It is a picture
fitted for a more peaceful and primitive age than that turbulent period
in which it is set.
But now we have to do with Alboin in another aspect,--his domestic
relations, his dealings with his wife Rosamond, and the tragic end of
all the actors in the drama of real life which we have set out to tell.
The Longobardi were barbarians, and Alboin was no better than his
people; a strong evidence of which is the fact that he had the skull of
Cunimund, his defeated enemy and the father of his wife, set in gold,
and used it as a drinking cup at his banquets.
Doubtless this brutality stirred revengeful sentiments in the mind of
Rosamond. An added instance of barbarian insult converted her outraged
feelings into a passion for revenge. Alboin had erected a palace near
Verona, one of the cities of his new dominion, and here he celebrated
his victories with a grand feast to his companions in arms. Wine flowed
freely at the banquet, the king emulating, or exceeding, his guests in
the art of imbibing. Heated with his potations, in which he had drained
many cups of Rhaetian or Falernian wine, he called for the choicest
ornament of his sideboard, the gold-mounted skull of Cunimund, and drank
its full measure of wine amid the loud plaudits of his drunken guests.
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