Directed by the divine,
he discovered a great treasure of gold buried
under slabs of the palace: "and the gold was
carried away and distributed among the
poor" [Migne, 509-511; cf.
he discovered a great treasure of gold buried
under slabs of the palace: "and the gold was
carried away and distributed among the
poor" [Migne, 509-511; cf.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
S.
Navy dirigible Akron and was swept into the air.
Two others who were also caught fell to their deaths, but "Cowart wrapped himself securely in the mooring line and held on" [Morse, Pai, 10.
3, 597J.
63. Hindoos . . . vacuity: Pou? nd's not very sympathetic idea of the Hindu concept of nirvana; it's not the thing itself so much as its consequences Pound objects to. His asso- ciations inform the rest of this canto. The famous "We appear to have lost the radiant world" passage in "Cavalcanti" is followed by a description of two kinds of "the Hin- doo disease, fanaticisms and excess that pro- duce Savonarola, . . . [andJ asceticisms that produce fakirs . . . . Between those diseases, existed the Mediterranean sanity . . . that gave the churches like St Hilaire . . . the clear lines and proportions" [LE, 154J. And again: "Against these European Hindoos we find the 'medieval clean line'" [LE, 150J.
Kassandra:
Elsa von
Freytag?
66. Santayana:
Pound's idea of intelligence in the cherry stone which made it able to create the cher- ry tree [113:431, he replied, in effect, that Pound had something there-but it would be intelligence of "an unconscious sort" [NS, Life, 429J.
George S.
[80:49J. To
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
590
95/647
96/651
591
tiers [45:16], built in his honor, has the clean lines and the economy of form [HK, Era, 327] of the oak leaf of John Heydon, "secretary of nature" [87:82]. Pound would applaud one of his central teachings: "the existence of God can be known by reason, but his nature is incomprehensible" [ibid]. One can deduce from this premise that the human race is safer if it celebrates mystery
as mystery, the arcanum as arcanum, than if it deduces, argumentatively, a lot of abstract dogma and starts burning and killing people in the name of such dogma. One of the reasons Pound praises the mysteries of Eleu- sis is that they maintained this distinction.
72. an oak-leaf: John Heydon said Hilary [92:40] looked at an oak leaf. A rhyme with "learn of the green world" and "the green casque has outdone your elegance" [81/521]: a central tenet of Pound's reli- gion. One must marvel at both the elegance and the absolute economy of forms created in nature. Any plant distributes its branches and spreads its leaves in a mathematically precise way to obtain the optimum amount
of sunlight. Since so precise a design implies a designer, Pound concurs with St. Hilary: "the existence of God can be known by reason" (109:49]. The point bears repeating as it is central to The Cantos. The "vine- leaf' evokes the god Dionysus, to discrimi-
nate him from the martyr Dionisis (hence the repetition of the line), but also because he was central to the Eleusinian mysteries.
73. St Denys: The Church of St. Denis, built in the 12th century on the spot in Montmartre where two missionaries, Dionisis and Eleuthedo, were martyred by beheading in 273 [Historia Francorum, I, 31; CB. R, ZBC,40].
74. Calvin: [14:16; 62:15]. His "logically developed" and fundamentalist belief that the Bible is the sole source of divine wisdom led to the burning of heretics, such as Mi- chael Servetus in 1533. The point seems to be that Calvin did not succeed in destroying the names of the earlier martyrs by a black- out [89:87; cf. 56 above], because the flight of the Huguenots at the battle of St. Denis on Nov. 16, 1567 memorialized them
[CB-R, ibid].
75. the wave . . . sea-god: The 10? line pas- sage invokes again the Homeric scene where the raft of Odysseus is destroyed by the storm created by Poseidon and he is saved by Ino, daughter of Cadmus, who had been turned into Leucothea. She took pity on him with her kredemmon [ad. v, 325-376], which Pound called a "bikini" [cf. 91: 102].
76. VOUTOV ? ? ? ? a:i17Kwv: H, "to reach the land of the Phaeacians" [ibid. , 344-345] .
Background
Max Gallo, Mussolini's Italy, trans. Charles Markmann, Macmillan,
1973; J. B. Bury, History o f the Later Roman Empire, II, London, 1923 [Later R. E. ]; History of the Langobards by Paul the Deacon, trans. William Dudley Foulke, Longmans, Green & Co. , New Y ork, 1906 [Foulke, History] ; Constance Head, Justinian I I of Byzantium, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1972 [Head, J. II]; John W. Barker, Justinian and The Later Roman Empire, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1966; Anthony Birley, Septimius Severus, Doubleday, 1972; Luigi Villari, The Liberation of Italy, C. C. Nelson, Wisconsin, 1959.
