n attest) the fame of
Posthumus, who is repeatedly styled the Conqueror of the Germans, and
the Savior of Gaul. [76]

[Footnote 75: Zosimus, l. i. p. 27.]

[Footnote 76: M. de Brequigny (in the Memoires de l'Academie, tom. xxx.)
has given us a very curious life of Posthumus. A series of the Augustan
History from Medals and Inscriptions has been more than once planned,
and is still much wanted. * Note: M. Eckhel, Keeper of the Cabinet of
Medals, and Professor of Antiquities at Vienna, lately deceased, has
supplied this want by his excellent work, Doctrina veterum Nummorum,
conscripta a Jos. Eckhel, 8 vol. in 4to Vindobona, 1797.--G. Captain
Smyth has likewise printed (privately) a valuable Descriptive Catologue
of a series of Large Brass Medals of this period Bedford, 1834.--M.
1845.]

But a single fact, the only one indeed of which we have any distinct
knowledge, erases, in a great measure, these monuments of vanity and
adulation. The Rhine, though dignified with the title of Safeguard of
the provinces, was an imperfect barrier against the daring spirit of
enterprise with which the Franks were actuated. Their rapid devastations
stretched from the river to the foot of the Pyrenees; nor were they
stopped by those mountains. Spain, which had never dreaded, was unable
to resist, the inroads of the Germans. During twelve years, the greatest
part of the reign of Gallie nus, that opulent country was the theatre of
unequal and destructive hostilities. Tarragona, the flourishing capital
of a peaceful province, was sacked and almost destroyed; [77] and so
late as the days of Orosius, who wrote in the fifth century, wretched
cottages, scattered amidst the ruins of magnificent cities, still
recorded the rage of the barbarians. [78] When the exhausted country no
longer supplied a variety of plunder, the Franks seized on some vessels
in the ports of Spain, [79] and transported themselves into Mauritania.
The distant province was astonished with the fury of these barbarians,
who seemed to fall from a new world, as their name, manners, and
complexion, were equally unknown on the coast of Africa. [80]

[Footnote 77: Aurel. Victor, c. 33. Instead of Poene direpto, both the
sense and the expression require deleto; though indeed, for different
reasons, it is alike difficult to correct the text of the best, and of
the worst, writers.]

[Footnote 78: In the time of Ausonius (the end of the fourth century)
Ilerda or Lerida was in a very