Beowulf's Roman Rites: Roman Ritual and Germanic Tradition

by Thomas D. Hill, Cornell Univerisity

One of the most striking and best known of the "sources and analogues" of Beowulf is the account of the funeral of Attila the Hun preserved in Jordanes' Getica. The parallel is not only widely cited in the various editions and commentaries, but Fr. Klaeber thought it important enough to reprint the Latin text in an appendix to his edition of Beowulf in which he gathered some of the most interesting parallels to the poem. The most striking correspondence between these two rituals is that in both funerals chosen warriors ride around the deceased, while commemorating and praising the fallen king in choral poetry. Questions have been raised about the parallel, but most Beowulf scholars have accepted this account of the funeral of Attila as a legitimate and reasonably close analogue to the poem—although to the best of my knowledge no one believes that there is any direct textual connection between Jordanes' Getica and Beowulf. The parallels are ascribed to shared "tradition"—in this case the tradition of funerary rites practiced among the Germanic pagan peoples and commemorated in traditional Germanic poetry that eventually was disseminated to the Beowulf-poet.