HUNGARIAN STUDIES 4. No. 2. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság. Akadémiai Kiadó Budapest [1988]

Péter Váczy: Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos and the Saga of the Hungarian Conquest

130 P. VÄCZY sight of the perished homeland ("Etelköz") caused the Magyars — late in the fall of 900 — to take possession of Pannónia which was occupied by the Franks, but which they had plundered in transit not long before. This, I think, is the reality that may be gleaned from the data. Let us now see how this historical reality has grown into a mythical narrative. We should be glad that it is precisely this initial part of the saga of the Conquest that has survived in a less revised form, though in Latin abstract and in prose. "As soon as the Magyars left the town of Kiev they crossed the Snowy Mountain at a region where they found innumerable eagles. They could not stay on for long here, as the eagles descended from the trees like flies and devoured and killed their cattle and horses" (Chron. s. XIV c. 26. Scriptores rer. Hung. I. 286). In this manner did the Pechenegs, agents of the destruction of the old homeland, become eagles in the saga. Another mythical element is that the passage through the Snowy Mountains took three months according to the account. As the Hungarians had to flee from the eagles, the figure three is clearly intended to denote a small quantity. This number was used in the same sense by the Hungarian who informed Niketas (the commander of the fleet, and presumably the envoy of Leo the Wise sent to Árpád Kurszán) "of the three years" spent by the Magyars in Lebedia (894). It would be a mistake to take this dating literally. The envoy's report was employed as a source by Emperor Constantine in his work cited here (c. 38). There is less favorable material for us in the fragment of the Conquest saga recorded in the 14th century Hungarian chronicle concerning Árpád (c. 28, cf. also c. 23). Undoubtedly, the saga in this form bears the marks of a late, scholastic revision. "In the middle of the country", on the Great Plain, reigns Svatopluk, a prince with a historical name. He is the adversary of Árpád, the Hungarian hero of the Conquest, or rather — and this is important — his sole adversary, from whom Árpád wants to obtain the future Hungary not in a duel, but through cunning and gift. When ultimately a fight breaks out Svatopluk flees from the Magyars and "throws himself into the Danube and gets drowned in its swift waters". The revision is of a later date because Svatopluk's name occurs in it in its later form as Zuatapolug. This is all the more striking as in the later chapters of the Hungarian chronicle (122, 140) there appears a Czech prince of this name in the story of king Salamon and the princes, but under the name Sentapolug, Sentepolug, which is a transitory form between the newer and the original old Moravian Svetoplk. The Hungarian chronicler does not claim his hero to have been the renowned Moravian prince Svatopluk (870—894), apparently because he himself is not aware of the connection. Indeed, he states that Svatopluk started his rule after Attila's death "in the heart of Hungary", circa partes Danubil That the original name of the hero was changed by the later chronicler in the name of historical authenticity is clear from a remark to be found in our chronicle literature (Kézai, Gesta.c. 23 and Chron. s. XIV c. 23). "There exists a tradition that the Magyars returning to Pannónia for the second time found there not Zuatapolug but Marót (Norot) as ruler." This is followed by an involved genealogical explanation which need not be discussed here. Later, more "erudite" ages attempted to bring the saga of the Hungarian Conquest closer to historical reality, but without much success. All the same, sure,

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