And how, I ask, can he even on land resist we with his scanty forces? His son was there, his wife was there, the Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians, were all with him: and if they did not know enough and were unable to take one little city that resisted them, how will they resist me when I come, I who am followed by as many troops as
‘Gargara corn-ears have, or grape-shoots the island of Lesbos,
Stars in the sky are found, or waves in the billowy ocean
When I wished to reply to him and to give forth an answer worthy of his boasting, he did not permit me; but added as if to scoff at me: “You are -not Romans but Lombards.” When he wished to speak further and was waving his hand to impose silence upon me, I said in anger: “History, teaches that the fratricide Romulus, from whom also the Romans are named, was born in adultery-; and that he made an asylum for himself in which he received insolvent debtors, fugitive slaves, homicides, and those who were worthy of death for their deeds. And he called to himself a certain number of such and called them Romans.
Sins of the Christians
From such nobility those are descended whom you call world-rulers, that is, emperors; whom we, namely the Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians, Burgundians, so despise, that when angry, we can call our enemies nothing more scornful than Roman-comprehending in this one thing, that is in the name of the Romans, whatever there is of contemptibility, of timidity, of avarice, of luxury, of lying: in a word, of viciousness. But because you do maintain that we are unwarlike and ignorant of horsemanship, if the sins of the Christians shall merit that you shall remain in this hard-heartedness: the next battle will show what you are, and how warlike we.”
Nicephorus, exasperated by these words, commanded silence with his hand, and bade that the long narrow table should be taken away, and that I should return to my hated habitation-or, to speak more truly, my prison. There after two days, as a result of vexation as well as of heat and thirst, I was taken with a severe illness.
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