Gylf.a.ginning is followed by another part of the Prose Edda called _Bragaroedur_ (Brage"s Talk), which is presented in a similar form. On Lesso, so it is said, dwelt formerly a man by name _aegir_. He, like Gylfe, had heard reports concerning the wisdom of the Asas, and resolved to visit them. He, like Gylfe, comes to a place where the Asas receive him with all sorts of magic arts, and conduct him into a hall which is lighted up in the evening with shining swords. There he is invited to take his seat by the side of Brage, and there were twelve high-seats in which sat men who were called Thor, Njord, Frey, &c., and women who were called Frigg, Freyja, Nanna, &c. The hall was splendidly decorated with shields. The mead pa.s.sed round was exquisite, and the talkative Brage instructed the guest in the traditions concerning the Asas" art of poetry. A postscript to the treatise warns young skalds not to place confidence in the stories told to Gylfe and _aegir_. The author of the postscript says they have value only as a key to the many metaphors which occur in the poems of the great skalds, but upon the whole they are deceptions invented by the Asas or Asiamen to make people believe that they were G.o.ds. Still, the author thinks these falsifications have an historical kernel. They are, he thinks, based on what happened in the ancient Asgard, that is, Troy. Thus, for instance, Ragnarok is originally nothing else than the siege of Troy; Thor is, as stated, Hektor; the Midgard-serpent is one of the heroes slain by Hektor; the Fenris-wolf is Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who slew Priam (Odin); and Vidar, who survives Ragnarok, is aeneas.
[Footnote 3: As much land as can be ploughed in a day.]
[Footnote 4: A translation of the Younger or Prose Edda was edited by R.
B. Anderson and published by S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago, in 1881.]
8.
THE TROY SAGA IN HEIMSKRINGLA AND THE PROSE EDDA (_continued_).
The sources of the traditions concerning the Asiatic immigration to the North belong to the Icelandic literature, and to it alone. Saxo"s _Historia Danica_, the first books of which were written toward the close of the twelfth century, presents on this topic its own peculiar view, which will be discussed later. The Icelandic accounts disagree only in unimportant details; the fundamental view is the same, and they have flown from the same fountain vein. Their contents may be summed up thus:
Among the tribes who after the Babylonian confusion of tongues emigrated to various countries, there was a body of people who settled and introduced their language in Asia Minor, which in the sagas is called Tyrkland; in Greece, which in the sagas is called Macedonia; and in Crete. In Tyrkland they founded the great city which was called Troy.
This city was attacked by the Greeks during the reign of the Trojan king Priam. Priam descended from Jupiter and the latter"s father Saturnus, and accordingly belonged to a race which the idolaters looked upon as divine. Troy was a very large city; twelve languages were spoken there, and Priam had twelve tributary kings under him. But however powerful the Trojans were, and however bravely they defended themselves under the leadership of the son of Priam"s daughter, that valiant hero Thor, still they were defeated. Troy was captured and burned by the Greeks, and Priam himself was slain. Of the surviving Trojans two parties emigrated in different directions. They seem in advance to have been well informed in regard to the quality of foreign lands; for Thor, the son of Priam"s daughter, had made extensive expeditions in which he had fought giants and monsters. On his journeys he had even visited the North, and there he had met Sibil, the celebrated prophetess, and married her. One of the parties of Trojan emigrants embarked under the leadership of aeneas for Italy, and founded Rome. The other party, accompanied by Thor"s son, Loride, went to Asialand, which is separated from Tyrkland by a mountain ridge, and from Europe by the river Tanais or Tanakvisl. There they founded a new city called Asgard, and there preserved the old customs and usages brought from Troy. Accordingly, there was organised in Asgard, as in Troy, a council of twelve men, who were high priests and judges. Many centuries pa.s.sed without any political contact between the new Trojan settlements in Rome and Asgard, though both well remembered their Trojan origin, and the Romans formed many of their inst.i.tutions after the model of the old fatherland. Meanwhile, Rome had grown to be one of the mightiest empires in the world, and began at length to send armies into Tyrkland. At that time there ruled in Asgard an exceedingly wise, prophetic king, Odin, who was skilled in the magic arts, and who was descended in the twentieth generation from the above-mentioned Thor.
