 Modern arguments have been made that this relationship was invented by contemporaries to give the Carolingians a Roman pedigree.However this is unlikely to have been the case inasmuch as (a) the Ferreoli, though significant, were far from the most prominent senatorial family in Gaul and (b) it would have been too easy for the Carolingians to obtain whatever Roman bloodline by marrying into remnants of those families.Still the interest taken by the Austrasians in the Ferreoli is enigmatic and significant and may have to do with their potential use in a conquest of Visigothic Septimania.