Library › St Gregory of Tours › History of the Franks

History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 6, 2. Of Chilperic’s Envoys, Returned from the East

Meanwhile the envoys of King Chilperic, dispatched three years before to the court of the emperor Tiberius, returned home, not without suffering hardships and heavy loss. Not venturing to approach the harbour of Marseilles because of the dissensions between the kings, they put in at Agde, a city in the Visigothic territory.¹ But before they reached land the ship was caught by a squall which drove her ashore and broke her up. The envoys and their servants, seeing their peril, laid hold of planks and hardly reached the shore; many of the servants were lost, but the greater number escaped. The people of the place seized such of their effects as were washed ashore, though they recovered the more precious objects which they were bringing for King Chilperic. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Agde kept many of these things for themselves.

At that time² I had gone to the royal domain of Nogent to see the king; and there he showed us a great salver, fifty pounds in weight, which he had caused to be made of gold and gems, saying: ‘This have I had made for the glory and ennoblement of the Frankish race. And much more shall yet be done, if life remain to me.’ And he displayed to us pieces of gold, each of a pound’s weight, which the emperor sent him, having the imperial image on one side with the legend: TIBERII CONSTANTINI PERPETUI AUGUSTI, and on the reverse a four-horsed chariot and charioteer with the legend: GLORIA ROMANORUM. He displayed at the same time many other precious objects which the ambassadors had brought.

Notes

i. e. in Septimania.
In A. D. 581.