NOTES

1. El rapto de Europa, p. 66 of my translation, London, George Unwin & Allen, 1959, where the philosopher and historian gives his own answer.

2. Camões, Lusiads, III, xviii; Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, xxix.

3. Thus Professor H. Ament of Berlin, surveying the Germanic peoples, finds (at Herpes) there are no traceable remains of the Visigoths from all the Gaulish territories they lost to the Franks in 507. Even in areas which were under the Goths’ control for a long time after (Septimania), finds of a German nature, which can be dated to the fifth century, are extremely rare (in The Northern World: the history and heritage of northern Europe, AD 400-1100, ed. D. M. Wilson, London, Thames & Hudson, 1980, 59).

4. Cf. several of the contributors to The Visigoths, ed. P. Heather, Woodridge, Boydell, 1999, who range far and deep, with rather disappointing results.

5. E. Condurachi and C. Daicoviciu, Romania, 1970, with profuse illustrations, cover the ages from the Neolithic to the 4th-7th centuries AD.

6. For a distant reflection of the Goths of old, cf. the Poema, l.760, ‘Las carbonclas del yelmo echogelas aparte cortole el yelmo’, where carbonclas are probably rubies or red glass beads, recalling the form of the helmet of Ciumesti, doubtless also used by the Saxons and others.

7. ‘Iam didici Getici Sarmaticeque loqui’, Tristia, I, xii, 660.

8. Zosimus, New History, III, vi.

9. To be distinguished (?) from the monastery of St Saba in Jordan, which drew many monks in the time of John Moschos and is described by W. Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain, London, Flamingo, 1998.

10. E. A. Thompson, The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966, asserts that Ulfila did not convert the Gothic people (at large). The famous Gothic Bible of Ulfila, prized by the University of Uppsala, was probably copied for Theodoric the Ostrogoth in Italy (476-526). No earlier copy is known. It does not appear to have reached the Visigoths in Aquitania or in Spain.

11. Thompson considers her in a brief appendix, but dismisses the evidence as slight.

12. Malchus makes magistriani imperial mounted couriers.

13. The name of Hermanric is recorded as Eomanric, with those of a dozen members of his retinue, in the Saxon poem Widsith, at a distance of several centuries.

14. Fragment 1.

15. It is in Riese’s Anthologia latina, 1894, and is dated before the seventh century, and in West Gothic style. Eils=Heil; matzia is meat, food; ia is akin to German ja. The only doubtful word is scopia: skapja is innkeeper, steward. I am endebted to the vast linguistic knowledge of Dr K. Kobbervig of Vancouver. (Zosimus has noted the Gothic propensity to take supplies in the market without paying).

16. New History, IV, 3.

17. Ammianus, the last great Roman historian, ends his work with the death and obituary of Valens. The story is continued by Zosimus, writing in Greek much later (518-527), who disposes of an array of written sources, some contradictory. The version in Spanish of J. M. Candau, Nueva Historia, 1992, summarizes in footnotes many modern amendments. R. C. Brockley prints, translates and annotates the fragments of Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus in Fragments of the Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, Liverpool, 1981 and 1986. Eunapius is anti-Christian and writes from afar without personal experience of affairs. Olympiodorus of Thebes covers 404 to 425, and is a well-travelled Egyptian diplomat with an eye for character and situation, composing memoirs rather than history.

18. Pagans, dwellers in pagi or rustics, was a word loosely applied to adherents of the old religion. Christianity, originally urban, left landowners to provide churches and clergy for their people, with no provision for independent villagers. In the Gauls, the Pannonian ex-officer, Martin, bishop of Tours, was distinguished for having carried the faith to the independent villages, at one of which he died in 397. The word heathen is akin to the Gothic haithno, a heathen woman.

19. In 386 (?), Priscillian’s career is examined by H. Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976, with a detailed account of the theological issues. He is disposed to accept the case for acquittal: St Martin favoured a pardon.

20. Eunapius says that it was believed that the Goths carried their own gods with them and that their priests or monks in dark habit were wolves in sheep’s clothing. Fragment 56.

21. N. H. Baynes, Byzantine Studies and Other Essays, London, Athlone Press, 1960, 297, n 112.

22. A little junior to his younger son Honorius, and next to him in line of succession: there were also two daughters, Maria and Thermantia.

23. Eunapius, who gives details of the campaign, calls both Gainas and Stilicho Scythians, using the word loosely for Germanic (Fragment 60).

24. IV, 59, inferring that the senators remained unconvinced: not otherwise confirmed. To some extent the Goths had an advantage over other barbarians in that their leaders professed Arian Christianity.

