Ethnogenesis and Religious Revitalization beyond the Roman Frontier: The Case of FrankishOriginsAuthor(s): David Harry MillerReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of World History, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall, 1993), pp. 277-285Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078564 .Accessed: 20/03/2012 16:42

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Ethnogenesis and Religious Revitalization

beyond the Roman Frontier: The Case of Frankish Origins

DAVID HARRY MILLER

University of Oklahoma

It

has long been understood that the Franks were not one of the so-called tribes of the Transrhenish region at the time of the

first Roman presence in the region about 240 C.E.1 Indeed, some

standard authorities provide lists of earlier ethnicities involved in the confederation that resulted in the Frankish entity.2 Clearly, the Frankish confederation emerged in a process of frontier

ethnogenesis; that is, it emerged under the circumstances created

by the presence of the Roman army and the creation of the prov ince of Germania Inferior.3

The effect of the Roman intrusion into the lower Rhineland was profound. The intrusion discredited traditional cultures that

1 Scriptores historiae Augustae, Vita Divi Aureliani, 7.1-2.

2 Paulys Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, new ed. by

G. Wissowa, 15 vols. (Stuttgart, 1894-1972), s.v. Salii (2), 2.1.2.1894-99; Johannes

Hoops, Reallexikon der germanishen Altertumskunde (Strassburg: Teubner, 1913), s.v. Franken, 2.82; Walter Schlesinger, "?ber germanisches Heerk?nigtum," in Das

K?nigtum: Seine geistigen und rechtlichen Grundlagen (Constance: Thorbeke

Verlag, 1956), p. 123; Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: Das Wer den der fr?hmittelalterlichen Gentes (Cologne: B?hlau, 1961), pp. 430-58; Friedrich

Schlette, "Zur Bildung germanischer Stammesverb?nde im dritten und vierten

Jahrhunderte," in H. Gr?nert and H. -J. D?lle, eds., R?mer und Germanen in

Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Akademische Verlag, 1975), p. 219; and Patrick Perin and Laure-Charlotte Feffer, Les Francs, 2 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1987), 1:25-26.

3 Peter M?nz, "Early European History and African Anthropology," New Zealand Journal of History 10 (1976): 38-39.

Journal of World History, Vol. 4, No. 2 ? 1993 hy University of Hawaii Press

277

278 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, FALL 1993

had proven unable to prevent humiliations, injuries, and subjuga tion. Societies confronted with the creation of such a frontier

were faced also by a limited number of options. They could not

withdraw, so they had a choice of either submission or transfor

mation4?hence the destabilization of the local societies and their

eventual modification. The period from the middle of the first

century to the end of the second was a period of the emergence of

warlords, or "big men/'5 The rise of the warlords resulted in part from the practical necessity of coping with Roman military opera tions and in part from the novel and, by traditional standards, immoral activity of raiding other communities to capture slaves

to pay for luxury imports.6 Eventually the traditional social struc

tures were sufficiently destabilized that they were eclipsed in sig nificance by the warlords, who took over the major functions of

society as providers of status and protection. It is not accidental

that the bond between a man and his lord was, in legal terms, a

variety of fictive kinship. The power of the lords came from the

retinues based on such bonds. The significance of the retinues is

that they were social organizations that existed, according to

their own overt rationale, solely for the waging of war.7

The frontier was an acculturative factor. But one must remem

4 See the particularly perceptive remarks of Andrew Bard Schmookler, The

Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (Boston:

Houghton-Mifflin, 1984), pp. 40-42 and passim. 5 On the concept of the "big man" stage of social evolution, see D. Blair Gibson

and Michael N. Geselowitz, "The Evolution of Complex Society in Late Prehistoric

Europe: Towards a Paradigm," in D. B. Gibson and M. N. Geselowitz, eds., Tribe

and Polity in Late Prehistoric Europe: Demography, Production and Exchange in

the Evolution of Complex Social Systems (New York: Plenum, 1988), pp. 23-24. 6 On imports, see the following: Hermann Aubin, "Der Rheinhandel in r?mi

scher Zeit," Bonner Jahrb?cher 130 (1925): 33; Hans Norling-Christensen, "Danish

Imports of Roman and Roman Provincial Objects in Bronze and Glass," in E. Bir

ley, ed., First Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 1949 (Durham: Duke University