Odin had waged many successful wars. The severest of these wars was the one with a neighbouring people, the Vans; but this had been ended with compromise and peace. In Tyrkland, the old mother country, Odin had great possessions, which fell into the hands of the Romans. This circ.u.mstance strengthened him in his resolution to emigrate to the north of Europe. The prophetic vision with which he was endowed had told him that his descendants would long flourish there. So he set out with his many sons, and was accompanied by the twelve priests and by many people, but not by all the inhabitants of the Asia country and of Asgard. A part of the people remained at home; and among them Odin"s brothers Vile and Ve. The expedition proceeded through Gardarike to Saxland; then across the Danish islands to Svithiod and Norway. Everywhere this great mult.i.tude of migrators was well received by the inhabitants. Odin"s superior wisdom and his marvellous skill in sorcery, together with the fact that his progress was everywhere attended by abundant harvests, caused the peoples to look upon him as a G.o.d, and to place their thrones at his disposal. He accordingly appointed his sons as kings in Saxland, Denmark, Svithiod, and Norway. Gylfe, the king of Svithiod, submitted to his superiority and gave him a splendid country around Lake Maelar to rule over. There Odin built Sigtuna, the inst.i.tutions of which were an imitation of those in Asgard and Troy. Poetry and many other arts came with Odin to the Teutonic lands, and so, too, the Trojan tongue. Like his ancestors, Saturnus and Jupiter, he was able to secure divine worship, which was extended even to his twelve priests. The religious traditions which he scattered among the people, and which were believed until the introduction of Christianity, were misrepresentations spun around the memories of Troy"s historical fate and its destruction, and around the events of Asgard.
9.
SAXO"S RELATION OF THE STORY OF TROY.
Such is, in the main, the story which was current in Iceland in the thirteenth century, and which found its way to Scandinavia through the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, concerning the immigration of Odin and the Asas. Somewhat older than these works is _Historia Danica_, by the Danish chronicler Saxo. Sturlason, the author of Heimskringla, was a lad of eight years when Saxo began to write his history, and he (Sturlason) had certainly not begun to write history when Saxo had completed the first nine books of his work, which are based on the still-existing songs and traditions found in Denmark, and of heathen origin. Saxo writes as if he were unacquainted with Icelandic theories concerning an Asiatic immigration to the North, and he has not a word to say about Odin"s reigning as king or chief anywhere in Scandinavia. This is the more remarkable, since he holds the same view as the Icelanders and the chroniclers of the Middle Ages in general in regard to the belief that the heathen myths were records of historical events, and that the heathen G.o.ds were historical persons, men changed into divinities; and our astonishment increases when we consider that he, in the heathen songs and traditions on which he based the first part of his work, frequently finds Odin"s name, and consequently could not avoid presenting him in Danish history as an important character. In Saxo, as in the Icelandic works, Odin is a human being, and at the same time a sorcerer of the greatest power. Saxo and the Icelanders also agree that Odin came from the East. The only difference is that while the Icelandic hypothesis makes him rule in Asgard, Saxo locates his residence in Byzantium, on the Bosphorus; but this is not far from the ancient Troy, where the Prose Edda locates his ancestors. From Byzantium, according to Saxo, the fame of his magic arts and of the miracles he performed reached even to the north of Europe. On account of these miracles he was worshipped as a G.o.d by the peoples, and to pay him honour the kings of the North once sent to Byzantium a golden image, to which Odin by magic arts imparted the power of speech. It is the myth about Mimer"s head which Saxo here relates. But the kings of the North knew him not only by report; they were also personally acquainted with him. He visited Upsala, a place which "pleased him much." Saxo, like the Heimskringla, relates that Odin was absent from his capital for a long time; and when we examine his statements on this point, we find that Saxo is here telling in his way the myth concerning the war which the Vans carried on successfully against the Asas, and concerning Odin"s expulsion from the mythic Asgard, situated in heaven (_Hist. Dan._, pp. 42-44; _vid._ No.
36). Saxo also tells that Odin"s son, Balder, was chosen king by the Danes "on account of his personal merits and his respect-commanding qualities." But Odin himself has never, according to Saxo, had land or authority in the North, though he was there worshipped as a G.o.d, and, as already stated, Saxo is entirely silent in regard to any immigration of an Asiatic people to Scandinavia under the leadership of Odin.
A comparison between him and the Icelanders will show at once that, although both parties are Euhemerists, and make Odin a man changed into a G.o.d, Saxo confines himself more faithfully to the popular myths, and seeks as far as possible to turn them into history; while the Icelanders, on the other hand, begin with the learned theory in regard to the original kinship of the northern races with the Trojans and Romans, and around this theory as a nucleus they weave about the same myths told as history as Saxo tells.
