The Older Periods Of The Troy Saga

: MEDIAEVAL MIGRATION SAGAS.
: Teutonic Mythology

How did the belief that Troy was the original home of the Teutons arise?

Does it rest on native traditions? Has it been inspired by sagas and

traditions current among the Teutons themselves, and containing as

kernel "a faint reminiscence of an immigration from Asia," or is it a

thought entirely foreign to the heathen Teutonic world, introduced in

Christian times by Latin scholars? These questions shall now be

considere
.



Already in the seventh century--that is to say, more than five hundred

years before Heimskringla and the Prose Edda were written--a Teutonic

people were told by a chronicler that they were of the same blood as the

Romans, that they had like the Romans emigrated from Troy, and that they

had the same share as the Romans in the glorious deeds of the Trojan

heroes. This people were the Franks. Their oldest chronicler, Gregorius,

bishop of Tours, who, about one hundred years before that time--that is

to say, in the sixth century--wrote their history in ten books, does not

say a word about it. He, too, desires to give an account of the original

home of the Franks (Hist. Franc., ii. 9), and locates it quite a

distance from the regions around the lower Rhine, where they first

appear in the light of history; but still not farther away than to

Pannonia. Of the coming of the Franks from Troy neither Gregorius knows

anything nor the older authors, Sulpicius Alexander and others, whose

works he studied to find information in regard to the early history of

the Franks. But in the middle of the following century, about 650, an

unknown author, who for reasons unknown, is called Fredegar, wrote a

chronicle, which is in part a reproduction of Gregorius' historical

work, but also contains various other things in regard to the early

history of the Franks, and among these the statement that they emigrated

from Troy. He even gives us the sources from which he got this

information. His sources are, according to his own statement, not

Frankish, not popular songs or traditions, but two Latin authors--the

Church father Hieronymus and the poet Virgil. If we, then, go to these

sources in order to compare Fredegar's statement with his authority, we

find that Hieronymus once names the Franks in passing, but never refers

to their origin from Troy, and that Virgil does not even mention Franks.

Nevertheless, the reference to Virgil is the key to the riddle, as we

shall show below. What Fredegar tells about the emigration of the Franks

is this: A Frankish king, by the name Priam, ruled in Troy at the time

when this city was conquered by the cunning of Ulysses. Then the Franks

emigrated, and were afterwards ruled by a king named Friga. Under his

reign a dispute arose between them, and they divided themselves into two

parties, one of which settled in Macedonia, while the other, called

after Friga's name Frigians (Phrygians), migrated through Asia and

settled there. There they were again divided, and one part of them

migrated under king Francio into Europe, travelled across this

continent, and settled, with their women and children, near the Rhine,

where they began building a city which they called Troy, and intended

to organise in the manner of the old Troy, but the city was not

completed. The other group chose a king by name Turchot, and were called

after him Turks. But those who settled on the Rhine called themselves

Franks after their king Francio, and later chose a king named Theudemer,

who was descended from Priam, Friga, and Francio. Thus Fredegar's

chronicle.



About seventy years later another Frankish chronicle saw the light of

day--the Gesta regum Francorum. In it we learn more of the emigration

of the Franks from Troy. Gesta regum Francorum (i) tells the following

story: In Asia lies the city of the Trojans called Ilium, where king

AEneas formerly ruled. The Trojans were a strong and brave people, who

waged war against all their neighbours. But then the kings of the Greeks

united and brought a large army against AEneas, king of the Trojans.

There were great battles and much bloodshed, and the greater part of the

Trojans fell. AEneas fled with those surviving into the city of Ilium,

which the Greeks besieged and conquered after ten years. The Trojans who

escaped divided themselves into two parties. The one under king AEneas

went to Italy, where he hoped to receive auxiliary troops. Other

distinguished Trojans became the leaders of the other party, which

numbered 12,000 men. They embarked in ships and came to the banks of the

river Tanais. They sailed farther and came within the borders of

Pannonia, near the Moeotian marshes (navigantes pervenerunt intra

terminos Pannoniarum juxta Moeotidas paludes), where they founded a

city, which they called Sicambria, and here they remained many years

and became a mighty people. Then came a time when the Roman emperor

Valentinianus got into war with that wicked people called Alamanni (also

Alani). He led a great army against them. The Alamanni were defeated,

and fled to the Moeotian marshes. Then said the emperor, "If anyone

dares to enter those marshes and drive away this wicked people, I shall

for ten years make him free from all burdens." When the Trojans heard

this they went, accompanied by a Roman army, into the marshes, attacked

the Alamanni, and hewed them down with their swords. Then the Trojans

received from the emperor Valentinianus the name Franks, which, the

chronicle adds, in the Attic tongue means the savage (feri), "for

the Trojans had a defiant and indomitable character."