Press, 1952); Edward Arthur Thompson, The Early Germans (Oxford: Oxford Uni

versity Press, 1965), p. 24; Horst Geisler, "Der r?mische Import auf dem kaiserzeitli

chen Urnengr?berfeld von Kemnitz, Kreis Potsdam-Land," in Gr?nert and D?lle,

eds., R?mer und Germanen in Mitteleuropa, pp. 131-38; Heinz Gr?nert, "Zusam

menstoss und Auseinandersetzung zwischen r?mischer Sklavenhaltergesellschaft und germanischer Gentilgesellschaft in Mitteleuropa vom ersten Jahrhundert

unserer Zeit bis zweiten Jahrhundert unserer Zeit," in Gr?nert and D?lle, eds.,

R?mer und Germanen in Mitteleuropa, pp. 12-15; Friedrich Schlette, "Formen des

r?misch-germanischen Handels," in Gr?nert and D?lle, eds., R?mer und Ger

manen in Mitteleuropa, pp. 124-26; and Jerzy Kolendo, "Les influences de Rome sur

les peuples de l'Europe central habitant loin des fronti?res de l'empire: L'example du territoire de la Pologne," Klio 63 (1981): 454-59.

7 See David Harry Miller and William W. Savage, Jr., "Editors' Introduction,"

in Frederick Jackson Turner, The Indian Trade in Wisconsin: A Study of the Trad

Miller: Ethnogenesis and Frankish Origins 279

ber that in the process of acculturation the features selected for

imitation did not wholly reproduce the total culture of the intru

sive society. Moreover, the culture presented to the Transrhenish

populations was not Roman culture, but the limited culture of the

Roman army.8 Hence, the economy degenerated to a raiding econ

omy of war bands. Male roles became specialized on economically wasteful and socially destructive lines. The retinue warriors were

not the traditional type of northern Transrhenish male, for they did not work: they were supported by plunder and the profits of

slaving. Basic subsistence depended increasingly upon the work

of women and slaves.

This organizational change was fraught with consequence; when war became the chief activity of free men, a new set of

behavior patterns and therefore a new set of cultural sanctions

had to become paramount. The new value system inculcated the

kind of behavior needed for a man to exist in a fundamentally vio

lent society. The warrior culture that developed emphasized a life of violence, indolence, and intoxication.9 Settlement sites indicate the disappearance of free villages and the appearance of village types dominated by the long hall of the lord.10

Meanwhile, demographic changes were also taking place. The

population groups closest to the frontier, and therefore least able to evade direct military confrontation with the Romans, were suf

fering demographic disaster. Mortality owing to war and loss of

individuals through enslavement, auxiliary recruitment, and de

ing Post as an Institution, ed. D. H. Miller and W. W. Savage, Jr. (Norman: Univer

sity of Oklahoma Press, 1977), pp. xviii-xix. 8 Compare Leonard Broom, Bernard J. Siegel, Evon Z. Vogt, and James B. Wat

son, "Acculturation: An Exploratory Formulation," in P. Bohannan and F. Plog, eds., Beyond the Frontier: Social Process and Cultural Change (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1967), p. 266.

9 Tacitus, Germania, 13-15, 22, 24. See also Thompson, The Early Germans, pp.

29> 49-53; and Bruno Kr?ger, "Zusammenstoss und Auseinandersetzung zwischen r?mischer Sklavenhaltergesellschaft und germanischer Gentilgesellschaft in Mit

teleuropa vom Ende des zweiten Jahrhunderts bis zur Mitte des vierten Jahrhun

derts," in Gr?nert and D?lle, eds., R?mer und Germanen in Mitteleuropa, p. 23. 10

Tacitus, Germania, 25. Edward Arthur Thompson, "Slavery in Early Ger

many," in M. I. Finley, ed., Slavery in Classical Antiquity: Views and Controversies

(New York: Barnes and Noble, i960), pp. 191-93; Malcolm Todd, The Northern Bar

barians, 100 B.C.-A.D. 300 (London: Hutchinson, 1975), pp. 100-104, 114; Achim

Leube, "Probleme germanischer Adelsentwicklung im ersten und zweiten Jahr

hunderte unter dem Aspekt der r?mischen Beeinflussung," in Gr?nert and D?lle, eds., R?mer und Germanen in Mitteleuropa, p. 190; and Christoph Reichman,

"Siedlungsreste der vorr?mischen Eisenzeit, j?nggermanischen r?mischen Kai

serzeit, und Merowingerzeit aus Soest-Ardey," Germania 59 (1981): 74-75.