25. Fragment 1. Blockley, op. cit., regards this as too hostile to Stilicho to come from Olympiodorus, and notes that Zosimus states that Alaric was in Epirus when the agreement was made. However, Eunapius says that it was Rufinus who sent Alaric into Greece to benefit himself at the expense of the Greek cities.

26. Eunuchs were an Eastern affectation repugnant to the West. It may be doubted whether Claudian chose to distinguish between them and celibates. Rome had rejected the example of Origen, but his sermons were quoted by both Ambrose and Jerome, Early Church Fathers, 204. Claudian’s recourse to classical imagery gained some credibility after Ambrose died in 397 and the pressure against paganism was relaxed.

27. Recently, according to B. H. Warmington, The North African Provinces from Diocletian to the Vandal Conquest, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1954, 12, citing Orosius. Alexandria was indisputably of the East and supplied Constantinople with cavalry: Libya was part of the granary that fed Rome.

28. ‘Rerum sic admonet usus’, 1. 128.

29. Claudian adds the defence of Hasta. Hasta, now Asti, is beyond the Roman military headquarters at Ticinum, now Pavia. If so, Alaric’s men had ranged far to the west. The battle at Verona is not otherwise recorded and has been placed in 403, if it was indeed a separate campaign.

30. The Ostrogoths occupied the Gothic highlands of Slovenia, where Theoderic the Ostrogoth was in 474.

31. The description of Arcadius as ‘governed like an ox’ owes much to Claudian and Stilicho’s hatred of Rufinus. Neither brother had the opportunity to display military capacity, but Arcadius made prudent appointments, while Honorius, twice a widower in his youth, never asserted himself for long, if ever.

32. He is supposed to have found an advantageous marriage. The suggestion that he died on his honeymoon appears to be a speculation by Vollmer.

33.. R. 419-429

34. Mme Demougeot, author of an article on Constantine and a very thorough study of the period, De l’unité à la division de l’Empire romain, 395-410, Paris, Maisonneuve, 1951, speaks of a planned withdrawal by the Romans. But there was no attempt to make a stand at Lugdunum or anywhere else, even Vienne. She concludes that Constantine was ‘not a British patriot’, but attempted to defend the Gauls and to keep the barbarians out of the south-east until Honorius could raise an army: this is not quite how I see it.

35. They were ignorant about the rest of the Spains. The poet and professor of Bordeaux Ausonius, whom Gratian made consul, in his Order of Noble Cities, thought that Braga was on the sea-coast. When he chided his friend Paulinus for going to live among the uncivilized Spaniards, his friend, who had married a Spaniard and took to religion, replied that he knew of Ilerda and Bilbilis through his classical reading, but knew nothing of such cities as Gerona and Barcelona.

36. His object was to negotiate, as the fragment of Olympiodorus states. Mme Demougeot says that they planned to take Italy. Olympiodorus, Fragment 15, as quoted by the Christian Sozomen.

37. A unique silver siliqua marked Nic for Nice, might suggest that the British took the coastal road. How it came to be struck or deposited there is unexplained.

38. The sources differ. Olympiodorus, Fragment 17, makes Constantine’s son Augustus defeated by the barbarians, with whom Gerontius made peace and set up his son Maximus. He then pursued Constans and brought about his death. Sozomen draws on this for a Christian moral. Gerontius was besieged in his house at Vienne and bade his wife Nunnitia flee. She refused to leave him. He fought with the aid of his Alan servant, and then killed the Alan, Nunnitia and finally himself. This made her a Christian heroine. Maximus sought shelter with the barbarians. Zosimus supposes that Constans was made Augustus to supersede Gerontius, who therefore rebelled (see also Bury). However, Maximus did not flee to the barbarians, but stayed with the ‘Celtic’ or British legion.

39. I have not attempted to unravel the course of the negotiations in detail. They presumably took place in barrack-room Latin, which Alaric would understand. For illiterate Goths symbolic actions were important as much as words. The accounts, fragmentary, are in any case one-sided, and did not follow the logic of the chess-board.

40. The date is given in the “Annals of Ravenna”, Blockley, II, 217, n. 50 rejecting Photius’ statement that they were executed at Carthage as a mistake, though followed by Bury.

41. The priest Orosius, writing in Palestine, heard that the fleet was the largest ever known, with 37,000 ships (Seven Books against the Pagans, VII, 42). It had increased in the telling, by how much who shall say.

42. Olympiodorus puts the number of Radagaesus and his optimates at 12,000, and some of whom were recruited by Stilicho (Fragment 9, ambiguously put), who had thirty Roman units: both figures are suspect.

