa  Aremulus S.  Rimus S.   Allodius  Aventinus Procas Aventinus Aventinus Aremulus S.  Aramulius S.  Carmentus  Romulus  Aventinus  Proca Numitor Proca Proca Aventinus S.  Aventinus  Silvius   Proca  Numitor Amulius Numitor Numitor Procas S.  Proca S.  Procas S.   Amulius  Amulius Rom.&Rem. Amulius Amulius Amulius S.  Amulius + Amulius S.   Numitor Rom.&Rem. >Numitor Quirinus / (Romulus) Numitor Numitor  Rom.&Rem. 17  Romulus & Rom.&Rem. Rom.&Rem. Remus 18 Benjamin Garstad Rome’s foundation, such as those by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy, in which the usurpation of Amulius and the restoration of Numitor are important elements in the rise of Romulus, and Remus is never more than a co-regent with his brother. If, however, we turn once again to Malalas’ chronicle, a work which we have already seen shares material with the Excerpta, we find another narrative of Rome’s beginnings which ignores the rivalry between Numitor and Amulius and gives more weight to the rivalry between Romulus and Remus. In fact, Malalas’ account of the Alban kings contains a number of precise correspondences with the Excerpta’s king-list. Albas is the immediate successor of Ascanius, as in the Excerpta, instead of fifth or sixth in line as in most canonical versions. Malalas’ regnal years for Aeneas (), Ascanius (), and Albas () are, with a deviation of a single year in only one instance, identical to those in the Excerpta. From Albas, Malalas skips directly to Romus (Romulus) and Remus without naming the intervening kings, and so – whether they were supposed to be among the kings from Albas to Romus or not – Numitor and Amulius are not mentioned, as in the Excerpta. After Romus slays Remus, disasters befall the city until, at the behest of an oracle, Romus allows his brother to ‘reign with him’ by setting up an image of Remus beside him on the throne, and issuing his decrees in the plural (giving rise to the ‘royal we’). Thus, although Remus is given a period of sole rule in the Excerpta and his memory becomes indispensable to his brother’s reign in Malalas, both texts grant a new and increased importance to Romulus’ twin. Taken together, the similarities between Malalas and the Excerpta suggest that whoever manipulated the Alban king-list in the Excerpta had access to sources very much like those of Malalas, and that this manipulation occurred not in the Latin west (which would be dominated by such sources as Livy, Ovid, and Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’ Canons), but in the Greek east, where the Excerp- ta’s Greek original was composed. The inclusion of Francus, however, remains the most remarkable aspect of the Excerpta’s Alban king-list. The appearance of Francus as a descendant at no great remove from Aeneas suggests very strongly that the king-list is somehow related to the legend of the Trojan origin of the  M. Hodgkinson, ‘John Malalas, Licinius Macer, and the History of Rome’, Histos  (), <http://www.dur.ac.uk/Classics/histos//hodgkinson.html>, has drawn attention to the Republican annalist Licinius Macer (d.  ) as a source for Malalas, but the mention of Amulius and Numitor in the fragments of Licinius Macer (Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Fragmenta, F  (p. ) = Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. v..) makes it seem unlikely that he is responsible for the features of the Alban king-list shared by the Excerpta and Malalas.  Malalas, Chronographia VI., , .  Malalas, Chronographia VII.–. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 19 Franks. Although a narrative tracing the Franks back to Troy is first found in the chronicle of Fredegar (dated to ), the existence of nearly contemporaneous but distinct accounts of the Trojan origin of the Franks has led to a general agreement that the legend pre-dates Fredegar. A legend of Trojan origins has precedents from Roman Gaul before the advent of the Franks, but the question becomes, when did the preten- sion of Trojan roots first attach itself to the Franks? Barlow suggests that this occurred before Christianization, perhaps in the late third or mid- fourth century, and proposes that the myth of Trojan origins was appro- priated by the Merovingian king Theudebert I (r. –), along with such other imperial prerogatives as minting gold coins with his image and claims of authority in correspondence with the emperor in Byzantium. Wood suggests that Trojan origins were first attributed to the Franks  See E. Lüthgen, Die Quellen und der historische Werth der fränkischen Trojasage (Bonn, ); O. Dippe, Die fränkischen Trojanersagen. Ihr Ursprung und ihr Einfluss auf die Poesie und die Geschichtschreibung im Mittelalter (Matthias Claudius-Gymnasium mit Realschule und Vorschule in Wandsbek. XXIII) (Wandsbek, ); E. Faral, La légende arthurienne, Études et Documents (Paris, ), Appendice I, Tome I, pp. –; M. Klippel, Die Darstellung der Fränkischen Trojanersage in Geschichtsschreibung und Dichtung vom Mittelalter bis zur Renaissance in Frankre- ich (Marburg, ); R. Asher, ‘Myth, Legend and History in Renaissance France’, Studi francesi  (), pp. –; A. Lindner, ‘Ex mala parentela bona sequi seu oriri non potest: The Troyan Ancestry of the Kings of France and the Opus Davidicum of Johannes Angelus de Legonissa’, Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance: Travaux et documents  (), pp. –; F. Graus, ‘Troja und trojanische Herkunftssage im Mittelalter’, in W. Erzgräber (ed.), Kontinuität und Transformation der Antike im Mittelalter: Veröffentlichung der Kongressakten zum Freiburger Symposion des Mediävistenverbandes (Sigmaringen, ), pp. –; A. Giardina, ‘Le origini troiane dall’impero alla nazione’, Settimane di studio  (), pp. –; E. Ewig, ‘Le mythe troyen et l’histoire des Francs’, in Rouche (ed.), Clovis: histoire et mémoire, tome I, pp. –; E. Brown, ‘The Trojan Origins of the French and the Brothers Jean du Tillet’, in A. Murray (ed.), After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, Essays presented to Walter Goffart (Toronto, ), pp. –; A. Murray, ‘Reinhard Wenskus on “Ethnogenesis”, Eth- nicity, and the Origin of the Franks’, in A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, ), p.  and n. ; E. Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, in D. Geuenich (ed.), Die Franken und die Alemannen bis zur ‘Schlacht bei Zülpich’ (–) (Berlin, ), pp. –. On the broader context of the problem of Barbarian ethnicity, see W. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Debate about the Ethnogenesis of the Germanic Tribes’, in H. Amirav and B. Romeny (eds), From Rome to Constantinople: Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron (Peeters, ), pp. –.  W. Goffart, ‘The Fredegar Problem Reconsidered’, Speculum  (), p. .  J. Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations (Oxford, ), p. xi; idem, The Long-Haired Kings, p. ; J. Barlow, ‘Gregory of Tours and the Myth of the Trojan Origins of the Franks’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien  (), p. .  Dippe, Die fränkischen Trojanersagen (), pp. IV–VII; Faral, La légende arthurienne, pp. –.  Barlow, ‘Gregory of Tours’, p. . Ewig, ‘Trojamythos und fränkische Frühgeschichte’, esp. pp. –, has taken issue with Barlow’s early date and suggests that the legend of Trojan origins for the Franks belongs to the late sixth century. He notes in particular that Fredegar’s mention of the Turks dates his version of the story, the earliest full narrative, to between / and /. While Ewig’s research is valuable in dating the specific version of Fredegar, it does not finally answer the question of how early its constituent elements, or indeed the concept of a Trojan origin for the Franks, began circulating. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 20 Benjamin Garstad under their king Mallobaudes, active under Gratian (r. –), the son of Valentinian, who has a prominent role in the legend as related in the Liber Historiae Francorum. Both of these proposals would suggest that the question of the origins of the Franks was first raised (and answered with a Trojan legend) well before the composition of the Excerpta’s Greek original. We are, further- more, in the fortunate position of being able to confirm that some kind of Frankish origin legend with Francus as its principal character was not isolated to Frankland, but was in fact not unknown in the Greek east. John Lydus, writing in Constantinople early in the second half of the sixth century, refers to ‘the Sygambrians . . . [whom] the people around the Rhine and the Rhone now call . . . Franci after a leader’. Isidore of Seville, a younger contemporary of Lydus, also records in his Etymologies, a repository of much eastern as well as western knowledge, that according to one interpretation the Franks were named for one of their leaders. The passage from Lydus may not demonstrate knowledge of a fully fleshed narrative, but the idea of an eponymous chief who gives his name to the Franks, with or without some connection to Troy, would be enough to inform the Alban king-list in the Excerpta. And so it is quite possible that the Alban king-list, more or less as it currently appears and complete with the inclusion of Francus, belongs to the composition of the Greek original as it first arrived in Gaul. The close correspondences with Malalas’ account, as well as the extreme brevity of the inclusion of Francus, suggest that they belong to the early, Greek version of the chronicle. The sparser account of Francus must presumably precede the fuller; while there was enough information circulating in the Greek east to produce the Excerpta’s notice on Francus, someone writing in Gaul after Fredegar and under the influence of the Trojan-origin stories would surely have included a more expansive narrative. The translator’s demon- strable ignorance of the story of Troy which would give significance to the Trojan-origin legends, moreover, tell against a manipulation of the Alban king-list on the part of the translator. The inclusion of Francus does not seem to have been part of the Greek chronicle’s original composition in the early fifth century, and it was almost certainly not found in the textual sources which account for the  I. Wood, ‘Defining the Franks: Frankish Origins in Early Medieval Historiography’, in S. Forde et al., Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages (Leeds, ), p. .  