Note 510 — BOOK VIII.

'Hac igitur honoris remuneratione contentus, pro exteris partibus indefessa devotione laboravit: et praestare com suis parentibus principi dignabatur obsequium, qui tantorum regum fuerat stirpe procreatus.' This sentence is full of difficulties. What can he mean by the labour 'pro exteris partibus?' Who is the 'Princeps' whom Tulum deigns to serve: the Eastern Emperor or Theodoric? Above all, who is 'tantorum regum stirpe procreatus?' I think the turn of the sentence requires that it should be Tulum; but Dahn has evidently not so understood it, for in his Könige der Germanen (iii. 29, 30) he makes Tulum a conspicuous example of a man not of noble birth raised to high dignity, and says that the two long letters about him in the Variae contain no allusion to illustrious descent.