43. With a wide diffusion in the Middle Ages. The catch-phrase about Romania and Gothia is the starting-place of J. M. Wallace-Hadrill’s The Long-haired Kings and Other Studies in Frankish History, London, Methuen, 1962.

44. A. H. M. Jones published his ‘reconstructed’ text in his Later Roman Empire 284-602, Oxford, Blackwell, 1964. He applies the units named in the Notitia dignitatum, the calendar of Roman offices revised to about 420. However, the Letter is directed to all the loyal troops serving in the Spains. The speculatores and the Britones are named because they were not regular members of the Roman forces, the former being traders used as spies, and the latter the remains of Constantine’s Celtic legions, then loyal. Mention of other units by name would have been invidious. Mme Demougeot’s reference to its ‘Latin barbare’ misunderstands its nature. It was couched in high-flown courtly language not always understood by medieval copyists.

45. The annalist Marcellinus, c. 518, with continuatio to 548, confuses this with Honorius’ tricentennalia celebrated on January 23 422, just before his death.

46. ‘Cum savinianus quodam tempore erede praelatus in Hispania est ob infestatione diversarum gentium barbarorum’. ‘Erede’ can only be the Latin for heir in the sense of successor. Nothing is known of this Sabinian, deceased. Sidonius tells a friend that his lineage is not overshadowed ‘even by the Sabinians’, who are thus a highly-placed Gallo-Roman family, and probably Dardanus’ choice for the task.

47. Later Riccimer used the title, though of barbarian stock, the grandson of King Wallia, and it came to mean little more than imperial delegate.

48. The dates are given by Hydatius, then still a lad studying in the East. He notes his conversio, or entry into the priesthood, in 416, possibly before his return to his native Gallaecia.

49. The Greek Procopius, writing c. 550, speaking of the Quads, says that there were other Quads to the west near the Franks, by which he means the main body of the Sueves. Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, says ‘suevi id est Alamanni’, meaning that the Sueves were part of the main Germanic people, the Alamanni, ‘all men’. The Quads were a migrant branch to their east. Whether they came with the Vandals is not clear: Hydatius first refers to a Suevic king Hermeric in 419.

50. Half a century later Sidonius depicts a barbarian wedding. The flaxen-haired couple retire to their wagon with its shelter of pelts. It was cluttered up with a jumble of weapons, culinary ware, covers and whatever else they possessed.

51. Olympiodorus (Fragment 12) says that dry bread or biscuit is called bucellatum, and used as a scornful nickname for soldiers, bucellarii. In Fragment 4 he adds that in the time of Honorius the word was applied to both Romans and Goths. Similarly, federati was given to a diverse and mixed body of men, as in the army of Alaric.

52. Cf. my note on the Britones of Gallaecia in Estudios mindonienses, III, 1987, reprinted in my Essays on Iberian History and Literature, from the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000.

53. Marcellinus supposes mistakenly that he died with Jovinus.

54. Maximus is the subject of a well-known section of the Mabinogion, Maxen’s Dream, in which as emperor of Rome he is made to populate Armorica between the Seine and Loire, or Little Britain. A Welsh legend makes the depopulation of Britain a cause of the Saxon conquest, which Bede places between 449 and 456. Lady Guest in her translation (1838) makes Maxen the usurper Magnus Maximus, who did not need to bring whole legions from Britain, much less to set them in Gallaecia. I am grateful to Sir Rees Davies for explaining Maxen Wledig as a derivative from gwlad, country, in the sense of ruler or lord.

55. He was clearly at Chaves in 460, but sent suspects on to Mérida for trial. There was an orthodox bishop at Lugo in 433 and another at Astorga in 445, the chief cities of the three Roman conventus that constituted Roman Gallaecia. Hydatius’ work is meticulously edited by A. Tranoy, Chronique d’Hydace, Paris, 1974, 2 v., most of whose comments I have accepted. I retain the Latin spelling to distinguish it from Galicia, which does not include Astorga or the Bierzo.

56. Hydatius knew of the death of the patrician Felix at Ravenna in 430, but communications with the East were intermittent.

57. A Celtic term for a gathering or association. It was used by Orosius in speaking of a rebellion of ignorant rustics easily quashed by Roman troops a century before, not necessarily in use at that time. It is found in the territory of Armorica, itself a Celtic word from mor, sea, in the sense of coastal, and also in the Alps in the time of Sarus, and especially in Tarraconensis.

58. This affords a probable context for the cluster of Suevic settlers in villages round Tuy, the only place north of their legal territory where they were present in force.

