A delicious passage from Gregory of Tours -- or rather translator Lewis Thorpe

Here's the Latin from Histories (or The History of the Franks) 7.2:

 Quibus discedentibus, coniuncti Dunenses cum reliquis Carnotenis, de vestigio subsecuntur, simile sorte eos adficientes, qua ipsi adfecti fuerant, nihil in domibus vel extra domus vel de domibus relinquentes. 

Thorpe's English:

[Raiders from Chateaudun wreaking reprisals on attackers from Blois and Orleans] meted out to them the same treatment which they themselves had received:  they left nothing inside the houses and nothing outside the houses, and they knocked the houses down.

With apologies to the long-ago victims of this violent episode, that's pretty amazing.


Image: the same action, same country, somewhat later.

Share this

My Website