Page:A book of the Pyrenees.djvu/263

Rh and arms. Unless supported efficaciously, he declared that he must infallibly be driven out of Spain. At length the tide of success turned. Disaffection broke out among the troops led by Sertorius, and a conspiracy was formed to destroy him among some of his most trusted comrades. One of these invited him to a banquet, at which they endeavoured to provoke him to anger and make an excuse for a fray by the employment of obscene language, which they were well aware that he detested; then by grotesque and undignified capers, as if they were drunk. Sertorius turned on his couch so as not to see their buffoonery, when they rushed on him with their daggers and slew him, B.C. 72. His faithful adherents fled through the defiles, and over the passes of the Pyrenees, and settled in the district afterwards known as the land of the Convenæ, and built Lugdunum Convenarum as their capital in that same year, B.C. 72.

Even after the fall of the Roman Empire this Lyons of the Convenæ remained a rich and populous city. But a terrible disaster fell on it in 584, that caused its utter and irretrievable ruin. This forms one of the most striking and detailed episodes of the history of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. In the words of Guizot:—

"Southern Gaul, that is to say Aquitaine, Gascony, Narbonne, called Septimania, and the two banks of the Rhone near its mouths, were not comprised in the partition of the Frankish dominions. Each of the co-partners assigned to themselves, to the south of the Garonne and on the coasts of the Mediterranean, such and such a district, and such and such a town, just as heirs-at-law keep to themselves severally such and such a valuable jewel out of a rich property to which they have succeeded, and which they divide among themselves. The peculiar situation of these provinces, at their distance from the Frank settlements, contributed much to the independence