Exegeses
EP, SP, 231,450; GK, 209; LE, 250; WB, in EH, Approaches, 312; Akiko Miyake, Pai, 7-1 & 2, 110; JW,Pai, 2? 2, 176; EH, Pai, 2? 3, 498; JW, Later, 102-132; Pearlman, Pai, 1-2, 163; Flory, Pai, 4? 2 & 3, 325; CFT, Pai, 2? 2, 223-242; Leo the Wise, Pai, 2-2, 245? 311; MB, Trace, 304; DD, Sculptor, 239-240; CB? R, ZBC, 136, 146, 151,258.
[As Cunizza says (Par. IX, 61-62): "Above are mirrors-you call them Thrones-by which the light of God as judge is reflected upon us. " The? source of divine wisdom is given as "pen yeh" at 94/640, followed by the comment, "That is of thrones, and above them: Justice. " Said Pound: "Thrones concerns the states of mind of people responsible for something more than their personal conduct" (Don Hall, Paris Review, no. 28, 1962, p. 49)].
Glossary
CANTO XCVI
Sources
J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, vol. 95, 1851: this volume contains The Complete Works of the Venerable Bede, and Paul the Deacon's History o f the Langobards [Migne, column no. ]; Alexander Del Mar, History ofMonetary Systems, Chicago, 1896 [HMS]; The Book o f the Eparch o f Leo The Wise, trans. into modern Greek and Latin with a French translation by Professor Jules Nicole and published as Le Livre du Prefet, Geneva, 1893 [EP. B] ; Cicero, De Officiis, 2; Catullus, Carmen,
93; Dante, Pur. I; Homer, ad. V, XIII.
5. ROMA . . . : L, formerly. . . . "
"Rome, which
1
l
I. Kpf/oE/1vov:
Leucothea [95 :32, 75] threw to the drown? ing Odysseus to save him [ad. V, 351]: "So saying the goddess gave him the veil, and herself plunged again into the surging deep, like a sea? mew; and the dark wave hid her. "
2. Aestheticisme . . . : F, "Aestheticism as church politics. "
3. hearth . . . diafana: -Thrones opens with a religious rite that is more than aesthetic. As indicated below, the name Tuscany (1, Toscana) derives from the Latin thus, thuris ("frankincense," "olibanum") and links the opening to the rhymes with Dionysus [2:20] at the end of Canto 95. The aromatic gum frankincense (pure incense) seems to derive
from a variety of African cedar or juniper. The rite may be conceived as one of purifica- tion and linked forward to the Na? Khi
[110:21; Eisenhauer,Pai, 9? 2, 251].
4. Aether . . . thure: L, "The air rains down coins / the earth throws up corpses, / Tuscany which from incense" [Migne, 474,492]. "Thusca" is a miscopying of Thuscia.
H, "veil,
scarf. " What
6. Sabines: An ancient people living NE of Rome who were the source of many legends, including one about the rape of their women to supply wives for the followers ofRomulus. For centuries they fought the Romans but
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -
592
96/651
96/652
eventually became full Roman citizens. Their ensign had a picus (a woodpecker, rather than a crow). In time the Sabines spread north and east.
7. Brennus: A tribal chieftain from Gaul. Paul the Deacon [cf. 10 below] said [Migne, 495-496]: "And the reason why the Gauls carne to Italy is represented to have been this: When they tasted the wine brought from that country, they were enticed by greed for this wine and passed over into Italy" [Foulke, History, 78].
8. Bergamo. . . Ticino: Cities eventually
founded by other Celts. Ticino should be Pavia (from Latin Ticinum), the later Lorn? bard capital, but perhaps the reference is to the Swiss canton of Tieino which is near Brescia, an Italian city near Lake Garda.
9. Cunimundus: King of the Gepidae, who "broke his treaty with the Langobards and chose war rather than peace. " Alboin, king of the Langobards [cf. 17 below] entered into a treaty with the Avars, first called the Huns and defeated them in two wars [Paul says 'one]: "In this battle Alboin killed Cunimund, and made out of his head, which he carried off, a drinking goblet. . . . And he led away as captive, Cunirnund's daughter, Rosemund by name" [Migne, 476], whom he married by force. Rosemund murdered King Alboin after she learned the horror he did to her: "While he sat in merriment . . . with the cup which he made of the head of his father? in? 1aw, King Cunimund, he ordered it to be given to the queen to drink wine, and he invited her to drink merrily with her father. Lest this should seem impossible to anyone, I speak the truth in Christ. 1saw King Ratchis holding this cup in his hand on a certain festal day to show it to his guest"
[Migne, 498].
10. Paulus: Paul the Deacon, ca. 725? 800, a
Lombard historian, author of Historia Mis- cella [Mixed history] and Historia Lango- bardorum [History of the Langobards]. Both are sources of the opening of this canto.
11. Tiberius Constantine: A Byzantine
emperor, 571-577.
