to plough the land or wait with patience for the year, as to challenge enemies and earn wounds; seeing that it seems dull and lazy to acquire with sweat what you may win with blood[295].” ----- Footnote 294: This very assertion proves that the position of the comes was, _in itself_, inferior to that of the freeman. Footnote 295: Mor. Germ. xiii. xiv. ----- It would be difficult in a few lines to give anything like so clear and admirable an account of the peculiarities of the Comitatus, as Tacitus has left us in this vigorous sketch; and little remains but to show how his view is confirmed by other sources of information, and to draw the conclusions which naturally result from these premises. To the influence and operation of these associations are justly attributed not only the conquests of the various tribes, but the most important modifications in the law of the people. As the proper name for the freeman is ceorl, and for the born-noble eorl, so is the true word for the comes, or comrade, gesíð. This is in close etymological connection with síð, a journey, and literally denotes one who accompanies another. The functions and social position of the gesíð led however to another appellation: in this peculiar relation to the prince, he is þegn, a thane, strictly and originally a servant or minister, and only noble when the service of royalty had shed a light upon dependence and imperfect freedom. Beówulf describes himself as the relative and thane of Hygelác: but his royal blood and tried valour make him also the head of a comitatus, and he visits Heort with a selected band of his own comrades, swǽse gesíðas: they, like himself, belong however to his lord, and are described as Hygelác’s beódgeneátas, heorðgeneátas (tischgenossen, heerdgenossen), sharers in the monarch’s table and hearth. A portion of the booty taken in war naturally became the property of the gesíðas; this almost follows from the words of Tacitus; and Saxo Grammaticus, who in this undoubtedly expresses a genuine fact, although after a peculiar fashion of his own, says of one of his heroes[296], “Proceres non solum domesticis stipendiis colebat, sed etiam spoliis ex hoste quaesitis: affirmare solitus, pecuniam ad milites, gloriam ad ducem redundare debere.” And again[297], “Horum omnium clientelam rex liberali familiaritate coluerat. Nam primis apud eum honoribus, habitum, cultos auro gladios, opimaque bellorum praemia perceperunt.” Thus also Hialto sings[298], “Dulce est nos domino percepta rependere dona, Acceptare enses, famaeque impendere ferrum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enses theutonici, galeae, armillaeque nitentes, Loricae talo immissae, quas contulit olim Rolvo suis, memores acuant in praelia mentes. Res petit, et par est, quaecumque per otia summa Nacti pace sumus, belli ditione mereri.”