subjects or allies, embarked in one of the ports of Spain in search of some secure and solitary retreat; but was he intercepted at sea, conducted to the presence of Honorius, led in triumph through the streets of Rome or Ravenna, and publicly exposed to the gazing multitude on the second step of the throne of his invincible conqueror. The same measure of punishment with which, in the days of his prosperity, he was accused of manacing his rival, was inflicted on Attalus himself; he was condemned, after the amputation of two fingers, to a perpetual exile in the isle of Lipari, where he was supplied with the decent necessaries of life. The remainder of the reign of Honorius was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be observed, that in the space of five years, seven usurpers had yielded to the fortune of a prince who was himself incapable either of counsel or of action.* The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that in a period of four hundred years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The footsteps of the barbarians, who in the reign of Gallienus, had penetrated beyond the Pyrenees, were soon obliterated by the return of peace; and in the fourth century of the Christian era, the cities of Emerita or Merida, of Corduba, Seville, Bracara, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people; and the peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade.† The * Yet these usurpers, even the most short-lived among them, all had their coins, boasting of victories; and Attalus, the very puppet of Rome's conqueror, proclaimed the "glory of the invincible and eternal city." (Eckhel, Num. Vet. vol. viii, p. 179, 180.)-ED. Without recurring to the more ancient writers, I shall quote three respectable testimonies which belong to the fourth and seventh centuries; the Expositio totius Mundi (p. 16, in the third volume of Hudson's Minor Geographers); Ausonius (de Claris Urbibus, p. 242, edit. Toll.); and Isidore of Seville (Præfat. ad Chron. ap. Grotium, Hist. Goth. p. 707.) Many particulars relative to the fertility and A.D. 409.] IRRUPTION OF THE BARBARIANS. 467 arts and sciences flourished under the protection of the emperors; and if the character of the Spaniards, was enfeebled by peace and servitude, the hostile approach of the Germans, who had spread terror and desolation from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed to rekindle some sparks of military ardour. As long as the defence of the mountains was intrusted to the hardy and faithful militia of the country, they successfully repelled the frequent attempts of the barbarians. But no sooner had the national troops been compelled to resign their post to the Honorian bands, in the service of Constantine, than the gates of Spain were treacherously betrayed to the public enemy, about ten months before the sack of Rome by the Goths.* The consciousness of guilt and the thirst of rapine, prompted the mercenary guards of the Pyrenees to desert their station, and to invite the arms of the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Alani; and to swell the torrent which was poured with irresistible violence from the frontiers of Gaul to the sea of Africa. The misfortunes of Spain may be described in the language of its most eloquent historian, who has concisely expressed the passionate, and perhaps exaggerated, declamations of contemporary writers.† "The irruption of these nations was followed by the most dreadful calamities: as the barbarians exercised their indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and the Spaniards; and ravaged with equal fury, the cities and the open country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable inhabitants to feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even the wild beasts, who multiplied without control in the desert, were exasperated by the taste of blood, and the impatience of hunger, boldly to attack and devour their human prey. Pestilence soon appeared, the inseparable companion of famine; a large proportion of the people was swept away, and the groans of the dying excited only the envy of their surviving friends. At length the barbarians, satiated with trade of Spain, may be found in Nonnius, Hispania Illustrata; and in Huet, Hist. du Commerce des Anciens, c. 40, p. 228-234. * The date is accurately fixed in the Fasti, and the Chronicle of Idatius. Orosius (lib. 7, c. 40, p. 578) imputes the loss of Spain to the treachery of the Honorians: while Sozomen (lib. 9, c. 12) accuses only their negligence. Idatius wishes to apply the prophecies of Daniel to these national calamities; and is, therefore, obliged to accommodate the circumstances of the event to the terms of the carnage and rapine, and afflicted by the contagious evils which they themselves had introduced, fixed their permanent seats in the depopulated country. The ancient Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of old Castille, was divided between the Suevi and the Vandals; the Alani were scattered over the provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic ocean: and the fruitful territory of Bætica was allotted to the Silingi, another branch of the Vandalic nation. After regulating this partition, the conquerors contracted with their new subjects some reciprocal engagements of protection and obedience: the lands were again cultivated, and the towns and villages were again occupied by a captive people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even disposed to prefer this new condition of poverty and barbarism to the severe oppressions of the Roman government; yet there were many who still asserted their native freedom; and who refused, more especially in the mountains of Gallicia, to submit to the barbarian yoke."