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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
In the short latin epic Waltharius, written in ninth- or tenth-century Germany, perhaps as an entertainment for clerics, the eponymous hero, having killed eleven men in successive single combats—some while fleeing or begging for mercy—picks the corpses:
Aggreditur iuuenis caesos spoliarier armis
armorumque habitu, tunicas et cetera linquens:
armillas tantum cum bullis, baltea et enses,
loricas quoque cum galeis detraxerat ollis.
Quatuor his onerauit equos sponsamque uocatam
imposuit quinto, sextum condescenderat ipse.
The young man proceeds to strip the slain of their arms
and armour, leaving their tunics and other things:
from them he took just armlets and brooches,
belts and swords, mail coats, too, and helmets.
He loaded four horses with these, called his betrothed
and set her on the fifth, and mounted the sixth himself.
These men have lost their ornaments, their horses, their battle-gear and their lives in a dispute over treasure, which unfolded as follows. Walthari has been a hostage at the court of Attila the Hun since childhood. In a splendid example of the narrative formula in which hostages fight for their captors, he has long been Attila's greatest champion and the author of all his victories. Immediately after a great battle, from which Walthari's triumphant army of Huns has returned with its loot, he plots to flee Attila's court along with Hiltgunt, another hostage, whom he plans to marry. They steal away by night, taking with them Attila's own helmet and mailcoat and two boxes heavy with golden Hunnish arm-rings.
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