rnandes, (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 distant parts of Germany or Scythia.]

[Footnote 161: The murder is related by Olympiodorus: but the number of
the children is taken from an epitaph of suspected authority.]

[Footnote 162: The death of Adolphus was celebrated at Constantinople
with illuminations and Circensian games. (See Chron. Alexandrin.) It
may seem doubtful whether the Greeks were actuated, on this occasion, be
their hatred of the Barbarians, or of the Latins.]

But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge, and the view of
her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people against the
tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of his usurpation. After
the death of Singeric, the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic
sceptre on Wallia; whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared, in the
beginning of his reign, extremely hostile to the republic. He marched
in arms from Barcelona to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the
ancients revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he
reached the southern promontory of Spain, [163] and, from the rock now
covered by the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the neighboring and
fertile coast of Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of conquest, which
had been interrupted by the death of Alaric. The winds and waves
again disappointed the enterprise of the Goths; and the minds of a
superstitious people were deeply affected by the repeated disasters of
storms and shipwrecks. In this disposition the successor of Adolphus
no longer refused to listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were
enforced by the real, or supposed, approach of a numerous army, under
the conduct of the brave Constantius. A solemn treaty was stipulated and
observed; Placidia was honorably restored to her brother; six hundred
thousand measures of wheat were delivered to the hungry Goths; [164] and
Wallia engaged to draw his sword in the service of the empire. A
bloody war was instantly excited among the Barbarians of Spain; and
the contending princes are said to have addressed their letters, their
ambassadors, and their hostages, to the throne of the Western emperor,
exhorting him to remain a tranquil spectator of their contest; the
events of which must be favorable to the Romans, by the mutual
slaughte