10.
THE OLDER PERIODS OF THE TROY SAGA.
How did the belief that Troy was the original home of the Teutons arise?
Does it rest on native traditions? Has it been inspired by sagas and traditions current among the Teutons themselves, and containing as kernel "a faint reminiscence of an immigration from Asia," or is it a thought entirely foreign to the heathen Teutonic world, introduced in Christian times by Latin scholars? These questions shall now be considered.
Already in the seventh century--that is to say, more than five hundred years before Heimskringla and the Prose Edda were written--a Teutonic people were told by a chronicler that they were of the same blood as the Romans, that they had like the Romans emigrated from Troy, and that they had the same share as the Romans in the glorious deeds of the Trojan heroes. This people were the Franks. Their oldest chronicler, Gregorius, bishop of Tours, who, about one hundred years before that time--that is to say, in the sixth century--wrote their history in ten books, does not say a word about it. He, too, desires to give an account of the original home of the Franks (_Hist. Franc._, ii. 9), and locates it quite a distance from the regions around the lower Rhine, where they first appear in the light of history; but still not farther away than to Pannonia. Of the coming of the Franks from Troy neither Gregorius knows anything nor the older authors, Sulpicius Alexander and others, whose works he studied to find information in regard to the early history of the Franks. But in the middle of the following century, about 650, an unknown author, who for reasons unknown, is called Fredegar, wrote a chronicle, which is in part a reproduction of Gregorius" historical work, but also contains various other things in regard to the early history of the Franks, and among these the statement that they emigrated from Troy. He even gives us the sources from which he got this information. His sources are, according to his own statement, not Frankish, not popular songs or traditions, but two Latin authors--the Church father Hieronymus and the poet Virgil. If we, then, go to these sources in order to compare Fredegar"s statement with his authority, we find that Hieronymus once names the Franks in pa.s.sing, but never refers to their origin from Troy, and that Virgil does not even mention Franks.
Nevertheless, the reference to Virgil is the key to the riddle, as we shall show below. What Fredegar tells about the emigration of the Franks is this: A Frankish king, by the name Priam, ruled in Troy at the time when this city was conquered by the cunning of Ulysses. Then the Franks emigrated, and were afterwards ruled by a king named Friga. Under his reign a dispute arose between them, and they divided themselves into two parties, one of which settled in Macedonia, while the other, called after Friga"s name Frigians (Phrygians), migrated through Asia and settled there. There they were again divided, and one part of them migrated under king Francio into Europe, travelled across this continent, and settled, with their women and children, near the Rhine, where they began building a city which they called Troy, and intended to organise in the manner of the old Troy, but the city was not completed. The other group chose a king by name Turchot, and were called after him Turks. But those who settled on the Rhine called themselves Franks after their king Francio, and later chose a king named Theudemer, who was descended from Priam, Friga, and Francio. Thus Fredegar"s chronicle.
About seventy years later another Frankish chronicle saw the light of day--the _Gesta regum Francorum_. In it we learn more of the emigration of the Franks from Troy. _Gesta regum Francorum_ (i) tells the following story: In Asia lies the city of the Trojans called Ilium, where king aeneas formerly ruled. The Trojans were a strong and brave people, who waged war against all their neighbours. But then the kings of the Greeks united and brought a large army against aeneas, king of the Trojans.
There were great battles and much bloodshed, and the greater part of the Trojans fell. aeneas fled with those surviving into the city of Ilium, which the Greeks besieged and conquered after ten years. The Trojans who escaped divided themselves into two parties. The one under king aeneas went to Italy, where he hoped to receive auxiliary troops. Other distinguished Trojans became the leaders of the other party, which numbered 12,000 men. They embarked in ships and came to the banks of the river Tanais. They sailed farther and came within the borders of Pannonia, near the Moeotian marshes (_navigantes pervenerunt intra terminos Pannoniarum juxta Moeotidas paludes_), where they founded a city, which they called Sicambria, and here they remained many years and became a mighty people. Then came a time when the Roman emperor Valentinia.n.u.s got into war with that wicked people called Alamanni (also Alani). He led a great army against them. The Alamanni were defeated, and fled to the Moeotian marshes. Then said the emperor, "If anyone dares to enter those marshes and drive away this wicked people, I shall for ten years make him free from all burdens." When the Trojans heard this they went, accompanied by a Roman army, into the marshes, attacked the Alamanni, and hewed them down with their swords. Then the Trojans received from the emperor Valentinia.n.u.s the name _Franks_, which, the chronicle adds, in the Attic tongue means the _savage_ (_feri_), "for the Trojans had a defiant and indomitable character."