Directed by the divine,
he discovered a great treasure of gold buried
under slabs of the palace: "and the gold was
carried away and distributed among the
poor" [Migne, 509-511; cf. 106 below].
12. Justinian: A minor general whom the Empress Sophia Augusta tried to install as chief ruler after her husband, Justin II, died. It was during his rule (565-578) that the Lombards under Alboin invaded Italy. Not to be confused with the earlier Justinian I, called "the Great. "
13. Chosroes: Or Khosru I, king of Persia (531-579). During the time of Justinian I and Justin II, he took part of Armenia and Caucasia from the Byzantine Empire. Thus Byzantium was threatened by powers from both north and south.
14. Augustae Sophiae: Empress, wife of Justin II.
IS. lumina mundi: L, "lights of the world. " From a note in Migne [517] quoting some verse in which Justinian and Sophia are called "pares duo lumina mundi" ("two equal lights of the world").
16. i"nK6J1~"y'", : H, "handouts . . . to the people. " The emperor Mauricius [cf. 114 below] made a distribution of food when he took command in 577 [Migne, 517n. ].
17. Authar: Authari, Lombard king (584- 590) who, after the murder of Alboin, was elected by the Lombard dukes to end the anarchy that set in. By 586, "more or less," he had put the state in order, repelled several Frankish invasions, and instituted peace. Paul the Deacon wrote: "Mirabile in regno . . . nulla erat vio1entia" [Migne, 517] , which in the canto becomes "marvelous reign, no violence. "
18. Vitalis beati: L, "Vitale blessed. " From a passage in Migne [520] describing the death and burial of Doctrulft, who was entombed "ante limina beati Vitalis martyris tribuentes" ("before the threshold assigned to the blessed martyrs in San Vitale").
19. San Zeno: Paul records that the church
in San Zena had floodwaters up to its win-
dows [Migne, 525].
20. Childibert: C. the Second, 570-596, son of Sigebert I and Brunhilda, king of Aus- trasia and Burgundy (575-596). But Paul reports it was Rome that had snakes in its granaries, and floods [Migne, 525].
21. Theodolinda: Empress of Bavaria. Her marriage to King Authar contributed to the power and stability of the Lombard throne. The translator says in a note: "An interest- ing question arises whether there is any con- nection between the characters and scenes in this Frankish drama of intrigue and revenge, and the legend of the Siegfried. . . . The resemblance o f some o f the names o f the
heroes is very striking; that of Sigispert . . . to Siegfried . . . Brunihilde to Brunhild. . . . It is well known that certain historical char- acters were actually introduced into legend: Etzel . . . was Attila the Hun, and Dietrich of Berne . . . was Theodoric the Great. "
22. Theodoric: Called Theuderic by Paul. Grandson of Brunhilda and Sigebert I. Not to be confused with the earlier Theodoric the Great, 454-526.
23. Brunhilda: She ruled as regent for her young grandson Theodoric.
24. Roma caput EccIesiae: L, "Rome the
head of the Church. " A declaration of Pope Boniface III made while (or, perhaps, because) the Persians were overrunning Jerusalem [Migne, 570].
2S. my grand-dad. . . hungry: Paul the
Deacon gives some of his own family his-
tory. He says the Huns forced his great-great-
grandfather Lupicis to flee Pannonia (now I Yugoslavia) "using a wolf as guide" [Migne, 574]. JW sees a pun in the spelling of Jugo- slavia, "because Paulus says his forebear was trying to escape the 'yoke (jugum) of cap- tivity. ' But when Lupieis (his own name resembles lupus, wolf) got too hungry, the animal became suspicious and fled" [JW,
Later, 106] .
26. comes itineris: L, "companion of the
593
route," which is what Paulus calls the wolf [Migne, 574].
27. Rothar: Rothari (? -652), king of the Lombards, 636-652. "And he was brave and strong," said Paul, "and followed the path of justice; he did not, however, hold the right line of Christian belief, but was stained by the infidelity of the Arian heresy [103: 105]. " Said Paul, "This king Rothari col- lected . . . the laws of the Langobards which
they were keeping in memory only, and he
directed this code to be called the Edict" [Migne,581].
28. Arian heresy: A theological concept
involving the nature of the Son in relation to the Father which as a major source of dissen- sion, tore the early church apart for hundreds of years. Said Paul: "The Arians, indeed, say to their own ruin that the Son is less than the Father, and the Holy Spirit also is less than the Father and the Son. But we Catho- lics confess that the Father and Son and
Holy Spirit are one and the true God in three
persons, equal in power and the same in
glory" [Migne, 582].
29. Ticino: Early name of Pavia, the seat
of the one Arian bishop, "Anastasius by name," who finally became converted. Said Paul, "It was now indeed the seventy- seventh year from the time when the Lango- bards had come into Italy, as that king bore witness in a prologue to his Edict" [Migne, 582].