28o JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, FALL 1993

portations11 undermined the viability of some traditional group

ings as stable formations. The absorption of smaller and harder

hit groups by larger and more stable groupings began early. Many groups seem to have disappeared altogether as discrete units.12

This is the context of Frankish ethnogenesis, but the formation

of the Frankish confederation was an event on a totally different

order of both meaning and magnitude than previous social shuf

flings. It was a deliberate act on the part of men previously asso

ciated with diverse groups, and it resulted in the creation, not of a

slightly augmented community, but of a clearly regional conglom eration for specialized purposes. Survival required the cultivation

of power, and power was best cultivated by larger consortia of war retinues.13 The frontier intrusion dictated that the capacity for effective aggression was indispensable for survival and there

fore required the creation of an enhanced warrior spirit among some of society's members.14 In the context of increased inter

group conflicts and competition with both Romans and other

Transrhenish populations, the notion of this emerging identity was a strong one. It was a case of degenerative change leading to a

functional adaptation.15 How and why did the warlords adhere to a specific formation

and leadership? In other words, what was the basis, ideological or

otherwise, for confederation?16 There were, at any one time, sev

eral geographic subunits capable of independent action. The total

number of those who came to call themselves Franks would have

been too large for the whole to move or act entirely in concert. As

has been suggested by others, the confederation of the Franks was

a "swarm" of associated war bands rather than anything more

highly organized. What was the principle of this association?

11 Gr?nert, "Zusammenstoss und Auseinandersetzung," p. 12; and Kr?ger,

"Zusammenstoss und Auseinandersetzung," p. 34. Compare M?nz, "Early Euro

pean History and African Anthropology," p. 40. 12 Friedrich Schlette, "Werden und Wesen fr?hegeschichtlicher Stammes

verb?nde," Zeitschrift f?r Archaeologie 5 (1971): 22; and Schlette, "Zur Bildung ger manischer Stammesverb?nde," p. 219.

13 Compare Schmookler, The Parable of the Tribes, pp. 81-87.

14 Compare R. Brian Ferguson, "Tribal Warfare," Scientific American 266 (Jan

uary 1992): 108-13; ana< Schmookler, The Parable of the Tribes, p. 160. 15 See Eugeen E. Roosens, Creating Ethnicity: The Process of Ethnogenesis

(Newberry Park: Sage Publications, 1989), pp. 12-13; and George Dalton, "Theoreti

cal Issues in Economic Anthropology," in Dalton, ed., Economic Development and

Social Change (Garden City: Natural History Press, 1971), pp. 216-17. 16

Schlesinger, "?ber germanisches Heerk?nigtum," p. 123; and Schlette, "Wer

den und Wesen," p. 24. Compare Broom, Siegel, Vogt, and Watson, "Acculturation,"

PP. 273-74

Miller: Ethnogenesis and Frankish Origins 281

The Rhine frontier during the second and third centuries was a

focal point for a religious movement that might be considered a

type of revitalization movement: the cult of Odin.17 This move

ment was clearly a reaction of the peoples involved to the trauma

of destabilization owing to the Roman intrusion in their space and

their lives. Odin was a preexisting local persona of a type of minor

god. He may originally have been a wind god or the psychompo

mpos. Or he may have been associated with commerce.18 When

the Romans first encountered his cult, they identified him with

Mercury19 and therefore associated him with all of these func

tions.

Sometime in the period between c. 50 and 200 CE.,20 Odin was

becoming a major, and polyvalent, deity: the local persona of the

All-Father.21 This development was associated with the advent of a

new mythology according to which Odin became a sacrificial vic

tim to himself. During the course of his passion on the World-Tree

(Yggdrasil, meaning "Odin's steed") he acquired knowledge of all

that had been, was, and would be, and he discovered the magical runic letters.22 More important, he came down from the gallows tree a new being. Henceforth he was the king of the gods, patron of magic,23 war, and violent death: the Germanic Mars in the

Roman interpretation.24 The cult of Odin was a pessimistic cult.

