of divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming
mouths of the infernal world, we may recognise in the heated
imagination of the orthodox monk some recollection of the mysterious
end of the legendary Dietrich {p11}. Later on, the legendary and the
real hero were so firmly welded together that, as early as the
twelfth century, chroniclers are at their wits' end how to reconcile
facts and dates.

Ekkehard, in his Chronicon Universale {p12}, which ends 1126 A.D.,
points out the chronological contradiction between Jornandes, who
places the death of Ermanrich long before Attila, and the popular
story which makes him and Dietrich, the son of Dietmar, his
contemporaries.

Otto von Freising {p13}, in the first half of the twelfth century,
expresses the same perplexity when he finds that Theodoric is made a
contemporary of Hermanricus and Attila, though it is certain that
Attila ruled long after Hermanric, and that, after the death of
Attila, Theodoric, when eight years old, was given by his father as a
hostage to the emperor Leo.

Gottfried von Viterbo {p14}, in the second half of the twelfth
century, expresses his difficulties in similar words.

All these chroniclers who handed down the historical traditions of
Germany were High-Germans, and thus it has happened that in Germany
Theodoric the Great became Dietrich, as Strataburgum became
Strassburg, or Turicum, Zurich. Whether because English belongs to
the Low German branch, it is less permissible to an English historian
than to a German to adopt these High-German names, I cannot say: all