30. dope. . . murder:JWsummarizesneatly: "no sooner does Rothar establish the law than Lombard SOCiety begins to show signs of decadence; dope is used (talis patio, 582); a snake cult is employed (585, note); and Chrothar debauches (bacchatur) with concu-
bin. es (586). Things reach a nadir when an aristocrat is cut down brutally in the basilica of San Giovanni in Pavia (592)" [JW, Later, 107, nos. in parens refer to Migne] .
31. Constans Augustus: Constantine IV,
631-685, became emperor at the age of 11 (642). His reign was fraught with violence and controversy. At one time, he captured
1
? ? ? 594
96/652-653
many of the cities of the Langobards but, failing finally, "directed all the threats of his cruelty against his own followers, that is the Romans" [Migne, 602] .
32. Pantheon: Constans was the first emperor to visit Rome for nearly two centuries-Pope Vitalian came out 6 miles to meet him. But Constans "pulled down everything that in ancient times had been made of metal for the ornament of the city, to such an extent that he even stripped off the roof of the church of the Blessed Mary which at one time was called the Pantheon. . . and he took away from there the bronze tiles and sent them with all the other ornaments to Constantinople"
[Migne, 602].
33. Constantinople: Formerly Byzantium, headquarters of the emperor since the time of Constantine the Great.
34. Siracusa: Said Paul: "He [Constans] dwelt in Syracuse and put such affiictions upon the people . . . as were never heard of before . . . but at last he suffered the punish- ment of such great iniquities and while he was in the bath he was put to death by his own servants" [Migne, 603] .
35. Reyna: Hieronymus Antonius R. , a friend of Fridericus Lindenbrogius, who is the editor of the work. In a note [Migne, 620] the editor says his friend Reyna told him "that the Lombards of this period cast statues of their heroes in the name and cult of St. Michael" [JW, Later, 107].
36. Migne: Jacques Paul M. , 1800-1875, a Roman Catholic priest who established a press in Paris and printed religious works. His principal work, in 3 series, was Patro- logiae, a collection of the writings of all the Christian writers from the beginning to the 15th century. He did the Latin fathers in 221 vols. , including indexes; the Greek fathers in Latin in 81 vols. ; and the Greek fathers in both Greek and Latin in 166 vols.
who says Paul visited Rome for absolution and died there [Migne, 632] .
38. Architriclin: L, "majordomo. " A sort of "mayor of the palace" to whom the Mero- vingian kings yielded their power. As a re- sult, the French rule passed into the hands of the Carolingians [Migne, 634]. Rhymes with the advice of Apollonius about what happens when the king will not be king
[94: 166].
39. From the golden . . . : Pound's transla- tion of "Aurea ex fonte quiescunt in ordine regis," the epitaph on the sepulcher of King Cunibert, next to the basilica in Pavia.
40. Cuningpert: Cunibert. Paul calls him [Migne, 636] "elegans" ("elegant") and "au- daxque bellator" ("a bold warrior").
41. de partibus Liguriae: L, "from the re- gions of the Ligurians. "
42. lubricus: L, "slippery" or "deceitful. " The epithet Paul applies to a duke from Liguia named Ferdulfus [Migne, 639] .
43. Aripert . . . gold: The fate of King A. was to drown in the Tieino River while he was trying to escape to France. He might have gotten away if he hadn't loaded himself
down with gold.
44. auro gravatus: L, "weighted down with gold. " The irony prompts Pound's next two lines. Migne has "gravatus auro" [646].
45. Via Lata: L, "Broad Street. "
46. Ponte Milvio: L, "MilVain Bridge. " After listing minor mishaps, Paul recorded a real disaster in which most of Rome was flooded
[Migne, 648] .
47. et quia Karolus: L, "and whom Charles. " From a chapter heading in Migne [648]: "De gente AngJorum, et rege Fran- corum Pippino, et bel1is ejus, et quia ei Karo- Ius suus filius successit" ("concerning the English people, and Pippin, king of the Franks, and his wars, and whom his son Charles [Charlemagne] followed").
48. Pippin: Pepin of Heristal (died ca. 714),
the father of Charles Martel and his wife Alpaide.
49. Plectrude's: A first wife of Pepin of Heristal whose sons were named Drogo and Grimvald.
50. Martel: Charles M. , 688-741, ruler of the Franks, the natural son of Pepin of Heri~ stal and grandfather of Charlemagne. He started to gain power as "mayor of the pal- ace" [cf. 38 above], crushed all opposition, and extended his rule from Austrasia to Bur- gundy, Aquitaine, and Provence. He also subjugated a number of German tribes, en~ couraged the missionary work of St. Boni~ face, and consolidated enough power to halt the Moslem invasion of Europe at the battle of Tours in 732. Known as "Charles the
Hammer," he never used the title king, but at his death he divided his lands between his sons Pepin the Short and Carolman.