Odin was a dour, violent, and deceitful god. He received sacrifice

17 Compare Anthony F. C. Wallace, "New Religious Beliefs among the Dela

ware Indians, 1600-1900," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 12 (1956): 1-21; Wal

lace, "Revitalization Movements: Some Theoretical Considerations for Their Com

parative Study," American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 264-82; and Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966).

18 Gr?mnism?l, 49, and Harbardzliod, both in P. Terry, ed., Poems of the Vikings

(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969). See also Jan de Vries, Alt germanische Reli

gionsgeschichte, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1935-37), 1:82, 2:187; and Bruce Lincoln, "The Ferryman of the Dead," Journal of Indo-European Studies 8 (1980): 42-51.

19 Tacitus, Germania, 9. See also Georg Wissowa, "Interpretatio romana:

R?mische G?tter im Barbarenl?nde," Archiv f?r Religionswissenschaf119 (1918): 40; and Sigmund Feist, Germanen und Kelten (Strassburg: Verlag f?r Kunst und Wiss

enschaft, 1948), p. 39. 20

Tacitus, Histories, 13.57. 21 Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, in The Prose Edda, trans. J. Young (Berke

ley: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 30-49. 22

H?vam?l, 138-39, in Terry, ed., Poems of the Vikings; and G. Vigfusson and F. Powell, eds. and trans., Corpus poeticum bor?ale, 2 vols. (New York: Russell and

Russell, 1965), 1:29-30. 23 Consider the importance of the hope that by magic, the power of the aggres

sor may be destroyed: Baldrs Draumr, 3, and H?vam?l, 6, both in Terry, ed., Poems

of the Vikings. 24 For example, Corpus inscriptionum latinarum (Berlin: Reimer, 1907), 13.8707.

282 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, FALL 1993

of prisoners of war, and he was lord of the carrion eaters that haunted the battlefield. He was a god who would deliberately cause war where none existed in order to claim for himself the

souls of the slain.25

There was a reason why Odin was such a grim figure: He pre

pared for Ragnarok, the hopeless last battle before World's End, in which the gods would meet their own doom in battle against the demonic elements of the world.26 He prepared for this doom

by recruiting his army from the ghosts of the heroes slain in bat

tle, who would fight at his side at the end. His great hall, situated

in the sky, where a growing army of the dead awaited the final

muster, was the mirror image of the beer-hall society of the

warlords and their retainers that was becoming dominant among the Transrhenish peoples. According to the new mythology, the

end of the world would be preceded by certain specific conditions

similar to those that then existed in the Rhineland: war, murder,

violence, adultery, treachery, and falsehood.27

The frontier intrusion had created a violent, dangerous, and

treacherous world. Roman military supremacy deprived men of

any expectation but that of eventual destruction. Therefore, reli

gion reoriented itself to represent the condition in which the fron

tier world then existed as the normal condition of the world, and

to inculcate behavior consistent with life in such a world.28 It did not cause the type of social conditions that gave rise to formations

such as that of the Franks, but it did sanctify them.

Associated with the emergence of the Odin cult was the

appearance of a form of war kingship, or the king as supreme warlord. Hence the new bond between men that became basic to a

new form of social organization was allegiance to such a king.29

25 Brot at Sugurtharkvitho, 16; Ynglingasaga, 6, and Harbardzliod, 24, all in

Terry, ed., Poems of the Vikings; and Vigfusson and Powell, eds., Corpus poeticum

bor?ale, 1:141-42,145,158. 26

Volosp?, 39-56, in Terry, ed., Poems of the Vikings. 27

Mary R. Gerstein, "Germanic Warg: The Outlaw as Werewolf," in G. Larson,

ed., Myth in Indo-European Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1974)? P-133 28

