During the times of Justinian’s Ostrogothic war the Lombards were under the rule of Audoin, whom Narses bribed with great gifts to aid him against Baduila. Five thousand warriors, under the command of their king himself, joined Narses in the invasion of Italy in 552, and took a distinguished part in the victory of Taginae. It must have been in this campaign that the Lombards learnt of the fertility and the weakness of Italy; but they were still engaged in wars with their neighbours on the Danube, and their king was an old man, wherefore we need not think it strange that they waited fifteen years before they turned their knowledge to account. The Lombards were the close neighbours and the bitter foes of the Gepidae, the Gothic tribe who had remained behind in the Hungarian plains when the other sections of the Goths moved westward to Spain and Italy. [Sidenote: Wars of Alboin.] The long struggle between Lombard and Gepid only came to an end in 567, when the Lombards called in to their aid the Tartar race of the Avars, and by their assistance almost entirely exterminated the Gepidae, whose scattered remnant only survived as slaves of the conquering horde. By this time Alboin, the son of Audoin, was reigning over the Lombards. He it was who slew with his own hand Cunimund, the king of the Gepidae. The barbarous victor struck off the head of his enemy, and had the skull mounted in gold, and fashioned into a drinking-cup, as the supreme token of his triumph. Yet, but a short time before, ere the last struggle had begun between the Lombards and the Gepidae, he had taken to wife Rosamund, the daughter of the man whom he now slew and beheaded. THE LOMBARD KINGS IN ITALY. 1. ALBOIN 568-72. Garibald, Duke of ----- Bavaria. 2. CLEPHO | 572-73. +----------+---------------+ | | | 3. AUTHARI=Theodelinda=4. AGILULF Gundoald 583-90. | 590-615. | | | +-----------+-------+ | | | | 5. ADALOALD Gundiberga=6. ARIOALD 9. ARIBERT 615-25. 625-36. 653-62. | +-----------------+--------------+--------------+ | | | 10. GODEBERT 12. BERTHARI A daughter=11. GRIMOALD 662. 672-88. | 662-71. | | | Reginbert, duke 13. CUNIBERT Garibald. of Turin. 688-700. | | 15. ARIBERT II. 14. LIUTBERT 701-11. 700-701.