51. Pippin: Pepin the Short. Paul's notes as well as his text is confusing, as the words "wait, wait" indicate. This Pepin was the father of Charlemagne.
52. Charlemagne: Charles the Great, 742- 814, who became the greatest of the Caro- lingian kings.
53. empty grave . . .
63. Hindoos . . . vacuity: Pou? nd's not very sympathetic idea of the Hindu concept of nirvana; it's not the thing itself so much as its consequences Pound objects to. His asso- ciations inform the rest of this canto. The famous "We appear to have lost the radiant world" passage in "Cavalcanti" is followed by a description of two kinds of "the Hin- doo disease, fanaticisms and excess that pro- duce Savonarola, . . . [andJ asceticisms that produce fakirs . . . . Between those diseases, existed the Mediterranean sanity . . . that gave the churches like St Hilaire . . . the clear lines and proportions" [LE, 154J. And again: "Against these European Hindoos we find the 'medieval clean line'" [LE, 150J.
Kassandra:
Elsa von
Freytag?
66. Santayana:
Pound's idea of intelligence in the cherry stone which made it able to create the cher- ry tree [113:431, he replied, in effect, that Pound had something there-but it would be intelligence of "an unconscious sort" [NS, Life, 429J.
George S.
[80:49J. To
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
590
95/647
96/651
591
tiers [45:16], built in his honor, has the clean lines and the economy of form [HK, Era, 327] of the oak leaf of John Heydon, "secretary of nature" [87:82]. Pound would applaud one of his central teachings: "the existence of God can be known by reason, but his nature is incomprehensible" [ibid]. One can deduce from this premise that the human race is safer if it celebrates mystery
as mystery, the arcanum as arcanum, than if it deduces, argumentatively, a lot of abstract dogma and starts burning and killing people in the name of such dogma. One of the reasons Pound praises the mysteries of Eleu- sis is that they maintained this distinction.
72. an oak-leaf: John Heydon said Hilary [92:40] looked at an oak leaf. A rhyme with "learn of the green world" and "the green casque has outdone your elegance" [81/521]: a central tenet of Pound's reli- gion. One must marvel at both the elegance and the absolute economy of forms created in nature. Any plant distributes its branches and spreads its leaves in a mathematically precise way to obtain the optimum amount
of sunlight. Since so precise a design implies a designer, Pound concurs with St. Hilary: "the existence of God can be known by reason" (109:49]. The point bears repeating as it is central to The Cantos. The "vine- leaf' evokes the god Dionysus, to discrimi-
nate him from the martyr Dionisis (hence the repetition of the line), but also because he was central to the Eleusinian mysteries.
73. St Denys: The Church of St. Denis, built in the 12th century on the spot in Montmartre where two missionaries, Dionisis and Eleuthedo, were martyred by beheading in 273 [Historia Francorum, I, 31; CB. R, ZBC,40].
74. Calvin: [14:16; 62:15]. His "logically developed" and fundamentalist belief that the Bible is the sole source of divine wisdom led to the burning of heretics, such as Mi- chael Servetus in 1533. The point seems to be that Calvin did not succeed in destroying the names of the earlier martyrs by a black- out [89:87; cf. 56 above], because the flight of the Huguenots at the battle of St. Denis on Nov. 16, 1567 memorialized them
[CB-R, ibid].
75. the wave . . . sea-god: The 10? line pas- sage invokes again the Homeric scene where the raft of Odysseus is destroyed by the storm created by Poseidon and he is saved by Ino, daughter of Cadmus, who had been turned into Leucothea. She took pity on him with her kredemmon [ad. v, 325-376], which Pound called a "bikini" [cf. 91: 102].
76. VOUTOV ? ? ? ? a:i17Kwv: H, "to reach the land of the Phaeacians" [ibid. , 344-345] .
Background
Max Gallo, Mussolini's Italy, trans. Charles Markmann, Macmillan,
1973; J. B. Bury, History o f the Later Roman Empire, II, London, 1923 [Later R. E. ]; History of the Langobards by Paul the Deacon, trans. William Dudley Foulke, Longmans, Green & Co. , New Y ork, 1906 [Foulke, History] ; Constance Head, Justinian I I of Byzantium, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1972 [Head, J. II]; John W. Barker, Justinian and The Later Roman Empire, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1966; Anthony Birley, Septimius Severus, Doubleday, 1972; Luigi Villari, The Liberation of Italy, C. C. Nelson, Wisconsin, 1959.
Exegeses
EP, SP, 231,450; GK, 209; LE, 250; WB, in EH, Approaches, 312; Akiko Miyake, Pai, 7-1 & 2, 110; JW,Pai, 2? 2, 176; EH, Pai, 2? 3, 498; JW, Later, 102-132; Pearlman, Pai, 1-2, 163; Flory, Pai, 4? 2 & 3, 325; CFT, Pai, 2? 2, 223-242; Leo the Wise, Pai, 2-2, 245? 311; MB, Trace, 304; DD, Sculptor, 239-240; CB? R, ZBC, 136, 146, 151,258.
