mbards still floated on the surface: they
gradually descended towards the south and the Danube, and, at the end
of four hundred years, they again appear with their ancient valor and
renown. Their manners were not less ferocious. The assassination of a
royal guest was executed in the presence, and by the command, of the
king's daughter, who had been provoked by some words of insult, and
disappointed by his diminutive stature; and a tribute, the price of
blood, was imposed on the Lombards, by his brother the king of the
Heruli. Adversity revived a sense of moderation and justice, and the
insolence of conquest was chastised by the signal defeat and irreparable
dispersion of the Heruli, who were seated in the southern provinces
of Poland. [9] The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the
friendship of the emperors; and at the solicitations of Justinian, they
passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the cities of
Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the spirit of rapine soon
tempted them beyond these ample limits; they wandered along the coast of
the Hadriatic as far as Dyrrachium, and presumed, with familiar rudeness
to enter the towns and houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the
captives who had escaped from their audacious hands. These acts
of hostility, the sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose
adventurers, were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor;
but the arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest
of thirty years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the
Gepidae. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before the throne
of Constantinople; and the crafty Justinian, to whom the Barbarians were
almost equally odious, pronounced a partial and ambiguous sentence, and
dexterously protracted the war by slow and ineffectual succors. Their
strength was formidable, since the Lombards, who sent into the field
several myriads of soldiers, still claimed, as the weaker side, the
protection of the Romans. Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the
uncertainty of courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with
a panic; they fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with
their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was obtained;
but their mutual resentment again kindled; and the remembrance of
their shame rendered the next encounter more desperate and bloody Forty
thousand of the Barbarians perished in the decis