|
|
| Commentary
|
| 1
|
Tertia pars orbis: as opposed to Africa and Asia, a division found as early as Herodotus (2.16).
Fratres: suggests that the poem could have been read in a monastic context. Cf. adelphus in the prologue, line 22.
|
| 3
|
Cultu: As distinguished from religione, it probably can be translated as “way of life,” in the sense of the general style of societal customs.
Sequestrans: “separating,” a meaning that seems to have developed from the concept of the deposit held by a sequester, the third-party arbitrator in a monetary conflict.
|
| 4
|
Pannonia: a Roman province in the north-west Balkans (around modern-day northern Croatia and western Hungary), and according to the poem the homeland of the “Huns” (Hunos, line 5). In historical reality, the Huns were a nomadic tribe that entered Europe from the Eurasian Steppe, beginning around 370 CE. The Romans relinquished control of Pannonia to the Huns in 435 (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.vv. “Huns,” “Pannonia”; Kelly 2008, 83–84).
|
| 5
|
Hunos: The Huns first swept into Roman consciousness when, invading from the east, they displaced the Goths, who—as detailed by Ammianus Marcellinus—ended up decimating the Roman army at the Battle of Adrianople, now Edirne in northwest Turkey, in 378 CE. In the following centuries
|
| 8
|
Oceani: The shores of the ocean almost function as the ends of the world in a pre-modern sense of geography, where Oceanus is the great river that encircled the known world. The very same section of Isidore’s Etymologies that line 1 likely references explicitly describes Oceanus as encircling the globe. The Huns were a people of the inland steppes and plains. At the height of its power, the Hunnic Empire stretched from the Caspian and Black Seas to the North Sea and even the Adriatic, but never all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
|
| 9
|
In this passage, the poet’s characterization of the Huns parallels a Virgilian characterization of the Romans. Especially here, the allusion to the Virgilian and Roman dictum to “spare the vanquished and crush the proud,” as it appears in Aeneid 6.852, is overt, despite its expression in a different language.
|
| 10
|
Fertur: the subject is populus.
Dominarier: archaic form for the passive infinitive (here of a deponent), frequent in poetry of all periods.
Ultra millenos … annos: The millennium reign has been a common enough trope for powerful long-lasting empires (cf. the celebration of the millennium of Rome’s rule in 248 CE or the thousand year reign of Christ in Rev. 20). The hyperbole of this time-frame for the Hunnic empire explicit here and implied later (antiquos … triumphos, line 13), which only really lasted around a century in Europe, likens the Huns to the Romans in the manner and duration of their rule. This aggrandized characterization averts potential humiliation from the Frankish kingdoms’ obeisance, and glorifies Walther’s eventual triumph, as the enemy they face is not merely a nomadic army, but an empire on par with Rome.
|
| 11
|
Attila: Ruler of the Huns, first with his brother Bleda, from ca. 440 to 445, then alone until 453 CE (Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “Attila”).
Tulit = gessit
|
| 12
|
Renovare: infinitive following impiger (“eager”); as in Hor. Carm. 4.14.22.
|
|
| Parallels
|
| 1
|
Lucan, De Bello Civili 9.411–12: Tertia pars rerum Libye, si credere famae / Cuncta velis; at, si ventos caelumque sequaris, / Pars erit Europae. “Libya is the third continent of the world, if one is willing in all things to trust report; but, if you judge by the winds and the sky, you will find it to be part of Europe.” Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, 14.2.1: Divisus est autem trifarie: e quibus una pars Asia, altera Europa, tertia Africa nuncupatur. “[The earth] is divided into three parts, one of which is called Asia, the second Europe, the third Africa.”
|
| 2
|
Aeneid 8.722–23: gentes, / quam variae linguis, habitu tam vestis et armis. “Peoples as diverse in fashion of dress and arms as in tongues.”
|
| 7–8
|
1 Macc. 1.1–2 Vulg.: Et factum est postquam percussit Alexander Philippi Macedo qui primus regnavit in Graecia egressus de terra Cetthim Darium regem Persarum et Medorum constituit proelia multa et omnium obtinuit munitiones et interfecit reges terrae et pertransiit usque ad fines terrae. “Now it came to pass, after that Alexander the son of Philip the Macedonian, who first reigned in Greece, coming out of the land of Cethim, had overthrown Darius king of the Persians and Medes: he fought many battles, and took the strong holds of all, and slew the kings of the earth: and he went through even to the ends of the earth.”
|
| 8
|
Aeneid 3.396: has autem terras Italique hanc litoris oram… “But these lands, and this nearest border of the Italian shore…” Virgil, Georgics 2.44: ades et primi lege litoris oram. “Draw nigh, and skirt the near shoreline.”
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, 14.2: Undique enim Oceanus circumfluens eius in circulo ambit fines. … sed ideo istae duae partes factae sunt, quia inter utramque ab Oceano mare Magnum ingreditur, quod eas intersecat. “Indeed, the Ocean that flows around it on all sides encompasses its furthest reaches in a circle. … But the former pair [Europe and Africa] are divided into two regions, because from the Ocean the Mediterranean enters in between them and separates them.”
|
| 9
|
Aeneid 6.851–52: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento / (hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. “You, Roman, be sure to rule the world (be these your arts), to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud.”
|
|
|