[As Cunizza says (Par. IX, 61-62): "Above are mirrors-you call them Thrones-by which the light of God as judge is reflected upon us. " The? source of divine wisdom is given as "pen yeh" at 94/640, followed by the comment, "That is of thrones, and above them: Justice. " Said Pound: "Thrones concerns the states of mind of people responsible for something more than their personal conduct" (Don Hall, Paris Review, no. 28, 1962, p. 49)].
Glossary
CANTO XCVI
Sources
J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, vol. 95, 1851: this volume contains The Complete Works of the Venerable Bede, and Paul the Deacon's History o f the Langobards [Migne, column no. ]; Alexander Del Mar, History ofMonetary Systems, Chicago, 1896 [HMS]; The Book o f the Eparch o f Leo The Wise, trans. into modern Greek and Latin with a French translation by Professor Jules Nicole and published as Le Livre du Prefet, Geneva, 1893 [EP. B] ; Cicero, De Officiis, 2; Catullus, Carmen,
93; Dante, Pur. I; Homer, ad. V, XIII.
5. ROMA . . . : L, formerly. . . . "
"Rome, which
1
l
I. Kpf/oE/1vov:
Leucothea [95 :32, 75] threw to the drown? ing Odysseus to save him [ad. V, 351]: "So saying the goddess gave him the veil, and herself plunged again into the surging deep, like a sea? mew; and the dark wave hid her. "
2. Aestheticisme . . . : F, "Aestheticism as church politics. "
3. hearth . . . diafana: -Thrones opens with a religious rite that is more than aesthetic. As indicated below, the name Tuscany (1, Toscana) derives from the Latin thus, thuris ("frankincense," "olibanum") and links the opening to the rhymes with Dionysus [2:20] at the end of Canto 95. The aromatic gum frankincense (pure incense) seems to derive
from a variety of African cedar or juniper. The rite may be conceived as one of purifica- tion and linked forward to the Na? Khi
[110:21; Eisenhauer,Pai, 9? 2, 251].
4. Aether . . . thure: L, "The air rains down coins / the earth throws up corpses, / Tuscany which from incense" [Migne, 474,492]. "Thusca" is a miscopying of Thuscia.
H, "veil,
scarf. " What
6. Sabines: An ancient people living NE of Rome who were the source of many legends, including one about the rape of their women to supply wives for the followers ofRomulus. For centuries they fought the Romans but
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -
592
96/651
96/652
eventually became full Roman citizens. Their ensign had a picus (a woodpecker, rather than a crow). In time the Sabines spread north and east.
7. Brennus: A tribal chieftain from Gaul. Paul the Deacon [cf. 10 below] said [Migne, 495-496]: "And the reason why the Gauls carne to Italy is represented to have been this: When they tasted the wine brought from that country, they were enticed by greed for this wine and passed over into Italy" [Foulke, History, 78].
8. Bergamo. . . Ticino: Cities eventually
founded by other Celts. Ticino should be Pavia (from Latin Ticinum), the later Lorn? bard capital, but perhaps the reference is to the Swiss canton of Tieino which is near Brescia, an Italian city near Lake Garda.
9. Cunimundus: King of the Gepidae, who "broke his treaty with the Langobards and chose war rather than peace. " Alboin, king of the Langobards [cf. 17 below] entered into a treaty with the Avars, first called the Huns and defeated them in two wars [Paul says 'one]: "In this battle Alboin killed Cunimund, and made out of his head, which he carried off, a drinking goblet. . . . And he led away as captive, Cunirnund's daughter, Rosemund by name" [Migne, 476], whom he married by force. Rosemund murdered King Alboin after she learned the horror he did to her: "While he sat in merriment . . . with the cup which he made of the head of his father? in? 1aw, King Cunimund, he ordered it to be given to the queen to drink wine, and he invited her to drink merrily with her father. Lest this should seem impossible to anyone, I speak the truth in Christ. 1saw King Ratchis holding this cup in his hand on a certain festal day to show it to his guest"
[Migne, 498].
10. Paulus: Paul the Deacon, ca. 725? 800, a
Lombard historian, author of Historia Mis- cella [Mixed history] and Historia Lango- bardorum [History of the Langobards]. Both are sources of the opening of this canto.
11. Tiberius Constantine: A Byzantine
emperor, 571-577.
Directed by the divine,
he discovered a great treasure of gold buried
under slabs of the palace: "and the gold was
carried away and distributed among the
poor" [Migne, 509-511; cf. 106 below].
