THE SCENE: When two foolhardy commanders taunt each other with accusations of cowardice, does it result in more courageous action. Does it result in disaster? Or does it result in both?
THE TEXT: The freebooters of the Slavs fell upon the flocks and upon the shepherds of the sheep that pastured in their neighborhoods and drove away the booty taken from them. The ruler of that place, whom they called in their own language “sculdahis,” a man of noble birth and strong in courage and capacity, followed them, but nevertheless he could not overtake the freebooters. Duke Ferdulf met him as he was returning thence and when he asked him what had become of these robbers, Argait, for that was his name, answered that they had escaped. Then Ferdulf in rage thus spoke to him: ” When could you do anything bravely, you whose name, Argait, comes from the word coward,” ‘ and Argait, provoked by great anger, since he was a brave man, answered as follows: “May God so will that you and I, duke Ferdulf, may not depart from this life until others know which of us is the greater coward.” When they had spoken to each other in turn, these words, in the vulgar tongue,’ it happened not many days afterwards, that the army of the Slavs, for whose coming duke Ferdulf had given his sums of money, now arrived in great strength. And when they had set their camp upon the very top of a mountain and it was hard to approach them from almost any side, Duke Ferdulf, coming upon them with his army, began to go around that mountain in order that he could attack them by more level places. Then Argait of whom we have spoken thus said to Ferdulf: “Remember, duke Ferdulf, that you said I was lazy and useless and that you called me in our common speech a coward, but now may the anger of God come upon him who shall be the last of us to attack those Slavs,” and saying these words, he turned his horse where the ascent was difficult on account of the steepness of the mountain, and began to attack the fortified camp of the Slavs. Ferdulf, being ashamed not to attack the Slavs himself, through the same difficult places, followed him through those steep and hard and pathless spots, and his army too, considering it base not to follow their leader, began also to press on after him. Consequently the Slavs, seeing that they were coming upon them through steep places, prepared themselves manfully, and fighting against them more with stones and axes than with arms they threw them nearly all from their horses and killed them. And thus they obtained their victory, not by their own strength, but by chance. There all the nobility of the Friulans perished. There duke Ferdulf fell and there too he who had provoked him was killed. And there so great a number of brave men were vanquished by the wickedness and thoughtlessness of dissension as could, with unity and wholesome counsel, overthrow many thousands of their enemies.
– The History of the Langobards, Paul the Deacon, 8th Century AD
