Prudentius was brought into contact with the three great forces of the day: the Pagan, revived under Julian, and tolerated in the days of Theodosius; the Barbarian, already thundering on the frontier; and the Christian, accepted by the edict of Milan in 313, and supreme after the death of Gratian in 382. And in his works we find something of this three-fold influence. The Liber Cathemerinon, the Christian Day, as Mr. Lilly calls it, is a collection of hymns, and is certainly the most important; after that, the Liber Peristephanon, the Martyr's Crown, consisting of fourteen lyric poems, is the most valuable; the Psychomachia was perhaps the most popular in the Middle Ages, together with the Hamartigenia-a treatise on the origin of sin, now rather of archæological than of theological interest. Prudentius wrote before rhyming Latin verse was thought of, and after quantity had ceased to be critically regarded; and his poetry has thus a slovenly and unfinished character, only redeemed by the exceeding earnestness of the writer, the beauty of his thoughts, and the immense interest to modern readers of his presentment of ancient life. "The Horace and Virgil of the Christians," according to no less a critic than Bentley, "the poet of dogma," and "the forerunner of Calderon and Lope de Vega," Prudentius has from the first been held in high honour at home and abroad. His works were edited in the sixth century by the Consul Vettius Agorius Basilius, the editor of Horace; and they were used as a school book from the tenth to the fifteenth century in every country in civilised Europe.2

1 Chapters on English History, i., 208.

2 No less than thirty-three MSS. are still in existence; and sixty editions of his works are said to have been printed since 1470.

65

CHAPTER VI.

THE KINGDOM OF TOULOUSE.

(411-569.)

On the death of Alaric, his brother-in-law, Atawulf, was proclaimed King of the Visigoths.

The dream of the Goth was at this time to destroy the Roman Empire, and to found a great Gothic Monarchy on its ruins. But Atawulf had none of the direct and uncompromising vigour of Alaric; and after many marchings and counter-marchings in Italy, after many attempts at honourable negotiations with the shifty and faithless Honorius, Atawulf made his way into Gaul, defeated Jovinus, one of the numerous upstart Cæsars of the period, proclaimed himself to be the friend and ally of Rome, and thus "employing the sword of his Goths, not to subvert, but to restore the prosperity of the Roman Empire," he re-conquered the greater part of Gaul, not for himself, but for Honorius. He then, and not for the first time, solicited the hand of Galla Placidia, a captive in his train, whom he respected rather as the daughter of the great Theodosius, than as the sister of his degenerate suc

cessor.

Honorius, the degenerate Emperor of the West, a powerless refugee at Ravenna, refused his consent to the restorer of Gaul; but the marriage-delayed but not prevented by his opposition -was celebrated with Imperial pomp and splendour at Narbonne in the course of the year 414. It would have been wise as well as kind to conciliate this Gothic brother-in-law, who had shown himself to be not the destroyer but the supporter of declining Rome. It is ever politic to be grateful to a powerful benefactor. But the weak are rarely politic, and are often ungrateful; and the weakness of Honorius was only exceeded by his ingratitude. The ignoble murderer of Stilicho knew not how to take advantage of the generosity of Atawulf,

He would admit no favour; he would allow no alliance; and above all, he would take upon himself to do nothing whatever. In the eyes of such politicians, to shirk responsibility is the only way to avoid danger.

Meanwhile, the diplomacy of his new minister Constantius -himself an aspirant to the hand of the wedded Placidiawas devoted to inducing Atawulf to abandon Gaul to the thankless Honorius, and to turn his arms, unasked and unaided, against the barbarous foes of the Empire in Spain. The Goth, indignant, but apparently consenting, bound it may be to the Roman with silken chains, crossed the Pyrenees, taking with him Attalus, the puppet Emperor of Alaric. Why, we scarce know. Nor do we know whether it was his supposed subserviency to his Imperial brother-in-law, as some have asserted, or, as it would seem more probable, a stroke of private revenge, that led to his assassination before he had penetrated further south than Barcelona, in August, 415. But even so he died.2

3

Atawulf has been called the first of the Visigothic sovereigns of Spain. But he was no more King of Spain than he was King of Italy. Far less, indeed. He ruled over Rome; he vanquished a rival Emperor at Mayence; he conquered Gaul. But if he was never King of Spain, nor of any other country in Europe, he succeeded Alaric as King of the Visigoths. He needs no higher title. The odious Singeric, who nominally succeeded him, was never king of any nation or country outside the palace at Barcelona, and was in his turn assassinated after a reign of seven days, when the choice of the Goths fell upon Wallia, who was elected as a determined foe to the Roman court. Spain was to be conquered, not for the Roman enemy, but for the Visigothic people.

The charms of Placidia once more saved the Empire. Constantius, still aspiring to the honour of her hand, now placed within his reach by the death of Atawulf, promptly marched into Spain at the head of an Imperial army, and compelled or persuaded the Gothic king to restore the daughter of Theodosius; and further, in return for a welcome subsidy, bound him by treaty to prosecute the war in Spain against the

1 There is a very long Disertacion by Martin de Ulloa in the Memorias de la Real Acad. de Historia, tom. i., pp. 264-345, on the origin of the Gothic Monarchy in Spain, more especially as regards the negotiations between Honorius and Alaric. 2 Memorias de la Real Academia de Historia, tom. i., pp. 225, and 243-264. 3 Mr. Bury somewhat happily styles him the Moses of the Goths, who brought them within sight of the promised land, but died before its actual occupation.

