together to prosecute a war in common, but when the war was over the link snapped and the tribes fell asunder again.
Documentary evidence enables us to trace how the generic name Franci came to be given to certain tribes between the Main and the North Sea, for we find these tribes designated now by the ancient name which was known to Tacitus and again by the later name. In Peutinger’s chart we find Chamavi qui et Pranci and there is no doubt that we should read qui et Frauci. The Chamavi inhabited the country between the Yssel and the Ems; later on, we find them a little further south, on the banks of the Rhine in Hamaland, and their laws were collected in the ninth century in the document known as the Lex Francorum Chamavorum. Along with the Chamavi we may reckon among the Franks the Attuarii or Chattuarii. We read in Ammianus Marcellinus (xx. 10) Rheno transmisso, regionem pervasit (Julian in a.d. 360) Francorum quos Atthuarios vocant. Later, the pagus Attuariorum will correspond to the country of Emmerich, of Cleves, and of Xanten. We may note that in the Middle Ages there was to be found in Burgundy, in the neighbourhood of Dijon, a pagus Attuariorum , and it is very probable that a portion of this tribe settled at this spot in the course of the fifth century. The Bructeri, the Ampsivarii, and the Chatti were, like the Chamavi, reckoned as Franks. They are mentioned as such in a well- known passage of Sulpicius Alexander which is cited by Gregory of Tours (Historia Francorum, ii. 9). Arbogast, a barbarian general in the service of Rome, desires to take vengeance on the Franks and their chiefs—subreguli— Sunno and Marcomir. 'Consequently in midwinter of the year 392 collecto exerdtu transgressus RJienum, Bructeros ripae proximos, pagum etiam quern Chamavi incolunt depopulatus est, nullo unquam occur sante, nisi quod paud ex Ampsivariis et Catthis Marcomers duce in ulterioribus collium jugis apparuere. It is this Marcomir, chief of the Ampsivarii and Chatti, whom the author of the Liber Historiae makes the father of Pharamond, though he has nothing whatever to do with the Salian Franks.
Thus it is evident that the name Franks was given to a group of tribes, not to a single tribe. The earliest historical mention of the name may be that in Peutinger’s chart,[1] supposing, at least, that the words et Prand are not a later interpolation. The earliest mention in a literary source is in the Vita Aureliani of Vopiscus, cap. 7. In the year 240, Aurelian, who was then only a military tribune, immediately after defeating the Franks in the neighbourhood of Mainz, was marching against the Persians, and his soldiers as thejr marched chanted this refrain:
Mille Sarnia tas, mille Francos semel et semel occidimus;
Mille Pcrsas quaerimus.
It would be in any case impossible to follow the history of all these
- ↑ The date of the chart is very uncertain.
