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368 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xlii arms their high-spirited independence. In the tempests of the North, which overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark of the Lombards still floated on the surface; they gradually descended towards the south and the Danube ; and at the end of four hundred years they again appear with their ancient valour 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. 10 The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship of the emperors ; and, at the solicitation 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 pre- tended, 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 Gepidse. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before the throne of Constantinople ; and the crafty Justinian, to whom the Barba- rians were almost equally odious, pronounced a partial and ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted the war by slow and ineffectual succours. 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 un- 10 Two facts in the narrative of Paul Diaconus (1. i. c. 20) are expressive of national manners : 1. Dum ad tabulam luderet — while he played at draughts. 2. Camporum viridantia Una. The cultivation of flax supposes property, commerce, agriculture, and manufactures.