were the forces against which Theodosius strove, and strove with immediate success. But against himself he strove not at all. He lived and died a tyrant and a bigot. His tongue was ever ready to proclaim or to confess his faith; but his hands were swift to shed blood. He ordered massacres; but he convoked councils. He destroyed cities; but he dictated laws. The character of Theodosius was thoroughly Spanish-devout, passionate, noble-minded. Reckless, when excited, of human life and suffering, he was alternately a resolute and skilful general,1 and an indolent and superstitious persecutor. But his arms did not save Italy, his laws did not save society, and his orthodoxy did not save religion.

II.-The Coming of the Visigoths.

Theodosius died in 395, and in five years Alaric was in Italy. But his first coming was not that of a conqueror. For his Gothic Barbarians, surprised in their pious celebration of Easter by the less scrupulous, if more orthodox, Vandal Barbarians in the service of Honorius, were defeated at Pollentia on Easter Day, 402, and Rome was saved from Alaric 2 the Goth, by Stilicho the Vandal, for seven inglorious years. And thus it

came to pass that Spain and not Italy first became the abiding place of the invader. But for the immediate cause of the occupation of the Peninsula by the Barbarians, we must look not to Italy nor to the fatherland of Alaric, but to Britain.

Far away beyond the Straits of Dover, a common soldier in the ranks of a Roman Legion, bearing the auspicious name of

which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the disciples of the apostles and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, under an equal majesty and a pious Trinity. We authorise the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians, and we judge that all others are extravagant madmen: we brand them with the infamous name of Heretics, and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable appellation of Churches. Besides the condemnation of Divine Justice, they must expect to suffer the severe penalties which our authorities, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think fit to inflict upon them.' See Cod. Theod., lib. xvi., tit. v.; Leg., 6, 23; Godefroy's Commentaries, tom. vi., pp. 104-110; Gibbon, chap. xxvii., 326, 327; Sozomen, lib. vii., c. 12.

""

1 See Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, i., 182, and 197, 198.

2 Bury, Later Roman Empire, i., 148; Orosius, vii., 37. Hodgkin, ubi supra, p. 289. Montalembert, Les Moines de l'Occident, i., 4. For a very appreciative sketch of the character of Stilicho, see an article in the Nineteenth Century, September, 1892, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, published after this chapter was written.

Constantine, had been elected by his fellows as Augustus-or Tyrant, after the fashion of the day-in Britain. This bold aspirant to supreme power had easily mastered the feeble government of Honorius, and had crossed over the narrow Straits into Gaul, dreaming of yet larger conquest.1 To oppose or embarrass the rebel, Stilicho, by one of those strokes of policy so common and ever so disastrous in history, had invited--or permitted-the Barbarian hordes, long kept back beyond the Rhine by the imperial allies who guarded the frontier, to cross over into Gaul. And on the last day of the memorable year 406, an immense concourse of Vandals and Suevians and Alans made their way across the river and ravaged the rich and peaceful districts of Eastern Gaul at their pleasure. They served Stilicho's immediate political purpose, no doubt, by embarrassing Constantine; yet that prudent rebel was skilful enough to avoid their onslaught, and, continuing his career of easy conquest, removed his capital from Treves (Augusta Treverorum), on the Moselle, to the richer and no less august city of Arles (Arelate), on the Rhone.

Having strengthened himself in his new capital, he defeated the imperial troops despatched against him under Sarus, at Valence on the Rhone, and was soon acknowledged by all that was left of Roman within the confines of Gaul, while the Barbarians were at once discouraged and dispersed.

Thus Constantine, everywhere triumphant, and aspiring to even greater empire, crossed the Pyrenees, and pursued his course of victory into the rich province of Spain. The northern districts of the Peninsula would seem to have been promptly and easily occupied. Constantine, albeit a usurper and a rebel, had all the authority of Prefect of Gaul, and he was received without opposition at Tarragona.

The authority of Honorius counted for little in the province; yet, as a Spaniard by race, and the son of the great Theodosius, the Emperor was not without friends and even relations in Spain. But the imperial troops offered little or no resistance to the Tyrant from Arles. The great mass of the population cared little whether the taxes were collected in the name of Honorius or in the name of Constantine. The usurper would possibly be less exacting than the regular oppressors. And it was the rude levies of slaves and dependents raised by some of the faithful kinsmen of Honorius that alone appear to have

1 See Olympiodorus, 12; Zosimus, vi., 2.

The

offered any opposition to the arms of Constantine.1 Barbarian levies of the Tyrant from Britain proved more than sufficient to overthrow these rustic troops; and two bands of Scottish soldiers are said to have played an important part in the determination of this early Peninsular War.

Within a few months the authority of Constantine was at least nominally supreme from the Wall of Antoninus to the Columns of Hercules. Honorius, ever prompt in weakness, recognised the successful rebel as Augustus and imperial brother; and Constantine, committing his new possessions to the care of his son Constans-another Augustus-and his lieutenant Gerontius, a British general of distinction, quitted Spain for Ravenna, proposing to drive Alaric out of Italy.

