The Story of Wamba

The Historia Wambae Regis, composed by Julian of Toledo (d. 690), is among the most important and striking narrative accounts to have survived from the Visigothic kingdom in Spain. The work narrates in detail the campaign that was waged in 672–3 by the recently elected king of the Visigoths, Wamba, to suppress a rebellion against his authority in the north-eastern provinces of Narbonensis and Tarraconensis. The Historia is made up of a sequence of four prose texts. The first is the Epistola, a letter purportedly addressed by the leader of the rebels, Paul, to Wamba, in which he challenges the latter to cross the Pyrenees and do battle with him. The second is an extended narrative account of Wamba's victorious campaign to crush the revolt, the public trial of the defeated rebels, and Wamba's return in triumph to Toledo. There then follows the Insultatio, addressed to defeated Gaul, where the main seat of the rebellion lay. Finally, there is the Iudicium, a shorter narrative of Wamba's expedition and a detailed account of the trial, which may have been a revised version of a text originally composed by a member of the king's military entourage. It is somewhat surprising, given the paucity of narrative texts to have survived from the Visigothic kingdom, that the Historia has received only relatively limited scholarly attention hitherto, and for this reason Joaquín Martínez Pizarro's translation and authoritative study of the work are to be warmly welcomed. Martínez Pizarro prefaces his translation with two substantial and wide-ranging essays. In the first, he explores the historical context in which the Historia was written, paying particular attention to the ideology of kingship that was articulated by the secular and ecclesiastical élite during the seventh century and to the tensions that bedevilled political relations between the monarchy and the aristocracy during the reigns of Wamba and his two predecessors on the throne, Chindasvind and Reccesvind. He goes on to trace the career of Julian of Toledo and his relationship with King Wamba in illuminating detail. In the second essay, which is the most strikingly original and insightful of the two, Martínez Pizarro subjects the texts that make up the Historia to close literary analysis. He pays careful attention to the sources and models upon which Julian drew and the ideological messages that they conveyed, and suggests convincingly that Julian may have drawn particular inspiration from the classical and Late Antique Latin tradition of panegyric exemplified by Sallust, Claudian, Sidonius and others. He also speculates that composing such a stylistically adventurous and learned work at the very beginning of Wamba's reign may well have been a means by which Julian sought personal advancement at the royal court in Toledo. The translation proper is a model of clarity and precision, and is supplemented by copious notes, a map, five plates and an extensive bibliography. In sum, this excellent volume constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of seventh-century Visigothic intellectual history and will be welcomed by scholars and students alike

Ancient history · Art · Battle · Literature · Narrative · Archaeological and Historical Studies · Classical Studies and Legal History · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History