59. Hydatius places this late in 448. Agiulf is said to have been a Varn, but the Goths set him up to succeed Rechiarius, which suggests that he was a dissident in command of the Sueves in Baetica, who rejected the succession of Rechiarius.

60. Who Basil was is far from clear. If Rechiarius had a change of heart, it followed his meeting with Theodoric. It was not what Hydatius would hope from a catholic king. Theodoric had reigned for thirty years and nursed the prospect of an all-Arian alliance by marrying one daughter to a Sueve and another to the heir of Gaiseric, Huneric.

61. Tranoy notes the appearance of Halley’s comet in May-August 451 and an eclipse of the sun in September, with Biblical analogies.

62. His fall is the subject of Sidonius’ letter to Serranus, II, xiii.

63. Sidonius’ letters are not necessarily in order of date, but this is in Book One (of eight). So long as the Gothic king adhered to the foedus and Avitus was emperor, Sidonius accepted Theodoric and even their religion, which later he would not have failed to disparage.

64. Ed. Tranoy, 1974, p. 170. This is part of his Olympiad 310, which suggests some confusion. The entries for 460 and 461 and perhaps 465 appear unusually numerous, while the final three years return to the usual pace of four or five per annum.

65. Ajax was a Galatian, a pocket of Celts who in ancient times were settled in Asia Minor, on the upper course of the River Meander, the frontier of Asia. St Paul had addressed them on their reluctance to believe what they thought the Apostles required.

66. The reign is dated from 466: Hydatius gives 467.

67. Welsh legend had it that Maximus had depopulated the Britains and gives a dramatic version of how the Britons imposed their language on Armorica: Geoffrey of Monmouth puts the emigrants at 100,000, with 30,000 warriors.

68. The fish was the Christian symbol and the languages those of the Bible. The bitter seeds would be the Arians. Hydatius’ hope of saving some Suevic souls had to be set aside for some eighty years. Nothing more is heard of the Suevic kings: even their names are lost. St Isidore in his short history of the Sueves merely follows Hydatius, adding that there were several.

69. Among themselves the Goths negotiated by shouting across a brook, which neither party crossed, with their men standing at a more or less respectful distance. With the emperor they either sent missions to Constantinople, or spoke on horseback. The details are in Malchus, a Syrian using Greek, 18-22, Blockley, II, 431 ff. He provides profuse details and no dates, and in the truncated form is not always clear.

70. R. W. Mathison, Ruricius of Limoges and friends: a collection of letters from Visigothic Gaul, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1994, supposes that it was recovered from the Franks, but the frontier, if any, fluctuated.

71. The network only occasionally reached Hydatius, who mentions seeing a copy of a letter from the bishop of Autun to the comes Agrippinus in 451.

72. See Ana Ma Jiménez, ‘settlement of the Visigoths’, in Visigoths, ed. Heather, 1999, 92 ff., who discards some supposed Visigothic toponyms, J. M. Piel and D. Kremer, Hispanogotisches Namenbuch : der Niederschlag des Westgotischen in den alten und heutigen Personen- und Ortsnamen der Iberischen Halbinsel, Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1976, passim.

73. Cf. Namenbuch, passim. Piel and Kremer do not distinguish between Gothic and Suevic in this respect, though their speech would differ.

74. As occurred with Theoderic the Ostrogoth, whose heir predeceased him, and whose Visigothic widow was unable to protect her young son from rapacious kinsfolk.

75. Paul’s arrival is not dated. The Lives of the Fathers of Mérida, Vitas patrum emeritensium, VPE, was composed by an anonymous deacon c.620, who professed to know no history before his own youth. The English version of A. T. Fear (Lives of the Visigothic Fathers, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1997) inserts the word Visigothic, which Paul and Fidelis were not.

76. The date is not recorded. An inscription shows that the clergy-house was founded by Lucretius, the seventh incumbent, and finished by his successor Andreas in 572.

77. In saying this, Procopius calls him a usurper or tyrant over the Visigoths.

78. John Moschos, c. 550 - c.619 composed his travels in 610. Martin arrived by sea in c.550, was consecrated bishop in 556 and consecrated his abbey at Dume in 558.

79. Germanic names were permitted by baptism. There are no documents before 572. The gravestones, of peculiar form, are uninscribed and undated. The place-names show an element of pre-Roman or Celtic, often not now identifiable.

80. Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, II, 41. This version of the name is not given by any other writer.