Lydus, De magistratibus, .: Συγ µβροις . . . (Φρ γγους α τος ξ γεµ νος καλο σιν π το παρ ντος ο περ Ρ νον κα  Ροδαν ν). See A. Bandy, Ioannes Lydus. On Powers, or The Magistracies of the Roman State (Philadelphia, ), p. ; on the date, see pp. xxvi–xxxviii. For another instance of knowledge of the Franks in near contemporary Constan- tinople, see A. Cameron, ‘Agathias on the Early Merovingians’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, nd ser.  (), pp. –.  Isid., Etym. IX..: ‘Franci a quodam proprio duce vocari putantur.’ Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 21 bulk of the chronicle’s substance. But whenever it was included, the mention of an eponymous ancestor for the Franks was made with a clear purpose. The Greek Excerpta was not a book which simply happened to make its way to Frankish Gaul; it shows telling indications of being prepared in the Greek east with a specific destination and audience in mind. So how did this volume make its way to the Franks who were supposed to find it interesting, and eventually into the hands of a stub- born if not skillful translator who found it sufficiently interesting to expend a great deal of effort making its pages render up their secrets? It is practically impossible to say on the basis of our meagre hints. The book’s origin may have been as official as the presentation of a Byzantine embassy which colluded in the putative claims of Theudebert or another Frankish king, or as pedestrian as the chance find of some traveller who had enough Greek and knowledge of scrivening to doctor a manuscript and saw a chance to curry favour with the ruling circles of the Frankish kingdom. Whatever the circumstances, the Greek original of the Excerpta seems to have been prepared in the Greek east for consumption amongst the Franks. But a single name, appearing only twice, hardly seems to be sufficiently prominent to achieve the purposes we have imagined. Such slight adap- tation is surely not impressive enough to accomplish the aims of flattery of either an ambassador or a sycophant. There is no fanfare, no protracted narrative, no attention is drawn to the name of Francus at all. We should note, however, that brevity to the point of imperceptibility is also the hallmark of the few but significant interpolations in Fredegar’s version of the Liber Generationis. The Trociane and Frigiiae are included amongst the sons of Japhet in anticipation of the account of the Trojan origins of the Franks. The value of an interpolation for the interpolator and his intended audience is contingent upon the validity of the interpolated text. That validity, in turn, is determined by the integrity of the text and its faithfulness to the tradition it is supposed to represent. We should expect, therefore, interpolations to be minor, almost escaping notice. The scale of the interpolation is certainly not commensurate with the inter- polator’s investment in its inclusion and reception. So the name Francus  M. McCormick, ‘Diplomacy and the Carolingian Encounter with Byzantium down to the Accession of Charles the Bald’, in B. McGinn and Willemien Otten (eds), Eriugena: East and West (Notre Dame, ), pp. –, traces a number of the diplomatic contacts between Byzantium and the Franks in a slightly later period, noting the high intellectual calibre of many of the personnel and the gift of books to the Carolingian court. This situation has a place, at least, in any consideration of how the Greek original of the Excerpta came to Frankland.  Fredegar, Chronicae I.; ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM  (Hanover, ), p. , lines , cf. . See Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, p. ; Goffart, ‘The Fredegar Problem Reconsidered’, p.  and n. . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 22 Benjamin Garstad alone might have been expected to gain a warm and enthusiastic welcome for the chronicle and its bearer. An instructive parallel to the peregrinations of our text might be provided by the fortunes of another obscure text from late antiquity concerned with ethnic origins. The so-called ‘Frankish Table of Nations’ appears in a number of works of early medieval Latin historiography, and in a few brief lines (perhaps no more than five in its original form) it traces the various peoples of the old western empire back to three broth- ers. The last of these brothers was the progenitor of both the Romans and the Franks. According to the meticulous researches of Goffart, the text was first composed (on the basis of Tacitus’ Germania) about  in Constantinople, or at least in the Byzantine east, and was modified some two hundred years later in Frankish Gaul. The adapter shows his hand by changing Visigothos to the Germanic synonym Walagothos, and by taking the contemporary situation into account with the inclusion of Saxones. The most remarkable parallel is that Romans and Franks are found together, and are supposed to have sprung from the same ancestor. And the point, such as it is, is made with extreme economy; the compo- sition itself is brief, like the adaptation of the Excerpta. The text begins its life in the Greek east at the beginning of the sixth century, but some interest, intended or accidental, brings it to the west where it is preserved. Continued interest assures that it still receives attention in the seventh or eighth century, as evinced by slight modifications to keep it timely, a thoroughgoing translation being unnecessary because it was first com- posed in Latin. Two such works may not indicate a steady stream of writings on history and ethnic origins emanating from the east for consumption in Gaul and still being digested well into the Merovingian period, but they do suggest that neither represents an altogether excep- tional phenomenon. One point that the Excerpta and the ‘Frankish Table of Nations’ have in common is of as great an interest in terms of its reception as of its intention. Both of these texts make the Franks and the Romans related by ancestry. This is by no means an uncommon feature of Trojan-origin narratives for the Franks. Among the early versions, Fredegar asserts that the Franks were descended from the Trojans, along with the Mace- donians, the Turks, and the Latins. The Franks were named for their chosen king, Francio, and they departed from Troy and Asia to settle on  See W. Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations: An Edition and Study’, Früh- mittelalterliche Studien  (), pp. –, who provides a comparison of preserved versions of the text as well as a hypothetical reconstruction of the original.  Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. –.  Goffart, ‘The Supposedly “Frankish” Table of Nations’, pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 23 the Rhine, where they fought against Pompey. The Liber Historiae Francorum, written in , relates a similar story that the Greeks besieged the city of Troy under its king Aeneas, and when the city was captured Aeneas fled to Italy, and the remaining Trojans were led by Priam and Antenor to the River Don and the Sea of Azov. There they first fought for the Romans against the Alans, and then assaulted the Roman tax collec- tors and made war with the Romans. In defeat they decamped to the extremities of the Rhine. Later versions also have the Romans and the Franks diverge from their common stock at Troy, and occasionally include conflict between the Franks and the Romans. The Excerpta’s presentation of the origins of the Franks stands apart from all of these in at least one important respect. Without an elaborate narrative, the Excerpta nevertheless makes it clear that the Franks are not a group of refugees like Aeneas and his followers, who splinter off from the Trojan people when the city falls. Rather, they trace their origins back to one of Aeneas’ descendants, a descendant who appears once the line of Aeneas is firmly ensconced in Italy, indeed, once it is as much Italian as Trojan. The Franks do not skirt around the periphery of Europe to come from Troy to the homeland from which they enter the pages of history; they come through Italy, from the Roman heartland, and are descended from the Alban kings, the ur-Romans. By making Francus, the putative ancestor of the Franks, one of the Alban kings, however, the Excerpta’s editor is doing more than creating a blood relationship – perhaps gratifying to the historically minded – between the Romans and the Franks. The Excerpta contains the idea that Rome from its inception, from before its foundation, ruled over all of the west, and implies that rule in the west devolves from Rome. Italy is depicted as the centre of power in the west in the Picus-Zeus narrative, as the seat of the god-kings, even though they rule over ‘the western parts’. The first version of the Alban king-list itself opens with the statement that it contains a roll of ‘the kings who ruled from Alba in the West’: ‘Reges autem qui regnauerunt ab Alba in occiduum sunt isti’. The words may certainly be taken to suggest that the capital of the west  Fredegar, Chron. II.–, III.; MGH SRM , pp. –, . Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, pp. –; R. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, ), pp. –.  LHF –; ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM  (Hanover, ), pp. –. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians, pp. –, –; Wood, ‘Defining the Franks’, pp. –.  For example, the eighth-century Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister and the ninth-century chronicle of Freculph of Lisieux, I..; see O. Prinz, Die Kosmographie des Aethicus Ister (Munich, ), pp. – (for date), –; M. Allen, Freculphi Lexoviensis Episcopi Opera Omnia, CCCM , A (Turnhout, ), I, pp. – (for date), II, pp. –.  