. p. 718,) the crime which their slave Jornandes had basely
dissembled, (c 43, p. 673.)]

[Footnote 17: This elaborate description (l. i. ep. ii. p. 2-7) was
dictated by some political motive. It was designed for the public eye,
and had been shown by the friends of Sidonius, before it was inserted in
the collection of his epistles. The first book was published separately.
See Tillemont, Memoires Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 264.]

[Footnote 18: I have suppressed, in this portrait of Theodoric, several
minute circumstances, and technical phrases, which could be tolerable,
or indeed intelligible, to those only who, like the contemporaries of
Sidonius, had frequented the markets where naked slaves were exposed to
male, (Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 404.)]

[Footnote 19: Videas ibi elegantiam Graecam, abundantiam Gallicanam;
celeritatem Italam; publicam pompam, privatam diligentiam, regiam
disciplinam.]

[Footnote 20: Tunc etiam ego aliquid obsecraturus feliciter vincor,
et mihi tabula perit ut causa salvetur. Sidonius of Auvergne was not
a subject of Theodoric; but he might be compelled to solicit either
justice or favor at the court of Thoulouse.]

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple,
he offered his person and his forces, as a faithful soldier of the
republic. [21] The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that
he had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After
the establishment of the Goths in Aquitain, and the passage of the
Vandals into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallicia,
aspired to the conquest of Spain, and threatened to extinguish the
feeble remains of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthagena and
Tarragona, afflicted by a hostile invasion, represented their injuries
and their apprehensions. Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of
the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and
Theodoric interposed his weighty mediation, to declare, that, unless his
brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be
obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. "Tell him," replied
the haughty Rechiarius, "that I despise his friendship and his arms; but
that I shall soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under
the walls of Thoulouse." Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent
the bold designs of his enemy; he passed the Pyrenees at the head of
the Visigoths: the Franks