81. His history is chiefly remarkable for its uniqueness. Earlier attempts by Renatus Frigeridus and Sulpicius Alexander are lost except for the few fragments he cites. The vita of St Martin of Tours, by Sulpicius Severus, supplied Gregory with numerous miracles, which neither Martin might have cared for. St Martin of Tours is best remembered, not for a miracle, but for an act of charity, cutting his military cloak in half to share with a poor rustic.

82. Sagontia is often read as Sagunto, but this is north of Valencia, with no direct road to Cordova. Others prefer Gigüenza on the road from Sidonia to Seville, cf. E. A. Thompson, The Goths in Spain, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969, App. 320.

83. In his conquest of 711 Táriq, having defeated Roderic near Sidonia, made straight for Toledo, having detached a force to occupy Cordova. There is no contemporary evidence of the marriage treaties, but the claims are made clear in the treaty of Andelot concluded in November 588 or 589 under the eyes of Bishops Felix and Gregory of Tours, who gives the full text, The History of the Franks, IX, 20. There may have been some redistribution, but Galswinth received Bordeaux, Limoges, Lescar, and La Ciutat, which then passed in theory to Brunhild, who had received Tours, Poitiers, Albi, Aire and Labourd.

85. Theodora, the first wife, is supposed to have been the daughter of Severianus, the governor of Cartagena, who fled with his family to Seville, where her brother Leander became bishop. Thompson’s allusion to Godeswinth, Athanagild’s widow, as his ‘unprepossessing relict’ is gratuitous, resting on Gregory’s accusations against her.

86. John of Biclaro’s annals begin here and end with the conversion to catholicism of his son Reccared, announced in 590 at Toledo III, a triumph clouded by the plot of Argimund, which he alone records. His editor, J Madoz, 1960, places his birth in about 540, and St Isidore says at Scallabis, now Santarém, of mixed parentage, his mother being a native and his father Gothic, whose language he spoke. He was sent to the East to be educated, 558-575, but was exiled to Saragossa, which then had an Arian bishop, being himself bishop of Gerona in 590. He founded the monastery of Vallclaro near Poblet where he wrote his annals; this information is not certain: Menéndez Pidal placed Biclaro at Béjar.

87. P. David in editing the Suevic Parochiale defends the authenticity of the list of churches, but denies the existence of two metropolitanates in a single province (Etudes historiques, 1947). The document is clear: Nitigisus of Lugo was metropolitan of the non-Suevic sees of Gallaecia. The superiority of Braga lay in its primacy and in royal recognition.

88. A. Almeida Fernandes, Paróquias suévicas e dioceses visigóticas, Arouca, 1987, regards the ecclesiae as Roman and the pagi, as Suevic villages. This might reflect the earlier St Martin’s conversion of several pagi in Gaul, at one of which he died in 395. It is questionable.

89. The typical form was the lavra. The word occurs as a place-name near the coast north of Oporto, described in the Middle Ages as of ancient foundation.

90. St Isidore says Rucones. The least improbable of the suggestions is the Arcones, mentioned in the classical writers.

91. Perhaps after Sabaria in Hungary, now Szombathely, the birthplace of St Martin of Tours. Similarly Panóias recalls Pannonia and replaces Constantim in Bragança.

92. The Lives of the Fathers calls him a Goth. The Namenbuch does not give the name or anything like it. Basque has the root Maus-, the dwarf elder or sauquillo, giving the name Maustegui, Michelena, Apellidos vascos, San Sebastián, 1953, n° 436.

93. An inscription from Villamartín, Seville, commemorates a dux named Zerezind, who died aged forty-four on August 30 578, perhaps Hermenegild’s predecessor.

94. John of Biclaro says only that he went to relieve Seville and died there, his son succeeding in his kingdom in Gallaecia. Biclaro places the gathering of Leovigild’s forces in 582, the close siege of Seville and death of Miro in 583, and the fortification of Italica and fall of Seville and capture of Hermenegild at Cordova in 584.

95. The only ruler of the Sueves to put his name on a gold coin was Odiacca or Audecca, who appears on a unique piece found at Castelo Branco.

96. In a society where ‘Germans’ took Latin names, and less often ‘Romans’ Germanic, the classification as ‘Germans’ or ‘Spaniards’(?) adopted by R. Grosse (Las fuentes de la época visigoda y bizantinas, Barcelona, 1947) and followed by E. A. Thompson as a statistic (The Goths in Spain, 338) is illusory. The use of two names, one of each kind, is uncommon.

97. A combination continued in Spain, where Philip’s IV valido, Olivares, was Conde-Duque.

98. The Latin servus gives serf, of whom the church had many as peasants deemed to belong to the land. A way out was provided by emancipation, a laudable act of charity. Even so, he remained a client. In 619, St Isidore held that a colonus who had fled his home to enter the church elsewhere must be returned since by civil law he still belonged to his birthplace. In a mingled society it is unwise to assume that general principles held everywhere.

