OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 349 Romans, by the mutual slaughter of their common enemies.!"^ The Spanish war was obstinately supported, during three cam- paigns, with desperate valour and various success ; and the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire the superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the Silingi, who had irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the province of Baetica. He slew, in battle, the king of the Alani ; and the remains of those Scythian wanderers who escaped from the field, instead of choosing a new leader, humbly sought a refuge under the standard of the Vandals, with whom they were ever afterwards confounded. The Vandals themselves and the Suevi yielded to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The pro- miscuous multitude of Barbarians, whose retreat had been inter- cepted, were driven into the mountains of Gallicia ; where they still continued, in a narrow compass and on a barren soil, to exercise their domestic and implacable hostilities. In the pride of victory, Wallia was faithful to his engagements : he restored his Spanish conquests to the obedience of Honorius ; and the tyranny of the Imperial officers soon reduced an oppressed people to regret the time of their Barbarian servitude. While the event of the war was still doubtful, the first advantages ob- tained by the arms of Wallia had encouraged the court of Ravenna to decree the honours of a triumph to their feeble sovereign. He entered Rome like the ancient conquerors of nations ; and, if the monuments of servile corruption had not long since met with the fate which they deserved, we should probably find that a crowd of poets and orators, of magistrates and bishops, applauded the fortune, the wisdom, and the invincible courage, of the em- peror Honorius. ^'^^ Such a triumph might have been justly claimed by the ally of Their estab Rome, if Wallia, before he repassed the Pyrenees, had extirpated Aquitain. the seeds of the Spanish war. His victorious Goths, forty-three years after they had passed the Danube, were established, ac- cording to the faith of treaties, in the possession of the second Aquitain : a maritime province between the Garonne and the 1™ Orosius inserts a copy of these pretended letters. Tu cum omnibus pacem habe, omniumque obsides accipe ; nos nobis confligimus, nobis perimus, tibi vin- cimus ; immortalis vero qutestus erat Reipublicag tux, si utrique pereamus. The idea is just ; but I cannot persuade myself that it was entertained, or expressed, by the Barbarians. 1"! Romam triumphans ingreditur, is the formal expression of Prosper's Chronicle. The facts which relate to the death of Adolphus, and the exploits of Wallia, are related from Olympiodorus (apud Phot. p. i88 [26]), Orosius (1. vii. c. 43, p. 584- 587), Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 31, 32), and the Chronicles of Idatius and Isidore.
