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 346 THE DECLINE AND FALL sciousnesR of c^uilt and the tliirst of rapine promoted the mercenary ^iiarils of the Pyrenees to desert their station ; to invite the arms of the Suevi, the 'andals, and the Alani ; and to swell the torrent which was poured with iiTesistible violence from the frontiers of Gaul to the sea of Africa. The mis- fortunes 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 indis- criminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and the Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open countiy. Tlie progress of famine reduced the miserable in- habitants 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 im- patience 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 carnage and rapine, and afflicted by the contagious evils which they themselves had introduced, fixed their ])ei'manent seats in the depopulated countiy. The ancient Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of Old Castille, was divided be- tween the Suevi and the Vandals ; the Alani were scattered over the provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, fi'oni the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean ; and the finiitful temtory of Baetica 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 ; 3'et there were many who still asserted their native freedom ; and who re- fused, more especially in the mountains of Gallicia, to submit to the Barbarian yoke.^''^ '^2 Idatius wishes to apply the prophecies of Daniel to th<»se national calamities ; and is therefore obliged to accommodate the circumstances of the event to the terms of the prediction. 1^ Mariana de Rebus Hispanicis, 1. v. c. i, torn. i. p. 148, Hag. Comit. 1733. fie had read, in Orosius (1. vii. c. 41, p. 579), that the Barbarians had turned their