Frick .–; .–, , –; ..  Frick .–. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 24 Benjamin Garstad remained in Italy, in Rome’s precursor, and that the Alban kings main- tained the rule of their lineal ancestors, Cronus, Picus-Zeus, and Faunus- Hermes, over the entire west. The concept appears rather more explicitly at the conclusion of the catalogue of Roman kings which follows the Alban king-list: ‘Isti reges, qui regnauerunt in Romam et in omnem occidentalis parte terram’ (‘These kings ruled in Rome and in all the western part of the earth’). The idea that rule in the west is derived from Rome is certainly present in the text, but what meaning this was sup- posed to have is less obvious. Perhaps it is part of a Byzantine diplomatic insistence that kingdoms in the west could only be confirmed by the ‘Roman’ emperor in Constantinople. Tracing the ancestry of the Franks back to the Alban kings would then be a validation of Frankish rule in Gaul, and the Excerpta perhaps something of a face-saving document which allowed the Byzantine emperor and his agents to nod at the claims of the Franks because on the grounds of ancestry they were entitled to share with the Romans in the rule of the west, and so nobody was ‘selling the store’. The Excerpta’s Alban king-list is distinct from all others, and inten- tionally so. It is the product of manipulation, and comparison with Malalas suggests that it was the Greek original which was manipulated in the Greek east. There is every likelihood that the name of Francus was also included in the Greek Excerpta and that he was intended to be an eponymous ancestor for the Franks. Even this one name might carry enormous import and was intended to do so by whoever prepared this text for reception amongst the Franks. The Greek chronicle was intended to serve a purpose. What exactly that purpose was, whether diplomatic, courtly, or some other, may be uncertain. But we can say that the text was intended to flatter the Franks and their rulers, who are purported to be not merely descendants of the Trojans, but of the Alban kings, the forebears of the Romans. And this provides them not merely with an ancestor of suitably ancient and distinguished pedigree, but also with a sanction for their rule in west.  Frick .–.  From the perspective of a Byzantine historian like Procopius (De Bellis VII..), the Franks were never comfortable in their tenure of Gaul unless the emperor afforded it his sanction. Johannes Straub’s Bonn School would certainly insist that the dispensation of authority and jurisdiction from Rome was an imperial idea from the fourth century on, as much as it was an eighth-century Frankish one; see E. Chrysos, ‘De foederatis iterum’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity (Leiden, ), p. .  It is also possible that the significance of Rome’s pre-eminence, for a reader in Frankland at any rate, lay in its resonance of claims of papal authority and the ideas that informed Charlemagne’s coronation in Rome in . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 25 II. Composition and translation To take stock, our examination of certain details of the text so far indicates that the translator of the Excerpta Latina Barbari was unfamiliar with the story of Troy (along with many other aspects of classical culture), the historical account of the gods in the Excerpta has both a polemical anti-pagan purpose and a number of resonances with Germanic myth, and the Excerpta’s Alban king-list was revised in the Greek east to include ‘Francus Siluius’ for a Frankish audience. All of this suggests there are two different time periods appropriate to the Excerpta Latina Barbari. First, the fifth or sixth centuries when the Franks themselves, or at least their kings and magnates, were being converted, and the Franks were seeking legitimacy and an identity within the old Roman empire. Second, the eighth century when the Franks were fostering the evangelization of the pagans on their frontiers. The problem of dating also raises the question of how a Greek chronicle came to Gaul in the first place. Frick’s sugges- tion that the Excerpta arrived in Gaul by way of the trade between Marseilles and the east is not implausible, just vague and imprecise, offering a route, but not a set of circumstances. One scenario seems to fit the observations noted above, and it will form the basis of the thesis we shall pursue in greater detail from this point on. The Greek text of the Excerpta was composed in the form the Latin translator knew shortly after the reign of the last emperor in the laterculus, Anastasius (–). The Greek chronicle was presented to the Austrasian king Theudebert I in an effort to encourage his aid in the Gothic wars (‘the liberation of Rome’), cement his adherence to Chris- tianity, and perhaps to help in his evangelization of the pagans on his borders. The translation of the Excerpta was undertaken some time later, quite likely in the eighth century, by which time the conversion of the heathen was a principal concern of the Franks and the story of Frankish descent from Francus had been substantially elaborated by other writers, but had decreased in importance. A number of points make Theudebert a likely recipient for the Excerpta. He reigned (–) shortly after the latest datable event in the Greek chronicle’s laterculus (the reign of Anastasius). He was courted as an ally by Justinian at the outset of the Gothic wars, and received  Frick lxxxiii. S. Loseby, ‘Marseille: A Late Antique Success Story?’, Journal of Roman Studies  (), pp. – (esp. ) demonstrates that Marseille did indeed remain a busy port under the Merovingians, and argues that the intellectual and cultural vitality of the city, especially its connections with the east, was maintained in late antiquity by the strength of the church.  Frick .. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 26 Benjamin Garstad Byzantine embassies and diplomatic correspondence from . One can only imagine, though, that these overtures were more optimistic and enthusiastic before  when Theudebert led a Frankish army into Italy attacking Goths and Byzantines indiscriminately, thus making manifest his perfidy and the dangerous quality of a Frankish alliance. By  Justinian had to confirm the ceding of Roman territories in Gaul to Frankish rule. Procopius’ report of the Franks sacrificing Gothic women and children as first-fruits of victory on their Italian campaign suggests that the Byzantines might have considered the Franks’ recognized adher- ence to Christianity to be somewhat precarious or imperfect. And as the king of Austrasia, Theudebert would not only have a number of Frankish followers who retained pagan ways, but also the Saxons as neighbours and subjects along his eastern frontier who were wholeheartedly pagan. The single detail of Francus’ inclusion in the Alban king-list indicates that the Greek chronicle was manipulated for Frankish consumption. But if we step back to survey the Excerpta as a whole there are further indications of reworking. The chronicle is for the most part comprised of genealogies, geographical and ethnographic catalogues, brief annalistic notices and synchronisms, king-lists, and chronographic computations. Bare bones stuff, indeed. There are very few instances of continuous narrative. These prolonged (if that is the proper word for accounts longer than notices, but by no means lengthy or involved) narratives fall into two categories. First, a rendition of the core elements of sacred history made up of Biblical quotations and paraphrase. Second, the Picus-Zeus narrative and an account of Alexander the Great. Both of these latter narratives have close parallels in the chronicle of John Malalas, and it  Procopius, Bell. V..–; Epistulae Austrasicae –, ed. W. Gundlach, CCSL  (Turnhout, ), pp. –.  Procopius, Bell. VI.; cf. VI..–.  Procopius, Bell. VII...  Procopius, Bell. V..–. See Cameron, ‘Agathias on the Early Merovingians’, pp. , –; H. Ellis Davidson, ‘Human Sacrifice in the Late Pagan Period in North-Western Europe’, in Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo, p. .  The Flood: Frick .–.. Babel: Frick .–.. Exodus: Frick .–.. Joshua: Frick .–.. Judges: Frick .–.; .–.. Gospel: Frick .–..  Picus-Zeus narrative: Frick .–.. Alexander: Frick .–; .–.; .– .; .–. (cf. .–.).  Malalas, Chronographia I.–, VII., VIII.–. The two versions of the Picus-Zeus narrative in the Excerpta and Malalas are discussed in Garstad, ‘The Excerpta Latina Barbari and the “Picus-Zeus Narrative” ’. The parallels in the account of Alexander in the two works range from recourse to the agency of God as an explanation of historical causality and mention of Alexander giving laws to the territories under him, to close verbal similarities in the stories of Nectanebo and such a distinct phrase as the following: ‘liberauit omnem terram Romanorum et Grecorum et Egyptiorum de seruitute Chaldeorum’ (Frick .–) / λευθερσας  α τς  Αλεξανδρος κα  τς π λεις κα  τς χρας κα  πσαν τ  ν γ ν τ ν Pωµα ων κα  Ελλ  νων κα  Α γυπτ ων κ τ ς  Ασσυρ ων κα  Περσ ν κα  Πρθων κα  Μ δων ποταγ ς κα  δουλε ας (Malalas, VIII.). Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 27 seems reasonable to assume that the two Greek chronicles shared a single source, rather than coincidentally compiling the same material. The curious concatenation of oriental peoples defeated by Alexander, the ‘Assyrians, Chaldaeans, Persians, and Medes’ in the Excerpta and the ‘Assyrians, Medes, Parthians, Babylonians, and Persians’ in Malalas, is the firmest link between the two texts. In the Excerpta this list of eastern powers also connects Alexander to the liberation of Rome and Judea from these same enemies. The Roman king-list ends with a passage relating that after the era of the kings, God handed the Romans over to the ‘Assyrians, Chaldaeans, Persians, and Medes’ until He raised up Alex- ander to free them. The list of Israelite and Judean kings ends in very similar terms, with God placing the rule of the land in the hands of the ‘Assyrians, Chaldaeans, Persians, and Medes’, and although Alexander is not said to liberate Judea from these peoples, the Excerpta does record that he went to Jerusalem and rendered worship to God. Similarly, in the Excerpta Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadnezzar), the king of the Assyr- ians and of Babylon, is responsible for leading the people in Israel and Judea into exile and destroying the temple in Jerusalem, and he rules all the land from the Caspian gates to the Pillars of Hercules, including Rome. While Malalas’ version does have Alexander freeing the Romans, it does not have precise parallels to God making Rome and Judea tribu- tary to the eastern overlords as listed in the account of Alexander, so these particular changes may be peculiar to the Excerpta. The instances of continuous narrative (along with the passages relating Alexander to the Romans and the Jews through the defeat of their common enemies), anomalous as they are, may be seen as interpolations in an annalistic chronicle with terse notices of events, a chronicle on the  Frick (clxvi) is probably right in saying that the ultimate source for the passages on Alexander is the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, but I think it likely that the immediate source of both the Excerpta and Malalas for all of the comparable material is the authority cited by Malalas, the otherwise unknown historian Bouttios; see B. Garstad, ‘The Tyche Sacrifices in John Malalas: Virgin Sacrifice and Fourth-Century Polemical History’, Illinois Classical Studies  (), pp. –. The irony of employing this source to present Alexander as a model of the victorious liberator is that it seems Bouttios’ intention was to depict Alexander, like all pagan kings, as a tyrant and an evil-doer.  There are further instances of this conflation in Malalas when he discusses Nebuchadnezzar (see below), and when the Median kings from Darius to Astyages and the Persian kings Cyrus and Cambyses are said to rule ‘the Assyrians’ (VI., ).  Frick .–.  Frick .–; .–; .–.. On the Excerpta’s account of Alexander at Jerusalem, see S. Cohen, ‘Alexander the Great and Jaddus the High Priest According to Josephus’ AJS Review  (), p. .  Frick .–; .–; .–. Likewise, in Malalas, Chronographia Nebuchadnezzar, whom history knew as a Babylonian king, is called an ‘Assyrian’ (VI., ) and a ‘Persian’ (XVIII.). Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 28 Benjamin Garstad model of Eusebius’ Chronological Canons. These interpolations had Greek sources (even the Biblical material belies traces of the Septuag- int), and so it seems likely that, as with the Alban king-list, the adap- tations were made to the Greek chronicle by a Greek hand. The extension of the laterculus of Roman emperors to Anastasius, another manipulation of the chronicle, offers an indication of when the changes were made. But the question of why the adaptations were made remains to be addressed. An answer is possible if we assume Theudebert to be the intended audience of the Excerpta. The Picus-Zeus narrative’s euhemeristic denun- ciation of the gods and the presentation of an alternative Christian world history might be taken as motivated by Byzantine fears of a Frankish relapse into paganism, or hopes for further conversions beyond the borders of Francia. They would have reminded Theudebert, who might be expected to remind his retainers in turn, of his denial of the pagan gods and his adherence to the Christian One. This might have been assumed to be necessary if we can take Procopius’ report of Frankish human sacrifice as an indication of Byzantine suspicions concerning the sincerity of the Franks’ Christianity. The account of Alexander, especially as it makes him the liberator of Rome and the worshiper of the True God in Jerusalem, might have been meant as a call to aid in the Gothic war. It could also be intended as an appeal to the vanity Theudebert displayed when he issued gold coinage in his own name (which not even the king  The Gospel as it appears in the Excerpta (Frick .–.), along with its legendary accretions, in particular shows signs of having been interpolated. The narrative is interspersed throughout a Roman consular list, and events which according to the story must have taken place only months or even days apart are separated by several years according to their place in the consular list.  For instance, the Septuagint date of  anno mundi is used for the Flood (Frick .–), instead of the Vulgate figure of  a.m. In rendering Genesis VI. the Excerpta’s tempus omnium rerum (.) is closer to the Septuagint’s καιρς παντς  νθρ που than to the Vulgate’s finis universae carnis. Noah’s ark is built de lignis quadratis (.), which reflects the Septuagint κ ξ λων τετραγ  νων as well as the Vulgate de lignis levigatis, and pitched inside and outside asfaltu bitumini (.) a reduplication of both the Septuagint’s σϕλτω  and the Vulgate’s bitumine (Genesis VI.).  I realize that dating the inclusion of this material to the extension of the laterculus involves an adjustment in the terminus ante quem which I have previously maintained for its source. I had stated that the Greek original of the Excerpta in more or less its present form with practically all of its contents, including the accounts of Picus-Zeus and Alexander, could be dated to shortly after ; Garstad, ‘The Excerpta Latina Barbari and the “Picus-Zeus Narrative” ’, pp. –; idem, ‘The Tyche Sacrifices in John Malalas’, pp. –. Even if the terminus ante quem for material attributable to him is extended by over a century, I would still date Bouttios to the late fourth or early fifth century, principally on the grounds of the consistency of his interests, themes and rhetoric, with the Christian reaction to the reign of Julian the Apostate ( –); Garstad, ‘The Tyche Sacrifices in John Malalas’, pp. –.  It is interesting to note that at least one modern scholar has drawn comparisons between Alexander and the early Frankish kings, although for altogether different reasons; see A. Samuel, ‘Philip and Alexander as Kings: Macedonian Monarchy and Merovingian Parallels’, American Historical Review  (), pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 29 of Persia dared to do), as well as to the vaunting ambition for which he would develop a reputation in Byzantium. According to this interpre- tation, the Excerpta calls upon Theudebert to emulate the mighty con- queror Alexander in freeing Rome (helping Justinian’s armies to recapture the city), and giving God his due glory aright (putting down the Arian Goths and reimposing Catholic Orthodoxy) by fighting tyrannical enemies, invaders and usurpers from the east (the Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths, were known to have migrated from the Black Sea). Such ideas of liberation and victory over ‘the nations’ seem to be echoed in coins of Theudebert which may be associated with his Italian expedi- tion; they bear legends announcing a Victor Gentium and Pax et Libertas. The inclusion of Francus, a putative ancestor for the Franks, among the Alban kings, can be seen not merely as idle flattery, but as an inducement to the Franks to help their kinsmen, the Romans, in their efforts to redeem the ancestral homeland (by then something of a foreign country to the ‘Romans’ of Byzantium no less than to the Franks), to say nothing of a balm to the Byzantines or even Gallo-Romans, who might have anticipated the prospect of ceding territory in Gaul to the Franks in order to win their help, as eventually happened, and who might have wished to legitimate this transfer of sovereignty by making the Franks near relatives of the Romans. There are a number of indications of the plausibility of our recon- struction of the Excerpta’s arrival in Gaul. In seeking aid on the basis of an invented ancestral kinship, the manipulators of the Excerpta would not have been engaged in a novel diplomatic manoeuvre – certainly not as far  Procopius, Bell. VII..–. See Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, pp. –; Cameron, ‘Agathias on the Early Merovingians’, pp. –. The authenticity of the single example of a coin on which Theudebert assumed the title of ‘Augustus’ may be in doubt, but Procopius attests to Byzantine intelligence in regard to some such activity on the part of the Frankish king; see E. Chrysos, ‘The Title 〉〈S⌱L⌭US in Early Byzantine International Relations’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers  (), pp. –; R. Collins, ‘Theodebert I, “Rex Magnus Francorum” ’, in P. Wormald et al. (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, ), pp. –; M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge and Paris, ), pp. –.  According to Agathias, I. (B–B), Theudebert attempted to orchestrate an attack on Constantinople itself; see Cameron, ‘Agathias on the Early Merovingians’, pp. –, , –. Theudebert himself could only have fostered such a reputation when, in his correspon- dence with Justinian, he claimed to rule extensive territories beyond the confines of Gaul; see Epistula Austrasica , ed. Gundlach, pp. –. On the imperial posture of Theudebert, see S. Fanning, ‘Clovis Augustus and Merovingian Imitatio Imperii’, in Mitchell and Wood (eds), The World of Gregory of Tours, pp. –.  K. Mitchell, ‘Marking the Bounds: The Distant Past in Gregory’s History’, in Mitchell and Wood (eds), The World of Gregory of Tours, pp. –, suggests at least one voice from within Gaul attempted to impose an anti-Arian mission on the Merovingian kings.  Procopius, Bell. III.. (cf. VIII..), V..–.  Collins, ‘Theodebert I’, pp. –; M. Hendy, ‘From Public to Private: The Western Barbarian Coinage as a Mirror of Late Roman State Structures’, Viator  (), p. . