400 SPA 
Goths. He readily accepted the proposal of turning his 
victorious arms against the barbarians of Spain; the troops 
of Constantius intercepted his communication with the sea¬ 
ports of Gaul, and gently pressed his march towards the 
Pyrenees. He passed the mountains, and surprised, in the 
name of the emperor, the city of Barcelona. The fondness 
of Adolphus for his Roman bride, Placidia, was not abated 
-by time or possession ; and the birth of a son, surnamed, from 
-his illustrious grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him for 
ever in the interest of the republic. The loss of that infant, 
whose remains were deposited in a silver coffin in one of the 
churches near Barcelona, afflicted his parents; but the grief 
of the Gothic king was suspended by the labours of the field, 
and the course of his victories was soon interrupted by 
domestic treason. He had imprudently received into his ser¬ 
vice one of the followers of Sarus, a barbarian of a daring 
spirit, but of a diminutive stature; whose secret desire of re¬ 
venging the death of his beloved patron, was continually 
irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent master. Adolphus 
was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona ; the laws of the 
succession were violated by a tumultuous faction; and a 
stranger to the royal race, Singeric, the brother of Sarus 
himself, was seated on the Gothic throne. The first act of 
his reign was the inhuman murder of the six children of Adol¬ 
phus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he tore, without 
pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop. The unfor¬ 
tunate Placidia, instead of the respectful compassion, which 
she might have excited in the most savage breasts, was treated 
with cruel and wanton insult. The daughter of the emperor 
Theodosius, confounded among a crowd of vulgar captives, 
was compelled to march on foot above 12 miles, before the 
horse of a barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom Pla¬ 
cidia loved and lamented. 
But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge; and 
the view of her ignominious sufferings roused an indig¬ 
nant people against the tyrant, who was assassinated on the 
seventh day of his usurpation. After the death of Singeric, 
the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic sceptre on 
Wallia, whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared, in the 
beginning of his reign, extremely hostile to the republic. He 
marched, in arms, from Barcelona to the shores of the At¬ 
lantic Ocean, which the ancients revered and dreaded as the 
boundary of the world. But when he reached the southern 
promontory of Spain, and, from the rock now covered by 
the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the neighbouring and 
fertile coasts of Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of con¬ 
quest, which had been interrupted by the death of Alaric. 
The winds and waves disappointed the enterprises of the 
Goths; and the minds of a superstitious people were deeply 
affected by the repeated disasters of storms and shipwrecks. 
In this disposition, the successor of Adolphus no longer re¬ 
fused to listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were 
enforced by the real, of supposed, approach of a numerous 
army, under the conduct of the brave Constantius A solemn 
treaty was stipulated and observed: Placidia was honourably 
restored to her brother; 600,000 measures of wheat were de¬ 
livered to the hungry Goths; and Wallia engaged to draw 
his sword in the service of the empire. A bloody war was 
instantly excited among the barbarians of Spain ; and the 
contending princes are said to have addressed their letters, 
their ambassadors, and their hostages, to the throne of the 
western emperor, exhorting him to remain a tranquil spec¬ 
tator of their contest; the events of which must be favourable 
to the Romans, by the mutual slaughter of their common 
enemies. The Spanish war was obstinately supported, 
during three campaigns, with desperate valour, and various 
success; and the martial achievements of Wallia diffused 
through the empire the superior renown of the Gothic hero. 
He exterminated the Silingi, who had irretrievably ruined the 
elegant plenty of the province of Bcetica. He slew in battle 
the king of the Alani; and the remains of those Scythian 
wanderers, who escaped from the field, instead of choosing a 
new leader, humbly sought a refuge under the standards of 
the Vandals, with whom they were ever afterwards con¬ 
founded. The Vandals.themselves, and the Suevi, yielded 
I N. 
to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The promiscuous mul¬ 
titude of barbarians, whose retreat had been intercepted, 
were driven into the mountains of Gallicia, where they still 
continued, in a narrow compass, and on a barren soil, to ex¬ 
ercise their domestic and implacable hostilities. In the pride 
of victory, Wallia was faithful to his engagements; he re¬ 
stored his Spanish conquests to the obedience of Honorius; 
and the tyranny of the imperial officers soon reduced an op¬ 
pressed people to regret the time of their barbarian servitude. 
