Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/367

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 347 The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian Adoiphns, had approved the friendship of Adolphus and restored Gaul Goths" to the obedience of his brother Honorius. Peace was incom- into spain. patible 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 seaports 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, appeared 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 Bar- barian of a dai'ing spirit, but of a diminutive stature ; whose secret desire of revenging the death of his beloved patron was hib death, continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent master. Augiut ' 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, 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 swords into ploughshares ; and that many of the Provincials preferred inter Barbaros pauperem libertatem quam inter Romanos tributariam solicitudinem sustinere. i^This mixture of force and persuasion may be fairly inferred from comparing Orosius and Jornandes, the Roman and the Gothic historian. [Force : the words of Orosius {a Narbona expulit, and coegit) are confirmed by Idatius (Chron. ed. Momms. p. 19 : pulsatus).'] 165 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 distan parts of Germany or Scythia. 168 The murder is related by Olympiodorus ; but the number of children is from an epitaph of suspected authority.