99. With the final piece of Audeca and one other found in the Gothic hoard at Reccopolis. On this, see my ‘Reis suevos e a igreja de São Martinho’, Nummus, xxi-xxv, Oporto, 1998-2002 and in Reinos ibéricos na idade média, I, 440-461, Oporto, 2003.

100. His age is sometimes given as eighteen. If Reccared married Baddo after 589 he could not have been much more than eleven. If much before, under an Arian rite, he might be thought illegitimate. In 594 Reccared had been considered free to marry the Frank Riguntha.

101. Its minutes exist only as preserved in Toledo XII, in 681.

102. Grosse comments that this shows that the Goths no longer feared the Franks (op.cit., p. 242). The defeat at Poitiers was a hundred years before, and the context points only to more recent events.

103. The Namenbuch notes numerous bearers of the name, and five place-names, all in Portugal or Galicia. The best-known is Gondomar, Oporto.

104. Fredegar adds the suppression of a dux Francius who had held Cantabria for the Franks for a long time. The Franks are not known ever to have ruled Cantabria. It is feasible that an adventurer so named should have reached the area during their attempts to intervene on behalf of the Sueves. The existence of the sea-route is shown by the toponym Monte Suevo.

105. Eugenius II, the metropolitan summoned by the king in 646, had been a monk in Toledo and archdeacon at Saragossa, and was the most prolific poet of his day.

106. A. T. Fear, introducing his English translation, says that Sisebut sponsored the cult of St Leocadia of Toledo. Eugenius II was buried in her church.

107. One of its most-quoted aphorisms is that regicide was the disease of the Goths. He refers to the end of Thiudis and Thiudisclus, the Ostrogoths, but after Witteric, these cases were few; the record of the Franks speaks for itself.

108. Fear resumes some of the discussion, and favours the theory of a hoped-for catholic alliance. This is speculative: the view of Sisebut as deeply religious with a keen interest in scholarship can easily be overstretched.

109. The classical frater, used in a spiritual sense, has been replaced in both Portuguese and Spanish by germanus, a blood-brother, giving irmão, hermano, with the appropriate feminines. The two seem to have been interchangeable for a time.

110. Thompson remarks that in his history of the Goths, finished shortly before his death, Isidore could hardly have told us less except by not writing at all. But so meticulous a lawyer as Isidore was in 619 recorded only what he thought reasonably certain. Isidore was intent on the restoration of the Roman provinces as they were in late imperial times. It must have cost him much to admit that the seat of Cartaginensis was not at Toledo, and (perhaps a little less) that Tarragona had yielded place to Saragossa.

111. No genuine coin of Reccared II is known to Miles, who rejects the arguments of Reinhart that a coin marked Reccared and ‘Ispali pius’ belongs to this reign, G. Miles, The Coinage of the Visigoths of Spain: Leovigild to Achila II, New York, 1952, 28.

112. The History of the Goths, 65, with the date ‘fifth year of Swinthila’. Riccimer was ‘adsumptus pari cum patre’, and possessed the paternal virtues in merit and appearance.

113. Miles, Coinage, 30. It has been suggested that Iudila stands for Geila, the brother of Swinthila, but the two names appear distinct. Heiss admitted a coin from Mérida of Khintila marked ‘victor’, but Miles does not record this epithet.

114. Pampilica, a diminutive of Pamplona, the Roman stronghold in Navarre, where the monastery perhaps served for the indoctrination of the Gothic mass.

115. Gregory of Tours had recorded similar incidents. Bishop Avitus (572-594), after a mob had burned the synagogue because a Jew had attacked catechumens, declared that he would not force them, but would welcome converts: a large number then accepted his invitation, and others left Arvernia for Marseille (The History of the Franks, V, ii). Gregory reproves a bishop for trading with Jews. He himself was ever ready for debate but admits his own failure to convince a Jew in the royal presence. Froga’s fault was in disbelieving a bishop.

116. The History of the Franks, V 44, with little success.

117. Miles gives a table of variants in his note on epigraphy. Toponyms offer less variants, except the Castilian B/V, as in Elbora/Elvora.

118. R Charanis, Armenians in the Byzantine Empire, Lisbon, 1963, Candau notes the forms Artabazakos, Latinized as Narbazaicus. Eunapius says (Fragment 71) that Abrazkous, who put down Isaurian rebels in 404, was an Armenian nicknamed Harpazakios because of his rapacity.