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 30 Benjamin Garstad as they were concerned – but would have had the example of the Mac- cabees claiming common ancestry with the Spartans before them. The Assyrians, who head the list of Alexander’s eastern foes, were common apocalyptic enemies in the oracles of late antiquity, but they may have had a particular resonance in regard to the Goths, since Procopius relates that during the Gothic siege of Rome certain patricians consulted the Sibylline oracles, and the Assyrians seem to have figured prominently in the frustratingly impenetrable prophecies which they produced to address the occasion. In the work of Priscus of Panium, writing perhaps a century before the alteration of the Excerpta, an indiscriminate collo- cation of ‘Medes, Parthians, and Persians’, similar to the list of the opponents of Alexander, is strung together in the context of a conversa- tion between Byzantine diplomats discussing the prospects of turning a dangerous barbarian invader against an enemy power, in Priscus’ case the Huns against Persia, but the parallels with the situation the Byzantines tried to create between the Franks and the Ostrogoths is worth noting. The Byzantines certainly believed that the Goths were attempting the same ploy on them and that the incitement of Gothic envoys to Chos- roes, the king of the ‘Medes’, was to blame when the Persians broke a treaty and opened hostilities. The creation of Francus Siluius seems to have responded to a need felt by both the Franks and the Byzantines. According to Procopius, the Franks did not consider their tenure over Gaul, especially those provinces newly acquired from the Goths, to be sure and legitimate unless it was sanctioned by the emperor in Byzan- tium. And the historian himself must exemplify the disgust that would have been felt by many imperial loyalists over the fact that after years of profligately expended money and manpower Justinian had nothing to show for his effort but the whole of the western empire in the secure possession of the barbarians, and Franks swaggering about the ancient Greek colonies of Provence. Some of this ill feeling might have been  I Macc. XII.–, –; XIV.– (cf. Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae XII.–, XIII.). See E. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley, ), pp. –.  P. Alexander, The Oracle of Baalbek: The Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek Dress (Washington, DC, ), pp.  n. ,  n. .  Procopius, Bell. V..–.  R. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicizing Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus (Liverpool, ), II, pp. –.  Procopius, Bell. VI..–.  Procopius, Bell. VII...  Procopius, Bell. VII..–. Procopius also reveals such bitter sentiments over imperial territo- ries lost to the barbarians at the opening of the Vandalic War (Bell. III.., .). W. Goffart, ‘Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians’, American Historical Review  (), pp. –, suggests that Procopius’ reaction belongs in a wider context of Byzantine attitudes toward the barbarians and the western half of the empire which led to Justinian’s campaigns. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 31 assuaged, and the Franks’ desire for legitimacy satisfied, if both sides could convince themselves that they were actually kinsmen. The import we have descried in the Excerpta is also consistent with what we know of Byzantine diplomatic overtures to the Franks at the outset of the Gothic war. We have in Procopius what purports to be the text of a letter from Justinian to the rulers of the Franks. In this letter the emperor protests that he has been provoked to war by the Goths’ violent seizure of territory which rightly belongs to him. He appeals to the Franks to join him in a war which is as much theirs as his because they are orthodox and the enemy is Arian, and because the Goths are the common enemy of Franks and Byzantines. As far as the Byzantines knew, again according to Procopius, Theudebert had once before been compelled to make war for the sake of orthodoxy when he attacked his brother-in-law, the Visigothic king Amalaric, for interfering with his sister’s practice of the orthodox faith. In the midst of the rhetoric and high-minded moral appeals exemplified by his letter, it would not be surprising to find Justinian or his agents drawing analogies between the Goths and the tyrannical conquerors of history who held illegitimate sway over the fundamentally legitimate and legitimizing nations of Rome and Israel, and calling upon the Frankish king to emulate Alexander in liberating the Romans and ‘the true Israel’ (the orthodox church) from subjection, and rendering a true testimony of God. The emperor’s letter was nevertheless accompanied by a gift of money and the promise of more. One is left to wonder whether it was cash or rhetoric which persuaded the Franks to enter into an alliance with the Byzantines. Along with money, we may assume any embassy brought other gifts whose appeal would not have been so crude. We have good reason to believe that the Excerpta could have been included among such diplo- matic gifts. Although we have only captions in a smaller hand and spaces left blank for illustrations to show it in our manuscript of the Latin  Procopius, Bell. V..–.  According to Collins, ‘Theodebert I’, p. , there are indications that the Frankish court concurred in this idea of the Italian campaign as a war of Catholic powers united against the heretical Ostrogoths.  Procopius, Bell. V..–. Procopius seems to be confused as to the identity of the protagonist of this story, since Gregory of Tours (Historia Francorum. III.) credits the role to Theudebert’s uncle, Childebert. It is, at any rate, important that Procopius and his fellows in the east attached the sentiment behind the action to Theudebert.  It is perhaps worthwhile to distinguish this rhetoric of ‘aid to Israel’ from the later rhetoric, found in later Merovingian and Carolingian liturgies and royal patents, which identified the Franks or their kings with Israel; see McCormick, Eternal Victory, pp. –, –, ; Y. Hen, ‘The Uses of the Bible and the Perception of Kingship in Merovingian Gaul’, EME  (), pp. –; I. Wood, ‘Incest, Law and the Bible in Sixth-Century Gaul’, EME  (), pp. –; M. Garrison, ‘The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an Identity from Pippin to Charlemagne’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, ), pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 32 Benjamin Garstad Excerpta, the Greek original of the text was illuminated. This is clear not only from the signs of the intention to illuminate the Latin translation on the model of its Greek original, but also from the affinities the Excerpta shows to the papyrus fragments of two illustrated Christian world chronicles. The earlier fragment from the early fifth century, a single leaf in the Berlin Museum (P. Berol. ), is particularly close in content to the Excerpta and has been taken as a remnant of the Greek original. The later remains of the Papyrus Golenišcˇev, dubbed the Alexandrian World Chronicle, have been dated to the late seventh century, but are still very similar to the text of the Excerpta. Even in their fragmentary state the papyri of both chronicles exhibit profuse if rudimentary illustrations of geographical features, figures from sacred and Roman history, personified months, saints, and even a scene of martyrdom. Illumination would have elevated the Excerpta chronicle from a scholarly curiosity to an expensive luxury item and a gift worthy of a king, especially one who might not have had the time or inclination to count reading among his pastimes. The captions and blank spaces in the Latin manuscript, moreover, suggest that there were illustrations to accompany those passages on the origins of paganism, the depredations of the Assyrians and other tyran- nical eastern peoples, and the career of Alexander, all of which we have proposed were central to the purposes of the Excerpta compiler. The illumination of the Greek original of the Excerpta might have made the text an appealing and intriguing gift, but should not be taken to mean that the pictures were intended to convey the whole message of the book to an illiterate audience. Even if Theudebert himself did not read Greek, there had been something of a renaissance of Greek letters in Gaul a generation or so before his time and there were plenty of easterners resident in Gaul who could have made the text plain to the royal court.  H. Leitzmann, ‘Ein Blatt aus einer antiken Weltchronik’, in R. Casey et al. (eds), Quantulacum- que: Studies Presented to Kirsopp Lake by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends (London, ), pp. –.  A. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, Eine Alexandrinische Weltchronik. Text und Miniaturen eines griechischen Papyrus der Sammlung W. Golenišcˇev (Vienna, ); O. Kurz, ‘The Date of the Alexandrian World Chronicle’, in A. Rosenauer and G. Weber (eds), Kunsthistorische Forschun- gen. Otto Pächt zu seinem . Geburstag (Salzburg, ), pp. –; Iskusstvo Vizantii v sob- raniíàkh: Katalog vystavki (Moscow, ), I, pp. –.  Captions: Frick .; .; .; .; ., ; .. Blank spaces: Frick .; .; .; ., ; .; ..  On the ‘renaissance of ’, see P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore (Paris, ), pp. –; Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, pp. , . N. Baynes, ‘Review of Courcelle, Les lettres grecques’, Journal of Hellenic Studies  (), pp. –, criticized the idea that there was a ‘Greek renaissance’ in late fifth-century Gaul, as presented in the first edition of Courcelle’s book, by maintaining that the isolated activities of an individual, Claudianus Mamertus, did not constitute a renaissance. On the presence of easterners in Gaul, see H. Pirenne, ‘La fin du commerce des Syriens en Occident’, in Mélanges Bidez (Annuaire de l’Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales, t. ) (Brussels, ), II, pp. