The Origin Of The Story In Regard To The Trojan Descent Of The Franks

: MEDIAEVAL MIGRATION SAGAS.
: Teutonic Mythology

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 hronicles 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 passage in

Virgil's poems in which the discoverer succeeded in finding the proof

that the Franks were Trojans? A careful examination of all the

circumstances connected with the subject leads to the conclusion that

the passage 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 cum 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

overpass 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 passage which was

interpreted as referring to the ancient history of the Franks, is based

on the following circumstances:



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

Illyricum 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 Roem.

Staatsverwalt, 295). To Illyricum belonged the Roman provinces

Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia, and the Pannonians were an Illyrian

tribe. In Pannonia Gregorius of Tours had located the Franks in early

times. Thus Antenor, with his Trojans, on their westward journey,

traverses the same regions from which, according to Gregorius, the

Franks had set out for the Rhine.



Virgil also says that Antenor extended his journeys to the Liburnian

kingdoms (regna Liburnorum). From Servius' commentary on this passage,

the middle age knew that the Liburnian kingdoms were Rhetia and

Vindelicia (Rhetia Vindelici ipsi sunt Liburni). Rhetia and Vindelicia

separate Pannonia from the Rhine. Antenor, accordingly, takes the same

route toward the West as the Franks must have taken if they came from

Pannonia to the Rhine.



Virgil then brings Antenor to a river, which, it is true, is called

Timavus, but which is described as a mighty stream, coming thundering

out of a mountainous region, where it has its source, carrying with it a

mass of water which the poet compares with a sea, forming before it

reaches the sea a delta, the plains of which are deluged by the billows,

and finally emptying itself by many outlets into the ocean. Virgil says

nine; but Servius interprets this as meaning many: "finitus est

numerus pro infinito."



We must pardon the Frankish scribes for taking this river to be the

Rhine; for if a water-course is to be looked for in Europe west of the

land of the Liburnians, which answers to the Virgilian description, then

this must be the Rhine, on whose banks the ancestors of the Franks for

the first time appear in history.



Again, Virgil tells us that Antenor settled near this river and founded

a colony--Patavium--on the low plains of the delta. The Salian Franks

acquired possession of the low and flat regions around the outlets of

the Rhine (Insula Batavorum) about the year 287, and also of the land

to the south as far as to the Scheldt; and after protracted wars the

Romans had to leave them in control of this region. By the very

occupation of this low country, its conquerors might properly be called

Batavian Franks. It is only necessary to call attention to the

similarity of the words Patavi and Batavi, in order to show at the

same time that the conclusion could scarcely be avoided that Virgil had

reference to the immigration of the Franks when he spoke of the

wanderings of Antenor, the more so, since from time out of date the

pronunciation of the initials B and P have been interchanged by the

Germans. In the conquered territory the Franks founded a city (Ammian.

Marc., xvii. 2, 5).



Thus it appears that the Franks were supposed to have migrated to the

Rhine under the leadership of Antenor. The first Frankish chiefs

recorded, after their appearance there, are Markomir and Sunno. From

this the conclusion was drawn that Sunno was Antenor's son; and as

Markomir ought to be the son of some celebrated Trojan chief, he was

made the son of Priam. Thus we have explained Fredegar's statement that

Virgil is his authority for the Trojan descent of these Franks. This

seemed to be established for all time.



The wars fought around the Moeotian marshes between the emperor

Valentinianus, the Alamanni, and the Franks, of which Gesta speaks,

are not wholly inventions of the fancy. The historical kernel in this

confused semi-mythical narrative is that Valentinianus really did fight

with the Alamanni, and that the Franks for some time were allies of the

Romans, and came into conflict with those same Alamanni (Ammian. Marc.,

libs, xxx., xxxi.). But the scene of these battles was not the Moeotian

marshes and Pannonia, as Gesta supposes, but the regions on the Rhine.



The unhistorical statement of Gregorius that the Franks came from

Pannonia is based only on the fact that Frankish warriors for some time

formed a Sicambra cohors, which about the year 26 was incorporated

with the Roman troops stationed in Pannonia and Thracia. The cohort is

believed to have remained in Hungary and formed a colony, where Buda now

is situated. Gesta makes Pannonia extend from the Moeotian marshes to

Tanais, since according to Gregorius and earlier chroniclers, these

waters were the boundary between Europe and Asia, and since Asia was

regarded as a synonym of the Trojan empire. Virgil had called the Trojan

kingdom Asia: Postquam res Asiae Priamique evertere gentem, &c.,

(AEneid, iii. 1).



Thus we have exhibited the seed out of which the fable about the Trojan

descent of the Franks grew into a tree spreading its branches over all

Teutonic Europe, in the same manner as the earlier fable, which was at

least developed if not born in Sicily, in regard to the Trojan descent

of the Romans had grown into a tree overshadowing all the lands around

the Mediterranean, and extending one of its branches across Gaul to

Britain and Ireland. The first son of the Britons, "Brutus," was,

according to Galfred, great-grandson of AEneas, and migrated from Alba

Longa to Ireland.



So far as the Gauls are concerned, the incorporation of Cis-Alpine Gaul

with the Roman Empire, and the Romanising of the Gauls dwelling there,

had at an early day made way for the belief that they had the same

origin and were of the same blood as the Romans. Consequently they too

were Trojans. This view, encouraged by Roman politics, gradually found

its way to the Gauls on the other side of the Rhine; and even before

Caesar's time the Roman senate had in its letters to the AEduans, often

called them the "brothers and kinsmen" of the Romans (fratres

consanguineique--Caesar, De Bell. Gall., i. 33, 2). Of the Avernians

Lucanus sings (i. 427): Averni ... ausi Latio se fingere fratres,

sanguine ab Iliaco populi.



Thus we see that when the Franks, having made themselves masters of the

Romanised Gaul, claimed a Trojan descent, then this was the repetition

of a history of which Gaul for many centuries previously had been the

scene. After the Frankish conquest the population of Gaul consisted for

the second time of two nationalities unlike in language and customs, and

now as before it was a political measure of no slight importance to

bring these two nationalities as closely together as possible by the

belief in a common descent. The Roman Gauls and the Franks were

represented as having been one people in the time of the Trojan war.

After the fall of the common fatherland they were divided into two

separate tribes, with separate destinies, until they refound each other

in the west of Europe, to dwell together again in Gaul. This explains

how it came to pass that, when they thought they had found evidence of

this view in Virgil, this was at once accepted, and was so eagerly

adopted that the older traditions in regard to the origin and migrations

of the Franks were thrust aside and consigned to oblivion. History

repeats itself a third time when the Normans conquered and became

masters of that part of Gaul which after them is called Normandy. Dudo,

their chronicler, says that they regarded themselves as being ex

Antenore progenitos, descendants of Antenor. This is sufficient proof

that they had borrowed from the Franks the tradition in regard to their

Trojan descent.