While the event of the war was still doubtful, the first advan¬ 
tages obtained by the arms of Wallia, had encouraged the 
court of Ravenna to decree the honours of a triumph to their 
feeble sovereign. He entered Rome like the ancient con¬ 
querors of nations; and if the monuments of servile corrup¬ 
tion had not long since met with the fate which they de¬ 
served, we should probably find that a crowd of poets, and 
orators, of magistrates and bishops, applauded the fortune, 
the wisdom, and the invincible courage, of the emperor 
Honorius. 
After the retreat of the Goths, the authority of Honorius 
had obtained a precarious establishment in Spain; except only 
in the province of Gallicia, where the Suevi and the Vandals 
had fortified their camps. The Vandals prevailed, and their 
adversaries were besieged in the Nervascan hills, between 
Leon and Oviedo, till the approach of Count Asterius pro¬ 
voked the victorious barbarians to remove the scene of the 
war to the plains of Boetica. The rapid progress of the Van¬ 
dals soon required a more effective opposition; and the 
master-general Cosfinus marched against them with a nu¬ 
merous army of Romans and Goths. Vanquished in battle 
by an inferior enemy, Costinus fled with dishonour to Tarra¬ 
gona ; and this memorable defeat was most probably the 
effect of his rash presumption. Seville and Carthagena 
became the prey of the ferocious conquerors; and the vessels 
which they found in the harbour of Carthagena, might easily 
transport them to the isles of Majorca and Minorca, where 
the Spanish fugitives had vainly concealed their families and 
their fortunes. The experience of navigation, and perhaps the 
prospect of Africa, encouraged the vandals to accept the in¬ 
vitation which they received from Count Boniface; and the 
death of Gonderic served only to forward and animate the 
bold enterprise. In the room of this prince, they acquired 
his bastard brother, the terrible Genseric; a name which has 
deserved an equal rank with the names of Alaric and Attila. 
Almost in the moment of his departure he was informed, that 
Hennanric, king of the Suevi, had presumed to ravage the 
Spanish territories, which he was resolved to abandon. Im¬ 
patient of the insult, Genseric pursued the hasty retreat of the 
Suevi as far as Merida ; precipitated the king and his army 
into the river Anas, and calmly returned to the sea shore, to 
embark his victorious troops. The vessels which transported 
the Vandals over the modern straits of Gibraltar, were fur¬ 
nished by the Spaniards, and by the African general, who 
had implored their formidable assistance. 
WhenTheodofic, king of the Visigoths, encouraged Avitus 
to assume the purple, he offered his person and his forces, as 
a faithful soldier of the republic. The exploits of Theodoric 
soon convinced the world, that he had not degenerated from 
the warlike virtues of his ancestors. Alter the establishment 
of the Goths in Aquitain, and the passage of the Vandals into 
Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom into Gallicia, 
aspired to the conquest of Spain, and threatened to extinguish 
the feeble remains of the Roman dominion. The provinces 
of Carthagena and Tarragona, afflicted by an hostile inva¬ 
sion, represented their injuries and their apprehensions. 
Count Fronto was dispatched, in the name of the emperor 
Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace; but Theodoric 
interposed his weighty mediation, to declare that, unless his 
brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, 
he should be obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of 
Rome. “Tell him,” replied the haughty Rechiarius, “that 
I despise his friendship and his arms ; but that I shall soon 
try, whether he will dare to expect my arrival under the w’alls 
of Thoulouse.” Such a challenge urged Theodoric to pre¬ 
vent the bold designs of his enemy. He passed the Pyrenees 
at 