For ten years afterwards the Trojans or Franks lived undisturbed by Roman tax-collectors; but after that the Roman emperor demanded that they should pay tribute. This they refused, and slew the tax-collectors sent to them. Then the emperor collected a large army under the command of Aristarcus, and strengthened it with auxiliary forces from many lands, and attacked the Franks, who were defeated by the superior force, lost their leader Priam, and had to take flight. They now proceeded under their leaders Markomir, Priam"s son, and Sunno, son of Antenor, away from Sicambria through Germany to the Rhine, and located there.
Thus this chronicle.
About fifty years after its appearance--that is, in the time of Charlemagne, and, to be more accurate, about the year 787--the well-known Longobardian historian Paulus Diaconus wrote a history of the bishops of Metz. Among these bishops was the Frank Arnulf, from whom Charlemagne was descended in the fifth generation. Arnulf had two sons, one of whom was named Ansgisel, in a contracted form Ansgis. When Paulus speaks of this he remarks that it is thought that the name Ansgis comes from the father of aeneas, Anchises, who went from Troy to Italy; and he adds that according to evidence of older date the Franks were believed to be descendants of the Trojans. These evidences of older date we have considered above--Fredegar"s _Chronicle_ and _Gesta regum Francorum_.
Meanwhile this shows that the belief that the Franks were of Trojan descent kept spreading with the lapse of time. It hardly needs to be added that there is no good foundation for the derivation of Ansgisel or Ansgis from Anchises. Ansgisel is a genuine Teutonic name. (See No. 123 concerning Ansgisel, the emigration chief of the Teutonic myth.)
We now pa.s.s to the second half of the tenth century, and there we find the Saxon chronicler Widukind. When he is to tell the story of the origin of the Saxon people, he presents two conflicting accounts. The one is from a Saxon source, from old native traditions, which we shall discuss later; the other is from a scholastic source, and claims that the Saxons are of Macedonian descent. According to this latter account they were a remnant of the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great, which, as Widukind had learned, after Alexander"s early death, had spread over the whole earth. The Macedonians were at that time regarded as h.e.l.lenicised Trojans. In this connection I call the reader"s attention to Fredegar"s _Chronicle_ referred to above, which tells that the Trojans, in the time of king Friga, disagreed among themselves, and that a part of them emigrated and settled in Macedonia. In this manner the Saxons, like the Franks, could claim a Trojan descent; and as England to a great extent was peopled by Saxon conquerors, the same honour was of course claimed by her people. In evidence of this, and to show that it was believed in England during the centuries immediately following Widukind"s time, that the Saxons and Angles were of Trojan blood, I will simply refer here to a pseudo-Sibylline ma.n.u.script found in Oxford and written in very poor Latin. It was examined by the French scholar Alexandre (_Excursus ad Sibyllina_, p. 298), and in it Britain is said to be an island inhabited by the survivors of the Trojans (_insulam reliquiis Trojanorum inhabitatam_). In another British pseudo-Sibylline doc.u.ment it is stated that the Sibylla was a daughter of king Priam of Troy; and an effort has been made to add weight and dignity to this doc.u.ment by incorporating it with the works of the well known Church historian Beda, and thus date it at the beginning of the eighth century, but the ma.n.u.script itself is a compilation from the time of Frederick Barbarossa (_Excurs. ad Sib._, p. 289). Other pseudo-Sibylline doc.u.ments in Latin give accounts of a Sibylla who lived and prophesied in Troy. I make special mention of this fact, for the reason that in the Foreword of the Prose Edda it is similarly stated that Thor, the son of Priam"s daughter, was married to Sibil (Sibylla).
Thus when Franks and Saxons had been made into Trojans--the former into full-blooded Trojans and the latter into h.e.l.lenicised Trojans--it could not take long before their northern kinsmen received the same descent as a heritage. In the very nature of things the beginning must be made by those Northmen who became the conquerors and settlers of Normandy in the midst of "Trojan" Franks. About a hundred years after their settlement there they produced a chronicler, Dudo, deacon of St. Quentin. I have already shown that the Macedonians were regarded as h.e.l.lenicised Trojans. Together with the h.e.l.lenicising they had obtained the name Danai, a term applied to all Greeks. In his Norman Chronicle, which goes down to the year 996, Dudo relates (_De moribus et gestis_, &c., lib.
i.) that the Norman men regarded themselves as Danai, for Danes (the Scandinavians in general) and Dania was regarded as the same race name.