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 33 There was no cause for fear that the subtle details which carried so much weight would go unread or unnoticed. The overtures with which Justinian solicited Theudebert’s aid in his Gothic war – both those we know about from Procopius and those we assume to lie behind the Excerpta – seem to have found something of a precedent in the congratulations offered by Anastasius to Clovis after his victory over the Goths in . According to Gregory of Tours at least, Clovis undertook his campaign against the Visigoths because he was dissatisfied that heretical Arians should rule any part of Gaul, just as Justinian urged Theudebert to join an Orthodox crusade to oust the Arian Ostrogoths. Victory was vouchsafed to the Franks by the words of the Psalms received as an oracle of St Martin, just as we have suggested persuasive ancient examples were offered to Theudebert. These may be the motives and circumstances of hindsight from a distinctly Catholic and Gallo-Roman perspective, but that makes them more, not less, relevant to the reconstruction of Byzantine appeals to the Franks. After defeating the Visigoths in battle Clovis received letters from Anastasius conferring on him the consulate. In consequence he began to wear the dress of a Roman potentate, a purple tunic, military mantle, and diadem, and had himself called Consul or Augustus. A message from the emperor, titles and regalia, served to integrate a Frankish king and his deeds into the context of Byzantine claims to authority throughout the old imperial territory and of conflicting Christian creeds. It is by no means inconsis- tent to imagine a Byzantine embassy expecting to achieve its ends through a presentation book which offered another Frankish king a place not only in the power politics of his day, but also in the pages of history. No less than the title and insignia of consul, it was a gift intended to work on the recipient’s vanity and desire for stature, rather than his pragmatic interests. Even if we can agree that the Greek Excerpta came to Gaul as a gift for Theudebert, intended to encourage his participation in the war against the Goths in Italy, it may be worthwhile raising a point of doubt. We have assumed that an embassy from the Byzantine emperor prepared the –; W. Goffart, ‘Foreigners in the Histories of Gregory of Tours’, Florilegium  (), pp. ,  and n. ; Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, p.  n. . Courcelle, pp. –, maintains that Jewish and Syrian merchants would have had a negligible influence on the culture of Gaul, but this is probably due to his rather heightened definitions of literacy and culture (i.e., an immersion in Neoplatonism), not to any real inability or unwillingness on the part of a Greek-speaking émigré community to make a given text comprehensible.  Gregory, Hist. II.–. See Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, pp. –, –; M. McCormick, ‘Clovis at Tours, Byzantine Public Ritual and the Origins of Medieval Ruler Symbolism’, in E. Chrysos and A. Schwarz (eds), Das Reich und die Barbaren (Vienna and Cologne, ), pp. –; O. Guillot, ‘Clovis “Auguste”, vecteur des conceptions romano- chrétiennes’, in Rouche (ed.), Clovis: histoire et mémoire, tome I, pp. –; Fanning, ‘Clovis Augustus and Merovingian Imitatio Imperii’, pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 34 Benjamin Garstad Greek Excerpta and brought it to Theudebert. The balance of the evi- dence supports this assumption. The Excerpta as it came to Gaul was a Greek text, after all, and the modifications which prepared it for a Frankish audience were made on the basis of Greek material. It seems, in short, to be a product of the Greek east, and it is hard to imagine anyone in the east apart from the emperor who would be substantially interested in soliciting a Frankish march on the Goths in Rome. The strategic involvement and the weight of the commitments expected of Theudebert as imagined by our reconstruction, moreover, suggest an official Byzan- tine preparation of the chronicle and presentation through diplomatic channels. But we should consider the possibility that the Excerpta was prepared by some party in the west with the same purposes in mind. Perhaps most significantly, the role envisioned for Theudebert in the Excerpta is not an ancillary one; he is to be a new Alexander, a conqueror and liberator in his own right, not an ally providing a diversionary attack. The use of an Alexandrian, rather than a Constantinopolitan, chronicle, might also suggest a less official endeavour, removed from the eastern capital. There was still a sufficiently large number people conversant in Greek in Gaul and Italy, educated clerks and patricians and resident aliens, to make it possible that the adjustments and additions which produced the Excerpta could have been made in the west; we need only presume a circulation of Greek chronicles in the west. The apparent familiarity with Germanic myth which we have noted is ambiguous evidence; Byzantine diplomats were not unobservant, and near neighbours could be quite obtuse. Collins has made a plausible case that Theudebert launched his Italian expedition at the behest of the leading citizens of Milan, quite as much as in response to Byzantine calls for aid, and the Excerpta might fit into the context he has suggested. The presence of Assyrians in both the Sibylline oracles consulted in Rome during the Gothic siege and the significant passages included in the Excerpta, might suggest Rome itself as a point of origin. There must have been many parties in Italy who would have preferred a barbarian king (if only a Catholic instead of an Arian one) at arm’s length, to direct rule, no less stifling than costly, by a representative of the eastern emperor, and so there are many potential sources for the Excerpta if we will not credit it to a Byzantine embassy. If it may be agreed as plausible that the Greek original of the Excerpta was composed to be sent to Theudebert (no matter by whom), we are unfortunately no closer to a date and context for the Latin translation. Since it was richly illustrated and there were people in the king’s realm  Collins, ‘Theodebert I’, pp. –.  Procopius, Bell. V..–; see above. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 35 and probably his court (to say nothing of a Byzantine embassy) who could read the Greek for him, it was unnecessary for the presentation volume to be translated before it was given to Theudebert. Moreover, the original and the translation seem to be out of sympathy on certain key points. The appearance of Francus Siluius in the chronicle may have served to make the Franks, like the Romans, descendants of Aeneas, members of the Roman family of nations, and legitimate participants in the rule of the empire, but the name would have held this significance only to someone familiar with the main strands of the classical tradition. The translator was not such a person. His ignorance of the Trojan legend to the extent that he would mistake ’Ιλ ον for λ ος and speak of the Achaeans sacking the city of the Sun, makes this abundantly clear. The Latin translation of the Excerpta is not concerned with questions of the legitimacy of Frankish rule because it makes no sense of those passages in the chronicle which address these questions. The suitability of the Excerpta for coming to grips with Saxon paganism, which we observed above, may provide a better clue to the date of the translation into Latin. Two French scholars have favoured a date later than Frick’s proposal of the sixth or seventh century for the translation, but the grounds on which they do so are open to doubt. Jouanaud considers the question of the translator’s identity to be answered. The titulus found in the upper margin of the first page of the Excerpta manuscript states that this is the ‘cronica georgii ambionensis episcopi uel sicut alii dicunt uictoris turon- ensis episcopi’ (‘the chronicle of George, the bishop of Amiens, or, as others say, of Victor, bishop of Tours’). Despite the ambivalence of the annotation and the grave misgivings of Frick, Jouanaud identifies the translator with George, the bishop of Amiens (–), formerly bishop of Ostia. His sole grounds for doing so seem to be a lengthy quotation of Porcher from the volume on L’Europe des invasions in L’univers des formes. Porcher notes George’s Greek name and states categorically that he was responsible for the Latin translation of a ‘Chronique universelle alexandrine’, and that the work was undertaken at Corbie. But Porcher does not establish a case for ascribing the translation to George, he simply accepts the titulus, or rather part of it, at face value and insists upon his judgement that the same artist was responsible for the Corbie Psalter and for the incomplete illumination of the initial P at the beginning of the  Frick lxxxv, . A note in the lower margin also indicates that the manuscript is cronica geogrii ambione.  Jouanaud, ‘Barbarus, Malalas et le bissextus’, p. ; see C. Frick, ‘Joseph Justus Scaliger und die Excerpta Latina Barbari’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie  (), pp. –.  J. Hubert, J. Porcher, and W.F. Volbach (eds), L’Europe des invasions, L’univers des formes  (Paris, ), p. . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 36 Benjamin Garstad Excerpta manuscript. Porcher’s real interest was in determining how certain Mediterranean and Near Eastern motifs came to be found in the illumination of the Corbie Psalter. Bishop George and his illuminated Alexandrian chronicle offered a plausible route of transmission from a busy Mediterranean port to the region of Amiens at more or less the right time. It should hardly surprise us that Porcher did not press such a convenient source too hard. Nevertheless, if Porcher depended on the titulus alone, his testimony cannot be used by Jouanaud to validate the testimony of the titulus. We are back with Frick looking for a nameless translator on the basis of the text itself. The association of the manuscript with the abbey of Corbie, which has some substance, need not be pushed too far to point us in the right direction. A new use, I would argue, was found for the Excerpta on the north-eastern frontier of the Frankish kingdom, so full of promise and peril, but it had to be translated for missionaries whose Latin was more than passable but whose Greek may be nonexistent. It is not merely that certain parallels can be drawn between the euhemeristic narrative in the Excerpta and the forms of Germanic myth which might have some affinities with the lost myth of the Saxons. The Excerpta, as a universal chronicle which takes the frame of its structure and the bulk of its content from the sacred history of the Bible, is consistent with what we can piece together of the substance of the preaching in the mission fields beyond the Rhine and the textual resources which were brought up in support of it. The Excerpta was no longer intended to flatter the vanity of ambitious Frankish kings, but rather to serve the purposes – evangelistic and expan- sionist in equal measure – of the Arnulfing lords of Austrasia and the churchmen they supported. The churchmen of western Europe who confronted paganism in the early Middle Ages, both those who tried to root out its lingering traces among the hidebound and superstitious inhabitants of officially Chris- tian territories and those who set out to convert the heathen, strove to present to their audiences an alternative history of the world which might make sense of the radical changes in belief and habit which were being asked of them. This account of the spiritual and material realms was, of course, based on the Bible and the traditions of the exegetes, and must have offered a powerful antidote to the essential world-view no less than to the charming stories of myth. But unlike myth, the preaching of the clergy made claims to a historical veracity which might be defended by a  Porcher, however, does not offer a reproduction of the Excerpta’s initial P so as to allow the reader to judge for himself.  Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, p. , notes the similarity of the Excerpta manuscript to those produced under Abbot Maurdramnus of Corbie and opines that it was not written far away.  R. Sullivan, ‘The Carolingian Missionary and the Pagan’, Speculum  (), pp. –. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 37 universal history like the Excerpta. While I can report no world chronicles in the hands of missionaries, Levison has noted that works of classical historiography were well represented in the libraries of the monastic houses founded by Anglo-Saxon missionaries, and their manuscript tra- ditions are in all probability traceable to the time of the founders or thereabouts. The indications of the substance of the preaching of various evangelists are perhaps more telling than a search for available resources of a comparable nature. Martin of Braga’s seminal work on the pagan gods and the superstitions they engender, De correctione rusticorum (c.–), begins with the Creation and the fall of Satan and the rebel angels, and briefly follows the course of salvation history to the Last Judgement. Pirmin of Reichenau, following Martin, included in his Scarapsus, a handbook to aid in the evangelism of Alemannia in the early eighth century, an account of the history of the world from the Gospel perspective. Daniel of Winchester advised Boniface, as we have seen, to discuss the origins of the world and the gods and their understanding of the past as an opening gambit with the heathen. Louis the Pious is reputed to have likewise urged Ebo of Reims to set out for the Danes he hoped to convert the progress of history from Creation, through the Fall and the Flood, to the ministry of Christ. A universal history like the Excerpta, which concentrates on Biblical material but purports to cover the whole world, may have been seen to complement an effort to address paganism in terms of history. It is, however, not because the Excerpta is a world chronicle that it principally suggests itself as a useful tool in a missionary effort, but rather because it includes a euhemeristic account of the gods which presents them as ancient human kings. We have noted above those parallels with what we know of Germanic myth, which might have made the Excerpta seem particularly effective in addressing the heathen Saxons. There is, moreover, plenty of evidence that the basic argument that the pagan gods were not gods at all, but men of the distant past who astounded and deluded their fellow men into taking them for gods, was well known and often used by evangelists at work on the north-west frontier of Christen- dom. Caesarius of Arles spoke of the gods as depraved men, and men who  Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, p. .  Martin of Braga, De correctione rusticorum –. See C. Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis Opera Omnia (New Haven, ), pp. –.  Pirmin, Scarapsus (PL , cols –).  Boniface, Ep. , ed. Tangl, pp. –.  Ermoldus Nigellus, Carmen in honorem Hludowici IV.–; ed. E. Faral, Ermold le Noir: Poème sur Louis le Pieux et épitres au Roi Pépin (Paris, ), pp. –. The false gods are mentioned by name before and after this précis of world history (–: proque Deo Neptunus erat, Christi retinebat / Juppiter orsa locum, : Juppiter aut Neptunus), but do not find a place in the course of events important to the preacher. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 38 Benjamin Garstad lived at a specific time in history, in the course of a sermon in which he inveighed against calling the days of the week by the names of pagan gods. Martin of Braga borrowed from this sermon, but his influential text, once again, seems to be the source for most of the other accounts of the gods we encounter. The De correctione rusticorum explains the origins of idolatry and paganism, as part of the course of the world’s history according to the Christians, by saying that demons took the names of especially wicked men and women and addressed people in these forms and demanded sacrifice from them. It is worth noting that it is on this point that the Excerpta disagrees with Martin and shows itself to be consistent with, but not dependent on, the De correctione rusticorum: the role of demons is not mentioned in the Excerpta. Martin of Braga’s brief letter does, however, exert an influence on many of the names we asso- ciate with the conversion of western Europe from the sixth to the eighth centuries and beyond. The homilies of Eligius of Noyen and the Scar- apsus of Pirmin show quite clearly a familiarity with the De correctione rusticorum, and while neither author gives literary evidence of having exploited Martin’s euhemerism, they certainly knew of it and had oppor- tunity to use it in preaching and disputation of which we have no record. An anonymous homelist in eighth-century Gaul certainly did see fit to include an exposition of the true nature of the pagan gods in his outline of Christian history, even though he was so unfamiliar with classical culture as to consider Venus a man. Such a degree of ignorance coupled with a perception of the value of a euhemeristic account of the gods offers an interesting parallel to the Excerpta. The euhemerism found in the De correctione rusticorum was later enlisted by Ælfric and Wulfstan to address the lingering superstition of the English and the active paganism of the Scandinavians who circulated throughout the country in the eleventh century. Here it is interesting to note that these authors were content to deal with Germanic gods largely by discussing the figures of Roman myth and cult.  Caesarius of Arles, Sermo CXCIII.; Sancti Caesarii Arelatensis Sermones, ed. G. Morin, CCSL  (Turnhout, ), p. . Cf. Martin of Braga, De correctione rusticorum –. Caesarius says that the gods were born during the time of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt.  Martin of Braga, De correctione rusticorum .  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis Opera Omnia, pp. –; J. Hillgarth, ‘Modes of Evange- lization of Western Europe in the Seventh Century’, in P. Ní Chatháin and M. Richter (eds), Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien un Mission / Ireland and Christendom: The Bible and the Missions (Stuttgart, ), p. .  Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, pp. –, esp. .  Ælfric, De falsis deis: J. Pope, Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, EETS – (Oxford, –), II, pp. –. Wulfstan, De falsis deis: Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulf- stan, pp. –. See A. Meaney, ‘Æthelweard, Ælfric, the Norse Gods and Northumbria’, Journal of Religious History  (), pp. –; D. Johnson, ‘Euhemerisation versus Demoni- Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 39 All of this indicates that in form and content the Excerpta Latina Barbari was consistent with the message and the material of the great evangelistic effort, with its twin purposes of the eradication of the last vestiges of pagan superstition amongst a largely Christian population and the conversion of the heathen, which marked the cultural life of north- western Europe in the early Middle Ages. This assertion takes us back to the Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum, which allows us to situate the Excerpta specifically on the north-eastern frontier of early to mid- eighth-century Gaul. The tenuous link between the two texts of the shared detail of auguries by horses is substantially bolstered when we observe that just as the Indiculus and its accompanying baptismal formula express the concerns of missionaries at work amongst the insufficiently Christianized, the newly converted, and the about to be converted, the Excerpta is the sort of work which those same missionaries might turn to for the substance of their preaching. The date and provenance of the manuscript, moreover, seem to corroborate eighth-century northern Gaul as a context (or at the very least a target) for the translation. Frick dates the translation to the sixth or seventh century, but the affinities with the Indiculus, as well as the simultaneous missionary activity amongst the Saxons and the Frisians, suggest that the translation and the manuscript both belong to the eighth century. This would make the Latin rendering of the Excerpta contemporary with a number of other translations from Greek to Latin which are also generally set in eighth- century Gaul. I would suggest, in conclusion, a reconstruction of the Excerpta’s textual history roughly along the following lines. A Greek world chronicle was completed in Alexandria shortly after the death of the sation: The Pagan Gods and Ælfric’s De falsis diis’, in T. Hofstra et al. (eds), Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Groningen, ), pp. –.  