12. Justinian: A minor general whom the Empress Sophia Augusta tried to install as chief ruler after her husband, Justin II, died. It was during his rule (565-578) that the Lombards under Alboin invaded Italy. Not to be confused with the earlier Justinian I, called "the Great. "
13. Chosroes: Or Khosru I, king of Persia (531-579). During the time of Justinian I and Justin II, he took part of Armenia and Caucasia from the Byzantine Empire. Thus Byzantium was threatened by powers from both north and south.
14. Augustae Sophiae: Empress, wife of Justin II.
IS. lumina mundi: L, "lights of the world. " From a note in Migne [517] quoting some verse in which Justinian and Sophia are called "pares duo lumina mundi" ("two equal lights of the world").
16. i"nK6J1~"y'", : H, "handouts . . . to the people. " The emperor Mauricius [cf. 114 below] made a distribution of food when he took command in 577 [Migne, 517n. ].
17. Authar: Authari, Lombard king (584- 590) who, after the murder of Alboin, was elected by the Lombard dukes to end the anarchy that set in. By 586, "more or less," he had put the state in order, repelled several Frankish invasions, and instituted peace. Paul the Deacon wrote: "Mirabile in regno . . . nulla erat vio1entia" [Migne, 517] , which in the canto becomes "marvelous reign, no violence. "
18. Vitalis beati: L, "Vitale blessed. " From a passage in Migne [520] describing the death and burial of Doctrulft, who was entombed "ante limina beati Vitalis martyris tribuentes" ("before the threshold assigned to the blessed martyrs in San Vitale").
19. San Zeno: Paul records that the church
in San Zena had floodwaters up to its win-
dows [Migne, 525].
20. Childibert: C. the Second, 570-596, son of Sigebert I and Brunhilda, king of Aus- trasia and Burgundy (575-596). But Paul reports it was Rome that had snakes in its granaries, and floods [Migne, 525].
21. Theodolinda: Empress of Bavaria. Her marriage to King Authar contributed to the power and stability of the Lombard throne. The translator says in a note: "An interest- ing question arises whether there is any con- nection between the characters and scenes in this Frankish drama of intrigue and revenge, and the legend of the Siegfried. . . . The resemblance o f some o f the names o f the
heroes is very striking; that of Sigispert . . . to Siegfried . . . Brunihilde to Brunhild. . . . It is well known that certain historical char- acters were actually introduced into legend: Etzel . . . was Attila the Hun, and Dietrich of Berne . . . was Theodoric the Great. "
22. Theodoric: Called Theuderic by Paul. Grandson of Brunhilda and Sigebert I. Not to be confused with the earlier Theodoric the Great, 454-526.
23. Brunhilda: She ruled as regent for her young grandson Theodoric.
24. Roma caput EccIesiae: L, "Rome the
head of the Church. " A declaration of Pope Boniface III made while (or, perhaps, because) the Persians were overrunning Jerusalem [Migne, 570].
2S. my grand-dad. . . hungry: Paul the
Deacon gives some of his own family his-
tory. He says the Huns forced his great-great-
grandfather Lupicis to flee Pannonia (now I Yugoslavia) "using a wolf as guide" [Migne, 574]. JW sees a pun in the spelling of Jugo- slavia, "because Paulus says his forebear was trying to escape the 'yoke (jugum) of cap- tivity. ' But when Lupieis (his own name resembles lupus, wolf) got too hungry, the animal became suspicious and fled" [JW,
Later, 106] .
26. comes itineris: L, "companion of the
593
route," which is what Paulus calls the wolf [Migne, 574].
27. Rothar: Rothari (? -652), king of the Lombards, 636-652. "And he was brave and strong," said Paul, "and followed the path of justice; he did not, however, hold the right line of Christian belief, but was stained by the infidelity of the Arian heresy [103: 105]. " Said Paul, "This king Rothari col- lected . . . the laws of the Langobards which
they were keeping in memory only, and he
directed this code to be called the Edict" [Migne,581].
28. Arian heresy: A theological concept
involving the nature of the Son in relation to the Father which as a major source of dissen- sion, tore the early church apart for hundreds of years. Said Paul: "The Arians, indeed, say to their own ruin that the Son is less than the Father, and the Holy Spirit also is less than the Father and the Son. But we Catho- lics confess that the Father and Son and
Holy Spirit are one and the true God in three
persons, equal in power and the same in
glory" [Migne, 582].
29. Ticino: Early name of Pavia, the seat
of the one Arian bishop, "Anastasius by name," who finally became converted. Said Paul, "It was now indeed the seventy- seventh year from the time when the Lango- bards had come into Italy, as that king bore witness in a prologue to his Edict" [Migne, 582].
30. dope. . . murder:JWsummarizesneatly: "no sooner does Rothar establish the law than Lombard SOCiety begins to show signs of decadence; dope is used (talis patio, 582); a snake cult is employed (585, note); and Chrothar debauches (bacchatur) with concu-
bin. es (586). Things reach a nadir when an aristocrat is cut down brutally in the basilica of San Giovanni in Pavia (592)" [JW, Later, 107, nos. in parens refer to Migne] .