H?vam?l, 1-4, 7, 34, and passim, in Terry, ed., Poems of the Vikings; and

Vigfusson and Powell, eds., Corpus poeticum bor?ale, 1:41-44. See also Leube, "Pro

bleme germanischer Adelsentwicklung," p. 191; and Alois Closs, "Neue Problems

stellungen in der germanischen Religionsgeschichte," Anthropos 29 (1934): 493. 29 Wilhelm Sickel, "Die Entstehung der fr?nkischen Monarchie," Westdeutsche

Zeitschrift f?r Geschichte 4 (1888): 318-19; G. Franz Petri, "Stamm und Land im fr?h

emittelalterlichen Nordwesten nach neuere historischer Forschungen," Westf? lische Forschungen 8 (1955): 7; Otto H?fler, "Der Sakralcharakter des germanischen

Miller: Ethnogenesis and Frankish Origins 283

These kings were regarded, not surprisingly, as descended from

Odin.30 Among the peoples who came to call themselves Franks, these kings were of the line of long-haired kings known as the

Merovings.31 To owe allegiance to a Meroving king was to be a

Frank.32 Therefore, to be a Frank was to be one of Odin's follow

ers, and the name Frank, meaning either "ferocious" or "bold,"33 was indicative of that status.34

It is probable that the early Franks, like the later Franks, adhered to the dictum that every adult male member of the regal

family was a king, so that the dynasty might produce several

reigning members in each generation. These related kings might compete with each other at some times and cooperate with each other at other times. Certainly some of them took service with the

imperial regime from the fourth century.35 As a consequence, sub swarms based on individual kings might appear from time to

time, and later disintegrate into the larger swarm, as the kings around whom they gathered came and went.

K?nigtums," in Das K?nigtum: Seine geistigen und rechtlichen Grundlagen, p. 101;

Schlesinger, "?ber germanisches Heerk?nigtum," p. 123; and Wenskus, Stammes

bildung und Verfassung, pp. 519-31. 30 Hermann Leo Moisl, "Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies and Germanic Oral

Tradition," Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 214-19. 31 David Harry Miller, "The Merovingians and the Origins of Frankish King

ship," paper delivered at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Mid-American Medieval

Association, Kansas City, March 1985. 32

Compare Patrick J. Geary, Before France and Germany: The Creation and

Transformation of the Merovingian World (New York: Oxford University Press,

1988), p. 62. 33 Goesta Langenfelt, "On the Origin of Tribal Names," Anthropos 14 (1919): 309;

Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung, pp. 513-14; Roger Grand, Recherches sur l'origine des Francs, ed. S. du Parc (Paris: Picard, 1965), p. 21; Erich Z?llner, Ge schichte der Franken bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck

Verlag, 1970), p. 1; and Schlette, "Werden und Wesen," p. 222. The argument that the word meant "free"?as advanced, for example, by Moritz Sch?nfeld, W?rterbuch der altgermanischen Personnen- und V?lkernamen (Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 1911), pp. 89-91?has been generally rejected.

34 Compare Kr?ger, "Zusammenstoss und Auseinandersetzung," p. 29.

35 Karl Friedrich Stroheker, "Zur Rolle der Heermeister fr?nkischer Abstam

mung im sp?ten vierten Jahrhundert," Historia 4 (1955): 313; Rigobert G?nther, "Zusammenstoss und Auseinandersetzung zwischen r?mischer Sklavenhalterge sellschaft und germanischer Gentilgesellschaft in Mitteleuropa von der Mitte des vierten Jahrhunderts bis zum Ende des f?nften Jahrhunderts," in Gr?nert and

D?lle, eds., R?mer und Germanen in Mitteleuropa, p. 46; Wolfgang Seyfarth, "Ger manen in r?mischen Diensten im vierten Jahrhundert," in Gr?nert and D?lle, eds., R?mer und Germanen in Mitteleuropa, pp. 244-51; Brian Croke, "Arbogast and the Death of Valentinian II," Historia 25 (1976): 236; and Barbara Saylor Rodgers, "Merobaudes and Maximus in Gaul," Historia 30 (1981): 82-105.