Wallia

earlier Barbarians, as the vassal or ally of Honorius. was faithful to his engagements. Placidia became the wife of Constantius. The Vandals in Bætica were dispersed. The Alans in Lusitania were said to be destroyed; and the Suevians, who retained their possessions in the north-east, submitted themselves, by a common and convenient fiction, to a nominal overlordship. And when the Peninsula was pacified, Wallia retired, faithful and triumphant, to the capital of the rich province that was granted to him on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees.

Wallia, like Atawulf, is usually counted among the kings of Spain. But although Wallia, unlike his great predecessor, actually or nominally conquered the country, he conquered it for Rome. And at the hand of the Roman Emperor he accepted the kingdom in southern Gaul, which the prudence of Constantius assigned to him. "The Kingdom of Tolosa," as it has been happily called, was a rich and fertile territory, and included the whole province of Aquitania Secunda and a great part of Narbonensis and Novempopulania, with the flourishing cities of Poictiers and Angoulême in the north-west, with Bordeaux on the broad Garonne, and Toulouse, where Wallia fixed his capital, higher up on the same noble stream -almost within sight of the Pyrenees.

But while Wallia triumphed at Toulouse, the Vandals remained in the Peninsula. In 420 they were attacked and defeated at Bracara Augusta by an army of Romans under Asterius, with the Suevians under Hermeric, and were routed with considerable slaughter.1 Disturbed in northern Spain alike by the Goths and the Romans, the Vandals pursued their course towards the south, as far as Bætica to which they gave the name of Vandalusia or Andalusia; 2 and for many years they ravaged that fair and fertile country, unharmed by the feeble Romans of Spain, almost unopposed by the degenerate Spaniards of the Peninsula. Their leader, the terrible Gaiseric, restless and unsatisfied even on the banks of Guadalquivir, was at length persuaded by Boniface, the Tribune, and Count of Africa, to assist him against his enemies. Whether these enemies were Goths or Romans, or both, is somewhat

1Though this defeat was revenged two years later by a great victory over Castinus.-H.

2 Rather their name of Vandal was given to the province by the Africans whose territory they invaded from southern Spain. As to the etymology of Andalusia, see post, Appendix IV.

lute, and that rift was religious dissension. The Visigoths were Arians. The great bulk of Euric's new subjects were Athanasians. The bishops as a rule were hostile to the king; and the bishops in the fifth century were already beginning to be a power in western Europe. Their influence, moreover, was rapidly increasing, as Alaric the Second, the feeble successor of the politic and masterful Euric, had soon good cause to know. Euric died in his capital at Arles in 484, having raised the kingdom of the Visigoths to its highest pitch of power, and to its greatest extent of territory in Europe. From the day of his death the greatness began to decline, and in less than five-andtwenty years the kingdom was shorn of nearly half its territories, and the king of more than half his glory.

1

Alaric had been less than three years on the throne 2 of his father, when Clovis, King of the Salian Franks, a bold young pagan from the banks of the Meuse, descending upon the city and district of Soissons in north-eastern Gaul, had overrun the country, and driven Afranius Syagrius, the governor, or as the old chronicle styles him, "king of the Romans" to seek asylum at the more hospitable court of Toulouse. Clovis demanded the surrender of the fugitive, and the contemptible Alaric yielded to his threats, and gave up his royal guest to the mercy of the Frank. Thus was Visigothic honour sadly sullied, even before the Visigothic dominions were curtailed.

But the loss of territory was not long delayed. Clovis was the hero of the hour. In 486 he had conquered the Gauls at Soissons. In 496 he was to conquer the Alemans at Zülpich. A strong and masterful barbarian, a heathen, but at least not a heretic, the vigorous pagan at Soissons was preferred by the Catholic bishops to the feeble Arian at Toulouse.3

are evidently inspired by the Theodosian code. The intention of Euric in preparing this code of Toulouse was evidently to bring about a fusion of the peoples, or at least to devise a commonly acceptable set of laws which should gradually bring them together. This attempt was a failure, as the Latinised Spaniards resisted all attempts to force Visigothic laws upon them. The result was that Euric's successor Alaric ordered a commission of jurists to draw up the Lex Romana, a code mainly founded on the Theodosian laws as a supplementary code to that of Euric (A.D. 506). These various codes were augmented by succeeding kings, and finally embodied, 150 years after, in the famous Lex Visigothorum of King Chindaswinth.-H.

Euric, like Atawulf and Wallia, is frequently spoken of as the first King of Spain. It would be as reasonable to style him King of France. But he was the sovereign not so much of any country as of a nation.

2 Clovis was born only in 465 or 466, and became King of the Franks in 481. The name by which I speak of him is, I think, a good English word; but as to the spelling of this and other proper names, see Introduction.

3 Clovis did not establish his court at Paris until the year 500.