119. His opponent may have been Iudila, though this would stretch Miles’ surmise.

120. Sidonius refers to the magistris palatinis et militaribus: the palatines have now come to include the military. If there is an apparent duplication, this may be owing to slips by the notaries.

121. The single reference to Recceswinth’s proficiency in the barbarian language may be set aside. It occurs in a strangely garbled version of the Continuatio, in which Khindaswinth becomes Gondelo and Recceswinth is reduced to ‘soa v annis’, the rest of the phrase being unintelligible, Chronica minora, II, 387. It is not in the more correct text (ibid. p.343).

122. The misunderstanding goes back to the earliest Spanish writer on the subject, the Marqués de Valdeflores, Congeturas sobre las medallas de los Reyes Godos y Suevos de Espana, Málaga, 1759, and since much repeated, v. J. M. Peixoto Cabral and D. M. Metcalf, Moeda Sueva: Suevic Coinage, Oporto, 1997, and my ‘Coinage of the Suevic period’, and ‘Reis suevos e a igreja de S Martinho’, in Nummus 1998-2002.

123. His Vita, composed after 680, places him after St Isidore as a restorer of the church.

124. The council at Mérida had tendered its thanks to Recceswinth by requiring that litanies be said for the king’s success when he was on campaign: according to Grosse, the practice was previously unknown. Whether Recceswinth was then on campaign or whether there was overt resistance to the transfer of the disputed dioceses remains also unknown.

125. Thompson, The History of the Goths, 252, n 1

126. L. Vázquez de Parga (La División de Wamba. Contribución al estudio de la historia y geografía eclesiástica de la edad media espanola, Madrid, 1943) catalogues 27 versions and summarizes critical opinions. It is not mentioned at Toledo XI of 675, the only general council of Wamba’s reign, but it may be related to the unrecorded provincial councils (cf. its canons ii-v). The original would be eclipsed by the Muslim invasion, which was anti-episcopal, but tolerant of monasticism. The bones of St Isidore were brought from Seville for Ferdinand I of Castile and his wife Sancha to Leon, where they were reinterred in the cathedral. Their son Alfonso VI recovered Toledo in 1090 and assumed the title of emperor, formerly used by the Leonese. The general form of the Divisio is ascribed to Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo (1119-1142).

127. Steven appears at Mérida, which he represented at Toledo in 681, when Wamba was deposed.

128. The Annales du Maghreb et de l’Espagne, translated by Fagnan, Alger, 1998, are extracted from his fourteen volumes, composed in the East.

129. Conquête de l’Afrique du Nord et de l’Espagne, ed. Gateau, Alger, Carbonel, 1947, 42-45.

130. Pimenius is not known to have left the East. His transfer might be construed as offering a distant precedent for St James at Compostela.

131. A reference to moneyers concerned with the production of coin.

132. Zeumer, followed by Thompson, says that he was already dead by 683. Lucas of Tuy, who follows a northern tradition hostile to Erwig, says that Wamba lived twelve years at Pampliega, which would prolong his existence until after 690. Neither statement is adequately supported.

133. Thompson thought that Leo addressed the letter to the deceased Quiricus in ignorance. This appears less probable. Rome rarely corresponded in writing with the Hispanic church. Leo II himself died in July 683, more than a year before Toledo XIV.

135. Wamba and Erwig had reigned for only eight and seven years. Rulers were old men at fifty, and to be acceptable a son required to have reached the ‘perfect age’, be legally married and preferably with an heir and authority to have his decisions enforced. Only Leovigild, Khindaswinth and Egica were able to impose their sons by associating them in their own lifetime. The regency of an uncle risked usurpation, as with Amalaric. The marriage of an elder sister to a strong figure bore a similar risk. This could be reduced by marriage to a niece, and removed if the bridegroom was also the acknowledged successor.

136. Namenbuch, n° 58, calls the name specifically Hispano-Gothic, not recorded earlier, but later much favoured. It gives some toponyms, two in Burgos, and it is carried by some medieval churchmen.

137. The only non-Germanic names are Vitulus and Severinus.

138. The History of the Goths, 243

139. Dagobert had returned from a long exile in 680 and was assassinated in 684: his bishops considered him despotic, cf Wallace-Hadrill, Long-haired Kings, 238. The Frankish bishops were content to be ruled by a boy or an inept king, who left affairs of state to the maiores palatii.

140. Hubner records an inscription from a church at Belén recognising Egica with a date in May 691. Miles notes a coin from Guadix marked ‘victor’. These drops of information, however welcome to the thirsting investigator, need not be overvalued.