Together with the Normans the Scandinavians also, from whom they were descended accordingly had to be made into Trojans. And thus the matter was understood by Dudo"s readers; and when Robert Wace wrote his rhymed chronicle, _Roman de Rou_, about the northern conquerors of Normandy, and wanted to give an account of their origin, he could say, on the basis of a common tradition:
"When the walls of Troy in ashes were laid, And the Greeks exceedingly glad were made, Then fled from flames on the Trojan strand The race that settled old Denmark"s land; And in honour of the old Trojan reigns, The people called themselves the Danes."
I have now traced the scholastic tradition about the descent of the Teutonic races from Troy all the way from the chronicle where we first find this tradition recorded, down to the time when Are, Iceland"s first historian, lived, and when the Icelander, Saemund, is said to have studied in Paris, the same century in which Sturlason, Heimskringla"s author, developed into manhood. Saxo rejected the theory current among the scholars of his time, that the northern races were Danai-Trojans. He knew that Dudo in St. Quentin was the authority upon which this belief was chiefly based, and he gives his Danes an entirely different origin, _quanquam Dudo, rerum Aquitanicarum scriptor, Danos a Danais ortos nuncupatosque recenseat_. The Icelanders on the other hand, accepted and continued to develop the belief, resting on the authority of five hundred years, concerning Troy as the starting-point for the Teutonic race; and in Iceland the theory is worked out and systematised as we have already seen, and is made to fit in a frame of the history of the world. The accounts given in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda in regard to the emigration from Asgard form the natural denouement of an era which had existed for centuries, and in which the events of antiquity were able to group themselves around a common centre. All peoples and families of chiefs were located around the Mediterranean Sea, and every event and every hero was connected in some way or other with Troy.
In fact, a great part of the lands subject to the Roman sceptre were in ancient literature in some way connected with the Trojan war and its consequences: Macedonia and Epirus through the Trojan emigrant Helenus; Illyria and Venetia through the Trojan emigrant Antenor; Rhetia and Vindelicia through the Amazons, allies of the Trojans, from whom the inhabitants of these provinces were said to be descended (_Servius ad Virg._, i. 248); Etruria through Darda.n.u.s, who was said to have emigrated from there to Troy; Latium and Campania through the aeneids; Sicily, the very home of the aenean traditions, through the relation between the royal families of Troy and Sicily; Sardinia (see Sall.u.s.t); Gaul (see Luca.n.u.s and Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus); Carthage through the visit of aeneas to Dido; and of course all of Asia Minor. This was not all.
According to the lost Argive History by Anaxikrates, Scamandrius, son of Hektor and Andromache, came with emigrants to Scythia and settled on the banks of the Tanais; and scarcely had Germany become known to the Romans, before it, too, became drawn into the cycle of Trojan stories, at least so far as to make this country visited by Ulysses on his many journeys and adventures (Tac., _Germ._). Every educated Greek and Roman person"s fancy was filled from his earliest school-days with Troy, and traces of Dardanians and Danaians were found everywhere, just as the English in our time think they have found traces of the ten lost tribes of Israel both in the old and in the new world.
In the same degree as Christianity, Church learning, and Latin ma.n.u.scripts were spread among the Teutonic tribes, there were disseminated among them knowledge of and an interest in the great Trojan stories. The native stories telling of Teutonic G.o.ds and heroes received terrible shocks from Christianity, but were rescued in another form on the lips of the people, and continued in their new guise to command their attention and devotion. In the cla.s.s of Latin scholars which developed among the Christianised Teutons, the new stories learned from Latin literature, telling of Ilium, of the conflicts between Trojans and Greeks, of migrations, of the founding of colonies on foreign sh.o.r.es and the creating of new empires, were the things which especially stimulated their curiosity and captivated their fancy. The Latin literature which was to a greater or less extent accessible to the Teutonic priests, or to priests labouring among the Teutons, furnished abundant materials in regard to Troy both in cla.s.sical and pseudo-cla.s.sical authors. We need only call attention to Virgil and his commentator Servius, which became a mine of learning for the whole middle age, and among pseudo-cla.s.sical works to Dares Phrygius"
_Historia de Excidio Trojae_ (which was believed to have been written by a Trojan and translated by Cornelius Nepos!), to Dictys Cretensis"
_Ephemeris belli Trojani_ (the original of which was said to have been Phoenician, and found in Dictys" alleged grave after an earthquake in the time of Nero!), and to "Pindari Thebani," _Epitome Iliados Homeri_.