It may not simply be that euhemerism was a tested and true weapon in the Christian arsenal against paganism. The missionary effort in early medieval north-western Europe was first directed towards the aristocracy in a heathen society, who were in turn expected to induce the conversion of the populations they ruled. Euhemerism, a theory which maintained that the rulers of the past were held in such esteem that they were taken for gods, might have had a particular appeal – to vanity, no less than to reason – to members of a contemporary nobility. On the ‘top down’ approach to conversion, see K. Werner, ‘Le rôle de l’aristocratie dans la christianisation du nord-est de la Gaule’, Revue d’Histoire de l’Eglise de France  (), pp. –, –; A. Ferreiro, ‘Early Medieval Missinonary Tactics: The Example of Martin and Caesarius’, Studia Historica/Historia Antigua  (), pp. –; E. Goldberg, ‘Popular Revolt, Dynastic Politics, and Aristocratic Factionalism in the Early Middle Ages: The Saxon Stellinga Reconsidered’, Speculum  (), pp. –.  Frick lxxxiii.  W. Berschin, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages from Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa, trans. J. Frakes (Washington, DC, ), p. . Berschin expresses some doubt that the translations actually took place in Merovingian Gaul, although he himself notes evidence for the knowledge of Greek in mid-eighth-century Gaul. Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 40 Benjamin Garstad Patriarch Theophilus in . This chronicle was selected to be brought up to date by the addition of a laterculus of Roman emperors and otherwise judiciously modified and augmented by certain hands in the eastern Roman empire, perhaps Constantinople, so as to be a pleasing and persuasive gift for the Frankish king, Theudebert. It seems most likely that the book was presented to Theudebert at some point between , when preparations were afoot for a Byzantine invasion of Italy, and , when Theudebert actually took the field in Italy and the dangers of a Frankish alliance were revealed to the Byzantines. After that the Greek chronicle languished on a library shelf somewhere in Gaul, perhaps something of an embarrassing reminder of Theudebert’s debacle across the Alps. But with its eye-catching illuminations it could not be ignored forever. According to the fates which little books are reputed to have, once the drive to convert the heathen Germans beyond the Rhine was underway in the first half of the eighth century, someone recognized what the Excerpta was and what it contained and saw that this could be put to good use in the mission fields. But if the Excerpta was to be used it first had to be translated. The original project seems to have been not only to render the Greek chronicle into Latin, but also to reproduce its illustra- tions. This project was half completed: the translation was made, but the illustrations were hardly begun. After that it is hard to say what hap- pened. There is no indisputable textual evidence for the Excerpta exerting an influence after its translation, but it has to be admitted that we know very little about medieval missionary preaching, and for all we know our text may have done sterling service in its destined sphere. The Greek text was lost. The authorship of the Latin chronicle was still a matter of interest (if also of ignorance) in the ninth or tenth century when two other hands each added their guesses on that subject to the manuscript. The single manuscript of the Excerpta Latina Barbari surfaced in the sixteenth century in the library of Claude Dupuy, received the famous if unenviable attentions of Scaliger early in the next century, and eventually came to reside in the Bibliothèque Nationale. All of this can help us address certain questions that have been raised recently about the culture and identity of the Franks in the time of the Excerpta’s translation. Matthew Innes has identified a ‘shift from a sub- Roman to a post-Roman mentality’ in the eighth century, when intellec- tuals began to perceive a discontinuity between Roman and Frankish dominion. He offers the historical work of Freculph of Lisieux and Pippin’s preface to the Lex Salica as examples of works in which the  M. Innes, ‘Teutons or Trojans? The Carolingians and the Germanic Past’, in Hen and Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, p. . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd  The Excerpta Latina Barbari 41 Franks are presented as victorious orthodox Christians, whereas the Romans are impious pagan persecutors. The history of the Excerpta seems to reflect this shift. Whoever prepared the Greek Excerpta for consump- tion in Frankish Gaul certainly presumed a ‘sub-Roman mentality’. He was preparing a picture of the past for a king and his people trying to find their place in a Roman world, a past filled with Roman heroes and conveying the message that in the present legitimacy was bestowed by church and emperor. But the translator, who fails to recognize the story of Troy in the chronicle, seems to have lost sight of such a perspective. The flight of the Trojans from their ruined city, and Francus, the name- sake of his people, among the Trojans’ descendants, do not appear to catch his attention. The Excerpta is worth translating into Latin because it can help in the work of converting the heathen on the borders, extending Christian ecclesia and imperium. There is indeed a new sense of purpose here, and it has more to do with Christ’s Great Commission than with Anchises’ imperial instruction to the Romans. The concern not with derivation from a single people, but with an undertaking involved in the universal history of salvation certainly belies a ‘post-Roman mental- ity’. Innes, however, further proposes that the legend of Trojan origins, rather than any consciousness of ‘Germanic warrior culture’, still pro- vided the keynote for a sense of Frankish identity into the Carolingian period. He says of the legend: ‘It must have originated in a context where a detailed knowledge of the literature of classical antiquity was available, but whether it was more than a literary invention with a limited audience is another matter.’ The Excerpta speaks to the contention that even when the documents were available to an intellectually engaged indi- vidual like the translator, the legend of Trojan origins did not necessarily excite interest. He seems to have considered Francus and the connection with Troy of negligible importance compared with the light shed on the origins of paganism. As for the origins of the legend itself, Innes’s insistence on ‘a detailed knowledge of the literature of classical antiquity’ may be further from the mark than Wood’s suggestion that the story was not based on classical texts, but perhaps ‘reconstructed from diplomatic rhetoric’. Indeed, the Excerpta seems to offer an example of such diplomatic rhetoric: a brief, almost cryptic, mention in an impressive document which could be pointed out and fulsomely elaborated by ambassadors prepared to stress the political implications of what was presented as historical fact. The Excerpta seems to assume an already formed legend of Trojan origins for  Virgil, Aeneid VI.–.  Innes, ‘Teutons or Trojans?’, p. .  Wood, ‘Defining the Franks’, p. . Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd 42 Benjamin Garstad the Franks, but if such succinct and parenthetical confirmations do not represent the beginnings of the legend, they certainly served to sustain it over the centuries between its early development and the time when it was committed to writing as a fully fleshed out narrative. But Fredegar and the author of the Liber Historiae Francorum, with their narratives of Frankish origins, are very far from the interests of the Excerpta translator, who duly renders the information which appears in his chronicle without being distracted from his largely evangelical task. So, let us return to the question with which we began this essay: is there a barbarian interest in the Excerpta Latina Barbari? The words solis confixus, at first glance, seem to betray the intrusion of some barbarous solar myth into a sober history of the world, but upon investigation the phrase really indicates one of the habits of our translator and the extended sense of configo in the early Middle Ages. Prognostication by the neighing of horses, however, appears to reveal the significance and usefulness the translator found in the Excerpta’s account of the gods as ancient kings. He may have seen in it a reflection of contemporary pagan Germanic belief and practice, and perhaps hoped that the text he translated could con- tribute to the effort to subdue and evangelize the Saxons on the frontier. We should note that by this point the Frankish translator, his people and their polity, had cast off the hoary cloak of ‘barbarism’ themselves and assumed the role of civilizers of the new barbarians beyond the pale. In this regard, the Excerpta is not, therefore, a document reflecting the translator’s own barbarism or Germanic character (certainly not as far as he is concerned), but rather his response to the barbarism of others. The inclusion of Francus in the Alban king-list shows signs of being a modi- fication of the material of the original Greek chronicle made in the Greek east where it was composed. It is a manipulation tailor-made to catch the attention of certain Franks and flatter their pretensions. The appearance of Francus can be called barbarian not because some barbarian was responsible for it, but inasmuch as it reflects barbarian interests and legends as they were understood in the still Roman east. MacEwen University Early Medieval Europe   () ©  Blackwell Publishing Ltd