Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/494

 472 THE DECLINE AND FALL the difference of religion is a reasonable ground of enmity and war fare. ^■''^ As early as the time of Othman ^-'^ their piratical squadrons had ravaged the coast of Andalusia ; ^-'^ nor had they forgotten the relief of Carthage by the Gothic succours. In that age^ as well as in the present, the kings of Spain were possessed of the for- [Septem] tress of Ceuta : one of the columns of Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar or point of Europe. ^^'^ A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to the African conquest ; but Musa, in the pride of victory^ was repulsed from the walls of Ceuta by the vigilance and courage of count Julian, the general of the Goths. From his disappointment and per- plexity Musa was relieved by an unexpected message of the Christian chief, who offered his place, his person, and his sword to the successors of Mahomet, and solicited the disgraceful honour of introducing their arms into the heart of Spain.^^^ 194 In a conference with a prince of the Greeks, Amrou observed that their religion was different; upon which score it was lawful for brothers to quarrel. Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 328. i'*^ Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem, p. 78, vers. Reiske. 196 The name of Andalusia [al-Andalus] ij applied by the .Arabs not only to the modern province, but to the whole peninsula of .Spain (Geograph. Nub. p. 151 ; d'Herhelot, Bibliot. Orient, p. 114, 115). The etymology has been most im- probably deduced from Vandalusia, country of the Vandals (d'Anville, Etats de i'Europe, p. 146, 147, &c. ). But the Handalusia of Casiri, which signiries in Arabic, the region of the evening, of the West, in a word the Hesperia of the Greeks, is perfectly apposite (Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, torn. ii. p. 327, &c. ). [The derivation of. dalusia is an unsolved problem.] 19' [There is a serious mistake here. The fortress of Septem (Ceuta) did not belong to the Visigothic King, but to the Roman Emperor ; Count Julian was an Imperial not a Gothic general. It seems probable that, as Dozy conjectures, the governor of Septem received the title of Exarch after the fall of Carthage. It seems too that some posts on the coast of Spain were still retained by the Empire — perhaps reconquered since the reign of Suinthila (see above, vol. 4, p. 299, n. 56). Cp. Dozy, Recherches sur I'histoire et la litt. de I'Espagne, i., p. 64 sqq. ; Isidore Pacensis, 38 (in Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. 96); and Life of St. Gregory of Agrigentum, in Patr. Grasc. vol. 98, p. 685, 697.] 19^ The fall and resurrection of the Gothic monarchy are related by Mariana (tom. i. p. 238-260, 1. vi. c. 19-26, 1. vii. c. i, 2). That historian has infused into his noble work (Historiae de Rebus Hispaniag, libri xxx. Hagae Comitum 1733, in four volumes in folio, with the Continuation of Miniana) the style and spirit of a Reman classic ; and, after the xiith century, his knowledge and judgment may be safely trusted. But the Jesuit is not exempt from the prejudices of his order ; he adopts and adorns, like his rival Buchanan, the most absurd of the national legends ; he is too careless of criticism and chronology, and supplies from a lively fancy the chasms of historical evidence. These chasms are large and frequent : Roderic, archbishop of Toledo, the father of the Spanish history, lived five hundred years after the conquest of the Arabs; and the more early accounts are comprised in some meagre lines of the blind chronicles of Isidore of Badajoz (Pacensis), and of Alphonso III. king of Leon, which I have seen only in the Annals of Pagi. [The chronicle of Isidorus Pacensis (reaching from 610 to 754 a.d.) is printed in Migne's Patr. Lat., vol. 98, p. 1253 jyy.]