the ruin of the state itself, I chose instead the glory
of renewing and maintaining by Gothic strength the fame of Rome;
preferring to go down to posterity as the restorer of that Roman power
which it was beyond my power to replace."

These are not the words of a barbarian; although by the corrupt and
courtly nobles in Rome he was considered one; but no doubt he towered
far above the barbarous host whom he helped to lead into Rome in the
year 410 A.D.

Ataulf was the brother-in-law of Alaric, and succeeded that great
leader in authority after his death (410 A.D.).

At the time of the sacking of Rome this Gothic prince fell in love
with Placidia, the sister of the Emperor Honorius; and after the
fashion of his people, carried her away as his captive; not an
unwilling one, we suspect, for we learn of her great devotion to her
brave, strong wooer, with blond hair and blue eyes. Ataulf took his
fair prize to the city of Narbonne in southern France, and made
her his Queen. But when Constantius, a disappointed Roman lover of
Placidia's, instigated Honorius to send an army against him and his
Goths, he withdrew into Spain, and established his court with its rude
splendor in the ancient city of Barcelona.

He seems to have had not an easy task between the desire to please his
haughty Roman bride and, at the same time, to repel the charge of his
people that he was becoming effeminate and Romanized; and, finally, so
jealous did they become of her influence that Ataulf was assassinated
in the presence of his wife, all his children butchered, and the proud
Placidia compelled to walk barefoot through the streets of Barcelona.

Constantius, the faithful Roman lover, came with an army and carried
back to Rome the royal widow, who married him and became the mother of
Valentinian III., who succeeded his uncle Honorius as Emperor of Rome
in 425 A.D., under the regency of Placidia during his infancy.

This romance, lying at the very root of a Gothic dynasty in Spain,
marks the earliest beginnings of a line of Visigoth kings. Ataulf's
successor removed his court to Toulouse in France, and Spain for many
years remained only an outlying province of the Gothic kingdom; her
turbulent northern tribes refusing to accept or to mingle with the
strange intruders. When driven by the Romans from their mountain
fastnesses the Basques, many of them, were at that time dispersed
through southern and central France; which accounts for the presence