Constantine marched as far as Verona on his way to relieve or to possess himself of the Western Empire; but having reason to suspect treachery on the part of his ally Honorius, and feeling that in such very doubtful company he was no match for the Goths of Alaric, he hastily retraced his steps to the Rhone, and retired within the walls of his capital at Arles. Gerontius, taking advantage of the absence of Constantine, and of a mutiny among the soldiers of various nationalities engaged in Spain, rebelled against the youthful Constans, and set up his own son Maximus as Emperor or Augustus, with his imperial capital at Tarragona. And the new usurper-seeking to overthrow the reigning usurper-adopted the old tactics, and invited the Barbarians, who were driven hither and thither in Gaul, to cross the Pyrenees, and assist him against the imperial forces of Honorius and the quasi-imperial forces of Constantine in Spain. And thus it was that the Vandals and the Suevians and the Alans, introduced into Gaul by Stilicho to embarrass Constantine, and introduced into Spain by Gerontius to embarrass Constans, promptly turned their arms against their various allies, and proceeded to ravage Spain for themselves.2

1 The levies of Verenianus and his brothers seem to have arrived too late to defend the passes of the Pyrenees. As soon as the Barbarians had actually crossed the mountains, their immense numbers would, of course, have overwhelmed the patriotic Guerilleros in the plain country.

Of the four brothers who raised and led these rude levies in defence of the rights of their contemptible kinsman, Lagodius and Theodosius escaped the destruction of their followers. Verenianus and Didymus were taken prisoners and immediately executed, after the savage fashion of the day, at Arles.

2 See Bury, op. cit., i., 41; Freeman, in Eng. Hist. Review, i., 60. There were now six Emperors! Theodosius at Constantinople, Honorius at Ravenna, Constantine at Arles, Constans at Saragossa (Cæsaraugusta), Maximus at Tarragona, and Attalus at Rome.

The Romans, indeed, of all parties in Spain, fared equally ill at the hands of the invaders, who showed themselves, with a pleasing impartiality, equally hostile to Honorius, to Constantine, to Constans, and to Gerontius. Constans fled at their approach, and sought refuge at Vienne, where he was taken and put to death by his old tutor Gerontius-himself a fugitive from his own unruly allies. Constantine, besieged at Arles by the imperial general Constantius, and finding further resistance impossible, assumed the habit of a Christian priest, and craved his life, without success, at the hands of the victors. Gerontius, hard pressed by the imperial legions on the Rhone, fled into Spain, where he fell by his own sword to escape the violence of his own troops. Meanwhile, the only man who could cope with the Goth had already found his reward at the hand of his sovereign. Stilicho, the mainstay of the falling Empire, had been sacrificed to a Court intrigue, and had been executed with his whole family at Ravenna in 408. It was time for Alaric to advance. Italy was undefended, Rome was at the mercy of the Barbarian. But the city was ransomed and spared by the invader. The title of Emperor had no charms for the King of the Visigoths; and Alaric contemptuously invested one Attalus, a Roman Prefect, with the imperial purple, of which, after twelve months' hesitation, he no less contemptuously stripped him. Disgusted at length by the tergiversation and treachery of Ravenna, Alaric turned his arms once more against Rome. And then no puppet Emperor, no Court intrigue, no religious ceremonial, was found to stay his hand. The priests, indeed, had unwittingly fought for Alaric in the palace at Ravenna. For they had induced the feeble Honorius to issue that disastrous and insulting edict by which neither heretics nor pagans were to be permitted to engage in the armies of the Empire. And thus forty thousand of the best troops that would have served to resist the invaders were dismissed from the Imperial service at the moment of the Imperial danger. The issue was never doubtful. Rome fell; but the victor did not long survive his victory.

While the sturdy Goth triumphed in Italy, the Vandals and their savage companions were devastating Spain. The northwest was occupied, if not entirely overcome, by the Suevians; Lusitania was overrun by the Alans, while the central and southern provinces were ravaged by the Vandals. The Alans were led by Atacius, the Suevians by Hermanaric, and the Vandals, the fiercest of the three, by the terrible Gunderic,

The

who was succeeded by the yet more terrible Gaiseric. destruction wrought by these hordes of Barbarians was terrific. They not only conquered, they destroyed. "Not only mankind," says Orosius, "but the fruits of the earth, the beasts of the field, cities, storehouses, everything perished as if devoured by the flames of a general conflagration. And the horrors of ensuing famine gave place only to pestilence. For so great was the number of unburied bodies of man and beast, that the entire country became, as it were, a vast charnel-house."

It is difficult to account for the extraordinary facility with which these Barbarians appear to have been able to possess themselves of the greatest of the provinces of Rome. The terror that was inspired by the vast numbers of their terrible tribes, and the very names of their yet more terrible leaders, was no doubt enormous. But the rapidity with which they overran the Spanish Peninsula is still well-nigh inexplicable. Three months before their descent into Spain, just such Barbarians had been driven out of the heart of Italy. Four years earlier Alaric himself had been repulsed on the very frontier of that country. Why were the degraded Romans of Spain so inferior to the degraded Romans of Italy? Stilicho and his Barbarian troops counted, no doubt, for much in the struggle. A skilful commander in those days was worth at least as much as Napoleon's forty thousand men. But were there no Spaniards left in Spain? Was the old Celtiberian blood entirely exhausted? No explanation is offered by history. We are merely told that five centuries after Numantia, a Barbarian host marched unchecked across the Peninsula, that the fatherland of Viriatus was invaded and occupied without the serious opposition of a single Lusitanian; and that the country which had for two hundred years resisted the forces of Republican Rome, which had defied Consuls and defeated armies, and, when exhausted by long years of conflict, had hardly yielded to the generalship of Pompey and of Cæsar, was content, almost without striking a blow, to submit, not merely to a change of masters, but to utter destruction at the hands of a horde of savages. It is hard to believe it is still harder to understand. It is reasonable at least to seek to solve the enigma.

I. The devastation that was wrought both in Italy and in the provinces by the incidence of Imperial taxation and the tyranny of the Imperial tax-collectors-more especially after the time of Caracalla-though it has perhaps been rhetorically exaggerated by contemporary Christian writers, was undoubt