31. Constans Augustus: Constantine IV,
631-685, became emperor at the age of 11 (642). His reign was fraught with violence and controversy. At one time, he captured
1
? ? ? 594
96/652-653
many of the cities of the Langobards but, failing finally, "directed all the threats of his cruelty against his own followers, that is the Romans" [Migne, 602] .
32. Pantheon: Constans was the first emperor to visit Rome for nearly two centuries-Pope Vitalian came out 6 miles to meet him. But Constans "pulled down everything that in ancient times had been made of metal for the ornament of the city, to such an extent that he even stripped off the roof of the church of the Blessed Mary which at one time was called the Pantheon. . . and he took away from there the bronze tiles and sent them with all the other ornaments to Constantinople"
[Migne, 602].
33. Constantinople: Formerly Byzantium, headquarters of the emperor since the time of Constantine the Great.
34. Siracusa: Said Paul: "He [Constans] dwelt in Syracuse and put such affiictions upon the people . . . as were never heard of before . . . but at last he suffered the punish- ment of such great iniquities and while he was in the bath he was put to death by his own servants" [Migne, 603] .
35. Reyna: Hieronymus Antonius R. , a friend of Fridericus Lindenbrogius, who is the editor of the work. In a note [Migne, 620] the editor says his friend Reyna told him "that the Lombards of this period cast statues of their heroes in the name and cult of St. Michael" [JW, Later, 107].
36. Migne: Jacques Paul M. , 1800-1875, a Roman Catholic priest who established a press in Paris and printed religious works. His principal work, in 3 series, was Patro- logiae, a collection of the writings of all the Christian writers from the beginning to the 15th century. He did the Latin fathers in 221 vols. , including indexes; the Greek fathers in Latin in 81 vols. ; and the Greek fathers in both Greek and Latin in 166 vols.
who says Paul visited Rome for absolution and died there [Migne, 632] .
38. Architriclin: L, "majordomo. " A sort of "mayor of the palace" to whom the Mero- vingian kings yielded their power. As a re- sult, the French rule passed into the hands of the Carolingians [Migne, 634]. Rhymes with the advice of Apollonius about what happens when the king will not be king
[94: 166].
39. From the golden . . . : Pound's transla- tion of "Aurea ex fonte quiescunt in ordine regis," the epitaph on the sepulcher of King Cunibert, next to the basilica in Pavia.
40. Cuningpert: Cunibert. Paul calls him [Migne, 636] "elegans" ("elegant") and "au- daxque bellator" ("a bold warrior").
41. de partibus Liguriae: L, "from the re- gions of the Ligurians. "
42. lubricus: L, "slippery" or "deceitful. " The epithet Paul applies to a duke from Liguia named Ferdulfus [Migne, 639] .
43. Aripert . . . gold: The fate of King A. was to drown in the Tieino River while he was trying to escape to France. He might have gotten away if he hadn't loaded himself
down with gold.
44. auro gravatus: L, "weighted down with gold. " The irony prompts Pound's next two lines. Migne has "gravatus auro" [646].
45. Via Lata: L, "Broad Street. "
46. Ponte Milvio: L, "MilVain Bridge. " After listing minor mishaps, Paul recorded a real disaster in which most of Rome was flooded
[Migne, 648] .
47. et quia Karolus: L, "and whom Charles. " From a chapter heading in Migne [648]: "De gente AngJorum, et rege Fran- corum Pippino, et bel1is ejus, et quia ei Karo- Ius suus filius successit" ("concerning the English people, and Pippin, king of the Franks, and his wars, and whom his son Charles [Charlemagne] followed").
48. Pippin: Pepin of Heristal (died ca. 714),
the father of Charles Martel and his wife Alpaide.
49. Plectrude's: A first wife of Pepin of Heristal whose sons were named Drogo and Grimvald.
50. Martel: Charles M. , 688-741, ruler of the Franks, the natural son of Pepin of Heri~ stal and grandfather of Charlemagne. He started to gain power as "mayor of the pal- ace" [cf. 38 above], crushed all opposition, and extended his rule from Austrasia to Bur- gundy, Aquitaine, and Provence. He also subjugated a number of German tribes, en~ couraged the missionary work of St. Boni~ face, and consolidated enough power to halt the Moslem invasion of Europe at the battle of Tours in 732. Known as "Charles the
Hammer," he never used the title king, but at his death he divided his lands between his sons Pepin the Short and Carolman.
51. Pippin: Pepin the Short. Paul's notes as well as his text is confusing, as the words "wait, wait" indicate. This Pepin was the father of Charlemagne.
52. Charlemagne: Charles the Great, 742- 814, who became the greatest of the Caro- lingian kings.
53. empty grave . . .