For ten years afterwards the Trojans or Franks lived undisturbed by

Roman tax-collectors; but after that the Roman emperor demanded that

they should pay tribute. This they refused, and slew the tax-collectors

sent to them. Then the emperor collected a large army under the command

of Aristarcus, and strengthened it with auxiliary forces from many

lands, and attacked the Franks, who were defeated by the superior force,

lost their leader Priam, and had to take flight. They now proceeded

under their leaders Markomir, Priam's son, and Sunno, son of Antenor,

away from Sicambria through Germany to the Rhine, and located there.

Thus this chronicle.



About fifty years after its appearance--that is, in the time of

Charlemagne, and, to be more accurate, about the year 787--the

well-known Longobardian historian Paulus Diaconus wrote a history of the

bishops of Metz. Among these bishops was the Frank Arnulf, from whom

Charlemagne was descended in the fifth generation. Arnulf had two sons,

one of whom was named Ansgisel, in a contracted form Ansgis. When Paulus

speaks of this he remarks that it is thought that the name Ansgis comes

from the father of AEneas, Anchises, who went from Troy to Italy; and he

adds that according to evidence of older date the Franks were believed

to be descendants of the Trojans. These evidences of older date we have

considered above--Fredegar's Chronicle and Gesta regum Francorum.

Meanwhile this shows that the belief that the Franks were of Trojan

descent kept spreading with the lapse of time. It hardly needs to be

added that there is no good foundation for the derivation of Ansgisel or

Ansgis from Anchises. Ansgisel is a genuine Teutonic name. (See No. 123

concerning Ansgisel, the emigration chief of the Teutonic myth.)



We now pass to the second half of the tenth century, and there we find

the Saxon chronicler Widukind. When he is to tell the story of the

origin of the Saxon people, he presents two conflicting accounts. The

one is from a Saxon source, from old native traditions, which we shall

discuss later; the other is from a scholastic source, and claims that

the Saxons are of Macedonian descent. According to this latter account

they were a remnant of the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great,

which, as Widukind had learned, after Alexander's early death, had

spread over the whole earth. The Macedonians were at that time regarded

as Hellenicised Trojans. In this connection I call the reader's

attention to Fredegar's Chronicle referred to above, which tells that

the Trojans, in the time of king Friga, disagreed among themselves, and

that a part of them emigrated and settled in Macedonia. In this manner

the Saxons, like the Franks, could claim a Trojan descent; and as

England to a great extent was peopled by Saxon conquerors, the same

honour was of course claimed by her people. In evidence of this, and to

show that it was believed in England during the centuries immediately

following Widukind's time, that the Saxons and Angles were of Trojan

blood, I will simply refer here to a pseudo-Sibylline manuscript found

in Oxford and written in very poor Latin. It was examined by the French

scholar Alexandre (Excursus ad Sibyllina, p. 298), and in it Britain

is said to be an island inhabited by the survivors of the Trojans

(insulam reliquiis Trojanorum inhabitatam). In another British

pseudo-Sibylline document it is stated that the Sibylla was a daughter

of king Priam of Troy; and an effort has been made to add weight and

dignity to this document by incorporating it with the works of the well

known Church historian Beda, and thus date it at the beginning of the

eighth century, but the manuscript itself is a compilation from the time

of Frederick Barbarossa (Excurs. ad Sib., p. 289). Other

pseudo-Sibylline documents in Latin give accounts of a Sibylla who lived

and prophesied in Troy. I make special mention of this fact, for the

reason that in the Foreword of the Prose Edda it is similarly stated

that Thor, the son of Priam's daughter, was married to Sibil (Sibylla).



Thus when Franks and Saxons had been made into Trojans--the former into

full-blooded Trojans and the latter into Hellenicised Trojans--it could

not take long before their northern kinsmen received the same descent as

a heritage. In the very nature of things the beginning must be made by

those Northmen who became the conquerors and settlers of Normandy in the

midst of "Trojan" Franks. About a hundred years after their settlement

there they produced a chronicler, Dudo, deacon of St. Quentin. I have

already shown that the Macedonians were regarded as Hellenicised

Trojans. Together with the Hellenicising they had obtained the name

Danai, a term applied to all Greeks. In his Norman Chronicle, which goes

down to the year 996, Dudo relates (De moribus et gestis, &c., lib.

i.) that the Norman men regarded themselves as Danai, for Danes (the

Scandinavians in general) and Dania was regarded as the same race name.

Together with the Normans the Scandinavians also, from whom they were

descended accordingly had to be made into Trojans. And thus the matter

was understood by Dudo's readers; and when Robert Wace wrote his rhymed

chronicle, Roman de Rou, about the northern conquerors of Normandy,

and wanted to give an account of their origin, he could say, on the

basis of a common tradition:



"When the walls of Troy in ashes were laid,

And the Greeks exceedingly glad were made,

Then fled from flames on the Trojan strand

The race that settled old Denmark's land;

And in honour of the old Trojan reigns,

The people called themselves the Danes."