284 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, FALL 1993

There is, however, a problem of nomenclature to be consid

ered. The designation Frank was clearly a word of Germanic ori

gin and the name of the confederation for itself. Roman observers

of Frankish activity in the late imperial period, however, referred

to some Frankish groups as Salii. This designation was clearly later adopted by the Franks to apply to themselves, but there is no

indication that it had its origin as a Frankish term for either the

whole group or any subgroup. Indeed, the word is clearly Lati

nate. The suggestion has been made that the name Salii was

derived from "salt" and referred to a maritime orientation,36 but

this cannot be sustained.37 The term is used in a passage of the

late imperial historian Zosimus, where it clearly indicates a cultic

identity. Zosimus refers to "the Salian ethnicity, a portion of the

Franks dedicated to [a] god."38 The most obvious origin of the name is as a nickname applied

to the Franks by Roman observers in analogy to the coll?gial

priesthoods of Rome dedicated to Mars and Quirinus: the Salii

palatini and the Salii colini, respectively.39 The ritual of the

Roman Salii involved a processional war dance, during which the

priests clashed their spears, symbolic of the god, against their

shields.40 It is clear that the Romans saw Odin, to whom the spear was also sacred, as the Germanic Mars from at least the second

century; devotion to Odin involved an ecstatic, possibly intoxi

cated, Waffentanz.41 The Romans perceived at least some of the

Franks, then, as members of a warrior sodality dedicated to Odin,

leaping about with their weapons, probably clashing spears

against shields.

The question at this point, then, is how the Salii related to the

larger group of the Franks. Recently, discussion of the Franks has

tended to see the Salii as a so-called tribal group, one of many that

contributed to the formation of the larger confederation.42 This

interpretation attempts to locate other constituent tribal groups with respect to geographical position and refers to various Franks

36 Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Salii (2), 2.1.2.1894-99.

37 Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches W?rterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1893), s.v.

sal, etc., pp. 1678-97; and Hoops, Reallexikon, s.v. Franken, 2:82.

38 Zosimus, 3.6.2. (author's translation).

39 Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Salii (1), 2.1.2.1874-94.

40 Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R?mer, 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck

Verlag, 1912), p. 558. 41 De Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2:135. 42

Geary, Before France and Germany, p. 78.

Miller: Ethnogenesis and Frankish Origins 285

as Chamavi, Brukteri, Sigambri, and the like.43 To be sure, late

ancient sources refer to various groups of Franks using these old

"tribal" names, but it has been suggested that these names, where

they occur, are merely literary archaisms.44 For example, the con

sensus is that although Bishop Remigius of Rheims, at the bap tism of King Clovis, called him "Sicamber,"45 we need not con

clude therefore that Clovis was of Sicambric origin. Indeed, had

the Salii been a so-called tribe, it is clear that Clovis would have

claimed Salian rather than Sicambrian identity. I believe that the

so-called tribal names sometimes used in reference to groups of

Franks are meaningless anachronisms. That the Salii should have

been a tribe is unlikely, in any case, since the earliest mention of them is in reference to events in the year 358 CE., whereas all the

other "tribal" names mentioned in this context were known from

the first century B.C.E.

If the Salii were a religiously dedicated group of Franks, they would almost certainly not have been regionally specific. The nature of such a religious group would have been transtribal and

confederation-wide. The only question remaining, it seems to me, would be whether this sodality was exclusive or all-inclusive of

the warriors within the confederation. At this stage the question seems to be unanswerable. A passage in Ammianus Marcellinus

does not clarify the issue: he refers to "the Franks, those namely whom custom calls the Salii."46 This passage might support either

of the above-stated possibilities. In any case, the sacral kings of

the confederation would stand at the head of the sodality, as they did at the head of the confederation.

In sum, then, the Franks constituted a warrior confederation based on the allegiance of individual warlords, and of their war

rior followers, to sacral kings dedicated to Odin. The confedera tion involved a hard core, at least, of specifically dedicated war

riors called Salii by the Romans. These warriors, whether earlier or later, gave their name by extension to the whole confederation.

43 Edward James, The Franks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 35.

44 Rigobert G?nther and Alexander R. Korsunskij, Germanen erobern Rom,

2nd ed. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1988), p. 143. 45

Gregory of Tours, Historia francorum, 2.31, Monumenta Germaniae His t?rica. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, ed. by B. Krusch and W Levison (Han

nover: Hahn, 1951), vol. 1. 46 Ammianus Marcellinus, 17.8.3.