* The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had approved the friendship of Adolphus, and restored Gaul to the obedience of his brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with the situation and temper of the king of the 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 was not abated by time or possession; and the birth of a son, surnamed from his illustrious grandsire, Theodosius, apprediction. * Mariana, de Rebus Hispanicis, lib. 5, c. 1, tom. i, p. 148. Hag. Comit. 1733. He had read, in Orosius (lib. 7, c. 41, p. 579), that the barbarians had turned their swords into ploughshares; and that many of the provincials had preferred "inter barbaros pauperem libertatem quam inter Romanos tributariam solicitudinem sustinere." [This admission, that the Spanish provincials preferred their Gothic to their Roman governors, must not be overlooked. If as subjects of barbarian rulers they were more contented than they had been, during a long term of prosperity, under the Romans, the fact contradicts the charge of violence and cruelty brought against the conquerors.-ED.] This mixture of force and persuasion may be fairly inferred from comparing Orosius and Jornandes, the 1 A.D. 414.] MARCHES INTO SPAIN. 469 peared 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 service, one of the followers of Sarus; a barbarian of a daring spirit, but of a diminutive stature; whose secret desire of revenging 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, * Roman and the Gothic historian. According to the system of Jornandes (c. 33, p. 659), the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant parts of Germany or Scythia. [The right of the Amali to regal authority did not at that time extend beyond the Ostrogoths, whom they ruled as the Balthi did the Visigoths. This was known to Jornandes (c. 5, p. 20), after whom Mariana repeats it (De Rebus Hisp. lib. 5, c. 20). It is very probable that before their division into two tribes, the Goths were under one jurisdiction. The traditional or fabulous genealogy given by Jornandes (c. 14, p. 42) makes Ostrogotha the grandson of Amala, which probably indicates the time of separation. The origin of the name of Amali is more remote and not so clear as that of its compeer, the Balthi; yet it no doubt had its distinct meaning. Very early traces of it seem to appear in Amalek, "the first of the nations" (Numbers, xx. xxi), and in Amalthæa, the goat-nurse of Jupiter. In later times it meets us frequently in various combinations. Adelung by a very far-fetched and improbable etymology gives it the signification of "the spotless." Higher philological research discovers, in simpler ages, am as a radical expressing the idea of collection or connection, and al, that of all or the whole. Amal therefore denoted "the uniter of all," by which a first organizer and head of a general association would be appropriately designated. This is not a dry piece of antiquarian etymology; it is connected with and serves to illustrate the interesting question, which Gibbon has here openedWas hereditary sovereignty an element of Gothic government? He has perhaps answered it somewhat too positively in the affirmative. As a general law, it was respected and observed; but departed from as expediency or necessity required. Minors and incapables were set aside, but their next of kin were substituted; and popular consent or approbation was most frequently expressed in some forms indicative of election. Jornandes must be understood as asserting the rights of a family rather than those of primogeniture; and the same is perhaps the proper interpretation of " reges ex nobilitate," as used by Tacitus. 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 Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he tore without pity from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop.* The unfortunate 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 twelve miles, before the horse of a barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom Placidia loved and lamented.t But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge; and the view of her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant 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 Atlantic 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 coast of Africa, (Germ. c. 7.) It cannot be doubted, that we here see the first rudiments of the system so eloquently described by Gibbon at the commencement of his seventh chapter. "No trace of an hereditary rule is to be found in any Italian people." (Niebuhr, Lectures, vol. i, p. 151.) This guarantee against the contests of ambition and confusion of anarchy has therefore descended to us from those primeval forests, in which our ancestors voluntarily submitted to the government of their Amali.-ED.] * The murder is related by Olympiodorus; but the number of the children is taken from an epitaph of suspected authority. The death of Adolphus was celebrated at Constantinople with illuminations and Circensian games. (See Chron. Alexandrin.) It may seem doubtful, whether the Greeks were actuated, on this occasion, by their hatred of the barbarians or of the Latins. Quod Tartessiacis avus hujus Vallia terris Sidon. Apollinar. in Panegyr. Anthem, 363 |