10/01/27 22:44:50
The Romans always called anyone who was not Roman a barbarian.
However violent the Anglo-Saxons,they were a people with their own rich traditions.
They were pagans who worshipped gods such as Woden,Thunor or Frig whose names were to be the origin of our Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday. They had no interest in the Roman way of life.
Their society was very differntly structured.
At the top came the nobles who fought, next the ceorls who farmed and, at the bottom, slaves.
The Anglo-Saxons were not town-dwellers, living instead in wooden villages in clusters of huts around a large central hall.
Unlike the Britons their whole existence was war. Fighting bound them together in ties of loyalty to their leaders.
Loyalty was seen as the greatest of human virtues and, as a consequence, the most detestable of all crimes was the betrayal of a king.
In their own way they were civilised, producing an heroic poetry and a magnificent art summed up in the splendid objects found in an early seventh century king's tomb known as the Sutton Hoo treasure, which is now in the British museum.
Beneath a vast mound of erath the king lay in a huge ship surrounded by weapons and jewels, a helmet, shield and purse, all objects of great beauty and skilful workmanship, rich with the figures of birds, animal heads and dragons.
The ship called for forty oarsmen to row this chief to the next world.
ここまでなんですが和訳のほう宜しくお願い致します。