Before the story of the Trojan descent of the Franks had been created, the Teuton Jordanes, active as a writer in the middle of the sixth century, had already found a place for his Gothic fellow-countrymen in the events of the great Trojan epic. Not that he made the Goths the descendants either of the Greeks or Trojans. On the contrary, he maintained the Goths" own traditions in regard to their descent and their original home, a matter which I shall discuss later. But according to Orosius, who is Jordanes" authority, the Goths were the same as the _Getae_, and when the ident.i.ty of these was accepted, it was easy for Jordanes to connect the history of the Goths with the Homeric stories. A Gothic chief marries Priam"s sister and fights with Achilles and Ulysses (Jord., c. 9), and Ilium, having scarcely recovered from the war with Agamemnon, is destroyed a second time by Goths (c. 20).
11.
THE ORIGIN OF THE STORY IN REGARD TO THE TROJAN DESCENT OF THE FRANKS.
We must now return to the Frankish chronicles, to Fredegar"s and _Gesta regum Francorum_, where the theory of the descent from Troy of a Teutonic tribe is presented for the first time, and thus renews the agitation handed down from antiquity, which attempted to make all ancient history a system of events radiating from Troy as their centre.
I believe I am able to point out the sources of all the statements made in these chronicles in reference to this subject, and also to find the very kernel out of which the illusion regarding the Trojan birth of the Franks grew.
As above stated, Fredegar admits that Virgil is the earliest authority for the claim that the Franks are descended from Troy. Fredegar"s predecessor, Gregorius of Tours, was ignorant of it, and, as already shown, the word Franks does not occur anywhere in Virgil. The discovery that he nevertheless gave information about the Franks and their origin must therefore have been made or known in the time intervening between Gregorius" chronicle and Fredegar"s. Which, then, can be the pa.s.sage in Virgil"s poems in which the discoverer succeeded in finding the proof that the Franks were Trojans? A careful examination of all the circ.u.mstances connected with the subject leads to the conclusion that the pa.s.sage is in _aeneis_, lib. i., 242ff.:
"Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis, Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus Regna Liburnorum, et fontem superare Timavi: Unde per ora novem vasto c.u.m murmere montis It mare proruptum, et pelago premit arva sonanti.
Hic tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit Teucrorum."
"Antenor having escaped from amidst the Greeks, could with safety penetrate the Illyrian Gulf and the inmost realms of Liburnia, and overpa.s.s the springs of Timavus, whence, through nine months, with loud echoing from the mountain, it bursts away, a sea impetuous, and sweeps the fields with a roaring deluge. Yet there he built the city of Padua and established a Trojan settlement."
The nearest proof at hand, that this is really the pa.s.sage which was interpreted as referring to the ancient history of the Franks, is based on the following circ.u.mstances:
Gregorius of Tours had found in the history of Sulpicius Alexander accounts of violent conflicts, on the west bank of the Rhine, between the Romans and Franks, the latter led by the chiefs Markomir and Sunno (Greg., _Hist._, ii. 9).
From Gregorius, _Gesta regum Francorum_ has taken both these names.
According to _Gesta_, the Franks, under the command of Markomir and Sunno, emigrate from Pannonia, near the Moeotian marshes, and settle on the Rhine. The supposition that they had lived in Pannonia before their coming to the Rhine, the author of _Gesta_ had learned from Gregorius.
In _Gesta_, Markomir is made a son of the Trojan Priam, and Sunno _a son of the Trojan Antenor_.
From this point of view, Virgil"s account of Antenor"s and his Trojans"
journey to Europe from fallen Troy refers to the emigration of the father of the Frankish chief Sunno at the head of a tribe of Franks. And as _Gesta"s_ predecessor, the so-called Fredegar, appeals to Virgil as his authority for this Frankish emigration, and as the wanderings of Antenor are nowhere else mentioned by the Roman poet, there can be no doubt that the lines above quoted were the very ones which were regarded as the Virgilian evidence in regard to a Frankish emigration from Troy.
But how did it come to be regarded as an evidence?
Virgil says that Antenor, when he had escaped the Achivians, succeeded in penetrating _Illyricos sinus_, the very heart of Illyria. The name Illyric.u.m served to designate all the regions inhabited by kindred tribes extending from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube and from the Danube to the Adriatic Sea and Haemus (cp. _Marquardt Rom.