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8.: MELLOBAUDES — ( P. 236, 257 ) - Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 4 [1776]

Edition used:

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 4.

Part of: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 12 vols.

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8.

MELLOBAUDES — (P. 236, 257)

Gibbon has confused Mellobaudes with the more eminent Merobaudes in two places (p. 236 and 257). Mellobaudes (or Mallobaudes: the MSS. of Ammian vary) was a Frank king and held the post of comes domesticorum under Gratian. See Ammian, 30, 3, 7, and 31, 10, 6; and cp. above p. 306.

This Mellobaudes must also be distinguished from another less important Mellobaudes (or Mallobaudes), a Frank who was tribunus armaturarum under Constantius; see Ammian, 14, 11, 21, and 15, 5, 6. These namesakes are confounded in the index of Gardthausen’s Ammianus. See Richter, Das weströmische Reich, p. 283.

Merobaudes deserves prominence as the first of a series of men of barbarian origin who rose to power in the Imperial service; Merobaudes, Arbogast, Stilicho, Aetius, Ricimer. He married into the family of Valentinian (Victor, Epit. 45), and was consul in 377.