OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 269 was sentenced to a mild, but distant, exile in the province of Tuscany ; and this degradation of the regal dignity was so far from exciting the resentment of his subjects that they punished with death the turbulent Sunno, who attempted to revenge his brother ; and maintained a dutiful allegiance to the princes who Avere established on the throne by the choice of Stilicho.^^ When the limits of Gaul and Germany were shaken by the northern emigration, the Franks bravely encountered the single force of the Vandals, who, regardless of the lessons of adversity, had again separated their troops from the standard of their Barbarian allies. They paid the penalty of their rashness, and twenty thousand Vandals, with their king Godigisclus, were slain in the field of battle. The whole people must have been extirpated if the squadrons of the Alani, advancing to their relief, had not trampled down the infantry of the Franks, who, after an honourable resistance, were compelled to relinquish the unequal contest. The victorious confederates pursued their march ; and on the last day of the year, in a season when the [a.d. 406] waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered, without opposition, the defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage of the Suevi, the Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never afterwards retreated, may be con- sidered as the fall of the Roman empire in the countries beyond the Alps ; and the barriers, which had so long separated the savage and the civilised nations of the earth, were from that fatal moment levelled with the ground. ^"^ While the peace of Germany was secured by the attachment Desolation of the Franks, and the neutrality of the Alemanni, the subjects a.d.*407, of Rome, unconscious of their approaching calamities, enjoyed the state of quiet and prosperity, which had seldom blessed the frontiers of Gaul. Their flocks and herds were permitted to graze in the pastures of the Barbarians ; their huntsmen pene- s' Provincia missos Expellet citius fasces quam Francia reges Quos dederis. Claudian {i. Cons. Stil. i. 235 [236], &c.) is clear and satisfactory. These kings of France are unknown to Gregory of Tours ; but the author of the Gesta Francorum mentions both Sunno and Marcomir, and names the latter as the father of Phara- mond (in tom. ii. p. 543). He seems to write from good materials, which he did not understand. [Mr. Hodgkin places this journey of Stilicho in the first half of .^.D. 396 (i. 660). The source for it is Claudian, de iv. Cons. Hon. 439 sqq."] 9" See Zosimus (1. vi. p. 373 [c. 3]). Orosius (1. vii. c. 40, p. 576), and the Chronicles. Gregory of Tours (1. ii. c. 9, p. 165, in the second volume of the Historians of France) has preserved a valuable fragment of Renalus Profuturus Frigeridus, whose three names denote a Christian, a Roman subject, and a Semi- barbarian.