141. Vestiges of the palace, the Pazos del Rey, exist near Tuy. The Fafes (now Pfaff) were loyal servitors of Tarasia, the first queen of Portugal, 1112-1126, when she was besieged by her Leonese half-sister Urraca in the tiny and ancient castle of Lanhoso perched on a height above the River Ave. The name survives in the village of Fafe near Braga.

142. Crónica de Alfonso III, ed. Z García Villada, Madrid, 1918. The ‘segunda redacción’, included by the editor, gives information not provided in the so-called ‘primitiva’. It says that before dealing with Roderic’s reign it will explain his lineage: Theodefred was a son of Khindaswinth whom his father had disowned, reliquit, at an early age.

143. Ibn al-Athir, trans. Fagnan, 27. The dates, gathered in a late compilation, are by no means certain.

144. There is a single medieval reference to another, XVIII, attributed to Wittiza and Gunderic as metropolitan. Nothing is known of it and no surviving document appears to refer to it. Thompson says that the document was lost, The History of the Goths, 249. No date is suggested. Isidore of Beja dores not assign a council to Wittiza. The chronicle of Alfonso III states that Wittiza called no council. Once he was associated, a council ad regem confirmandum may have been considered improper.

145. Miles classifies the coins from Toledo in more than a dozen issues, noting that the quality of the gold varies considerably. The single coin of Suniefred is light, and some of Egica’s not much heavier, though others are of good standard. Both the rate of survival and the extent of reminting are unknown, so that the significance of these observations is doubtful. Since Miles’ day the number of known pieces has increased by perhaps half, but they have not been subjected to the same critical examination. However, the general level of weight declined steadily by about a tenth from the level sustained under Khindaswinth and Recceswinth.

146. Edited together, somewhat confusedly, by T. Noldeke, in Mommsen’s MGH, Chronica minora, II, 3334 ff. He explains the formidable textual difficulties in an ‘Epitermum’ (p.368).

147. More remote is the chronicle of Lucas, bishop of Tuy in the 13th Century.

148. ‘Decrepito iam patri pariter regnat’, in Isidore’s words.

149. Thompson, The History of the Goths 275, devotes a page to the subject, regarding it as a symptom of a society in which the administrative machinery is breaking down.

150. Miles, 156. The studies of metrology by Gomes Marques, Peixoto Cabral and Rodrigues Marinho in Ensaios sobre história monetária visigótica, Oporto 1995, using spectroscopic methods over selected specimens, confirm this. Their statistical method may exaggerate the difference. A small improvement at the end of Wittiza’s reign reflects only a very small number of specimens. The quantity of known coins for each ruler is affected by the existence of a few large hoards, of which Miles names seven, p 165: there has been at least one since he wrote, the contents of which are widely dispersed. The find at Abusejo near Salamanca in 1932 contained about 110 pieces, 20 from Egica, 53 from the dual reign and 19 from Wittiza. Menéndez Pidal thought that the large number from the dual reign indicated that it lasted longer than is supposed, a view which Miles refuted.

151. Crónica de Alfonso III, 105.

152. The Namenbuch accepts that Gundered was bishop of Seville. the name is Germanic. An Oppa was bishop of Tuy in 683, before Wittiza was placed there and another of Elche in 693. The name may be a variant of Offila, comes cubiculariorum et dux in 653.

153. Illustrated in Miles, Coinage, Plate xxxviii. Others, shown on his final plate, are dismissed as forgeries.

154. Cairo, 1944, put into Spanish as vol. iii of Menéndez Pidal’s monumental Historia de España. Some additions are noted in Al-Andalus and Alcántara. There is no contemporary Berber account.

155. The Berber tactic may well have been to overwhelm and kill the enemy commander, counting on the resulting demoralization of a leaderless army: this had succeeded in earlier battles with the Byzantine magistri.

156. When the young king of Portugal perished at Alcazar Quibir in 1578, rumours of his survival were so persistent that they took shape in the movement called Sebastianism, which still casts its shadow.

157. Ep. Ovet, ch. 16, in Chronica minora. Grosse prefers the alternative reading malo, which in the context makes no sense.

158. Asín Palacios, Topónimos árabes, not now identifiable and perhaps mythical.

159. C. Sánchez Albornoz, ‘Itinerario de la conquista’, Cuadernos de historia de España, Buenos Aires, 1940, 21-74. The course is set chiefly by the system of Roman roads.

160. For comparison, the kingdom of the Sueves lasted some 165 years from c. 420 to 585. The Roman empire in the West ran for over four centuries, and its Christian phase for less than a century.