was not abated by time or
possession: and the birth of a son, surnamed, from his illustrious
grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him forever in the interest of
the republic. The loss of that infant, whose remains were deposited in
a silver coffin in one of the churches near Barcelona, afflicted his
parents; but the grief of the Gothic king was suspended by the labors
of the field; and the course of his victories was soon interrupted by
domestic treason. He had imprudently received into his service one
of the followers of Sarus; a Barbarian of a daring spirit, but of a
diminutive stature; whose secret desire of revenging the death of his
beloved patron was continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent
master. Adolphus was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona; the laws
of the succession were violated by a tumultuous faction; and a stranger
to the royal race, Singeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on
the Gothic throne. The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of
the six children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he
tore, without pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop. The
unfortunate Placidia, instead of the respectful compassion, which she
might have excited in the most savage breasts, was treated with cruel
and wanton insult. The daughter of the emperor Theodosius, confounded
among a crowd of vulgar captives, was compelled to march on foot above
twelve miles, before the horse of a Barbarian, the assassin of a husband
whom Placidia loved and lamented.

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, 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