I have now traced the scholastic tradition about the descent of the

Teutonic races from Troy all the way from the chronicle where we first

find this tradition recorded, down to the time when Are, Iceland's first

historian, lived, and when the Icelander, Saemund, is said to have

studied in Paris, the same century in which Sturlason, Heimskringla's

author, developed into manhood. Saxo rejected the theory current among

the scholars of his time, that the northern races were Danai-Trojans. He

knew that Dudo in St. Quentin was the authority upon which this belief

was chiefly based, and he gives his Danes an entirely different origin,

quanquam Dudo, rerum Aquitanicarum scriptor, Danos a Danais ortos

nuncupatosque recenseat. The Icelanders on the other hand, accepted and

continued to develop the belief, resting on the authority of five

hundred years, concerning Troy as the starting-point for the Teutonic

race; and in Iceland the theory is worked out and systematised as we

have already seen, and is made to fit in a frame of the history of the

world. The accounts given in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda in regard

to the emigration from Asgard form the natural denouement of an era

which had existed for centuries, and in which the events of antiquity

were able to group themselves around a common centre. All peoples and

families of chiefs were located around the Mediterranean Sea, and every

event and every hero was connected in some way or other with Troy.



In fact, a great part of the lands subject to the Roman sceptre were in

ancient literature in some way connected with the Trojan war and its

consequences: Macedonia and Epirus through the Trojan emigrant Helenus;

Illyria and Venetia through the Trojan emigrant Antenor; Rhetia and

Vindelicia through the Amazons, allies of the Trojans, from whom the

inhabitants of these provinces were said to be descended (Servius ad

Virg., i. 248); Etruria through Dardanus, who was said to have

emigrated from there to Troy; Latium and Campania through the AEneids;

Sicily, the very home of the AEnean traditions, through the relation

between the royal families of Troy and Sicily; Sardinia (see Sallust);

Gaul (see Lucanus and Ammianus Marcellinus); Carthage through the visit

of AEneas to Dido; and of course all of Asia Minor. This was not all.

According to the lost Argive History by Anaxikrates, Scamandrius, son of

Hektor and Andromache, came with emigrants to Scythia and settled on the

banks of the Tanais; and scarcely had Germany become known to the

Romans, before it, too, became drawn into the cycle of Trojan stories,

at least so far as to make this country visited by Ulysses on his many

journeys and adventures (Tac., Germ.). Every educated Greek and Roman

person's fancy was filled from his earliest school-days with Troy, and

traces of Dardanians and Danaians were found everywhere, just as the

English in our time think they have found traces of the ten lost tribes

of Israel both in the old and in the new world.



In the same degree as Christianity, Church learning, and Latin

manuscripts were spread among the Teutonic tribes, there were

disseminated among them knowledge of and an interest in the great Trojan

stories. The native stories telling of Teutonic gods and heroes

received terrible shocks from Christianity, but were rescued in another

form on the lips of the people, and continued in their new guise to

command their attention and devotion. In the class of Latin scholars

which developed among the Christianised Teutons, the new stories learned

from Latin literature, telling of Ilium, of the conflicts between

Trojans and Greeks, of migrations, of the founding of colonies on

foreign shores and the creating of new empires, were the things which

especially stimulated their curiosity and captivated their fancy. The

Latin literature which was to a greater or less extent accessible to the

Teutonic priests, or to priests labouring among the Teutons, furnished

abundant materials in regard to Troy both in classical and

pseudo-classical authors. We need only call attention to Virgil and his

commentator Servius, which became a mine of learning for the whole

middle age, and among pseudo-classical works to Dares Phrygius'

Historia de Excidio Trojae (which was believed to have been written by

a Trojan and translated by Cornelius Nepos!), to Dictys Cretensis'

Ephemeris belli Trojani (the original of which was said to have been

Phoenician, and found in Dictys' alleged grave after an earthquake in

the time of Nero!), and to "Pindari Thebani," Epitome Iliados Homeri.



Before the story of the Trojan descent of the Franks had been created,

the Teuton Jordanes, active as a writer in the middle of the sixth

century, had already found a place for his Gothic fellow-countrymen in

the events of the great Trojan epic. Not that he made the Goths the

descendants either of the Greeks or Trojans. On the contrary, he

maintained the Goths' own traditions in regard to their descent and

their original home, a matter which I shall discuss later. But according

to Orosius, who is Jordanes' authority, the Goths were the same as the

Getae, and when the identity of these was accepted, it was easy for

Jordanes to connect the history of the Goths with the Homeric stories. A

Gothic chief marries Priam's sister and fights with Achilles and Ulysses

(Jord., c. 9), and Ilium, having scarcely recovered from the war with

Agamemnon, is destroyed a second time by Goths (c. 20).



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