In the country between the Elbe and the Oder, about the time of Augustus, a tribe had settled, of a singularly savage aspect, and, by the exaggerations of national terror, described as having the "heads of dogs," as lapping the blood of the slain in battle, and exhibiting at once the ferocity of the animal and the daring of the man. On the summons of Justinian, they instantly plucked up their spears and standards from the graves of the Heruli, whom they had slaughtered in Poland, crossed the Danube with the whole force of their warriors, and finally, after a long and bloody war, extinguished the Gepidæ in a battle in which forty thousand of the enemy were slain round their king. The conqueror, with characteristic savageness, made a drinking-cup of the skull of the fallen monarch, and in it pledged his chieftains to their future fame. This victory at last had taught the imperial court the hazards of its policy; but the deed was done, and Italy lay open to a race whose strange aspect, ferocity of habit, and invincible courage, had already wrought the Italians to the highest pitch of terror. Among the effeminacies of Italy, the classic arrangement of the hair and beard seem to have held a foremost place. But, in their new invaders, the nation saw a host of athletic warriors, indifferent to every thing but arms, wearing their locks wild as nature had made them, and with visages and manners which almost justified the popular report, that they had the heads of dogs, and lapped up the blood of their enemies. From this length and looseness of hair they had their name. Savage as they were, they exhibited something of that spirit which from time to time tinges barbarism with romance. Alboin, the prince of the Longobards, young, handsome, and a hero, resolved to possess at once the two great objects of the passions, love and glory. To accomplish the first, he seized on Rosamunda, the beautiful daughter of the fallen monarch; and for the second he made a royal banquet, and, covering the tables with the fruits and wines of Italy, demanded of his chieftains whether the land which produced such things was not worth their swords? We may justly conceive that he was answered with acclamation. Their trumpets were heard through every tribe of the North, and the multitude were instantly in arms under a leader whose name was a pledge of possession. His vanguard scaled the Julian Alps. All the roving warriors of Gaul and Germany, with a column of twenty thousand Saxons, instantly joined the Lombard banner. Italy, exhausted by a long continuance of disease and famine, and now accustomed to yield, had lain at the mercy of the first invader, and Alboin, with his sword in the sheath, marched through a fugitive population, and finished his bloodless triumph within the impregnable ramparts and patrician palaces of Verona. From the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and Rome, all was the easy prize of Lombard victory.