viedo, till the approach of Count Asterius compelled, or rather
provoked, the victorious Barbarians to remove the scene of the war to
the plains of Boetica. The rapid progress of the Vandals soon acquired
a more effectual opposition; and the master-general Castinus marched
against them with a numerous army of Romans and Goths. Vanquished in
battle by an inferior army, Castinus fled with dishonor to Tarragona;
and this memorable defeat, which has been represented as the punishment,
was most probably the effect, of his rash presumption. [12] Seville
and Carthagena became the reward, or rather the prey, of the ferocious
conquerors; and the vessels which they found in the harbor of Carthagena
might easily transport them to the Isles of Majorca and Minorca, where
the Spanish fugitives, as in a secure recess, had vainly concealed their
families and their fortunes. The experience of navigation, and perhaps
the prospect of Africa, encouraged the Vandals to accept the invitation
which they received from Count Boniface; and the death of Gonderic
served only to forward and animate the bold enterprise. In the room of a
prince not conspicuous for any superior powers of the mind or body, they
acquired his bastard brother, the terrible Genseric; [13] a name, which,
in the destruction of the Roman empire, has deserved an equal rank with
the names of Alaric and Attila. The king of the Vandals is described to
have been of a middle stature, with a lameness in one leg, which he had
contracted by an accidental fall from his horse. His slow and cautious
speech seldom declared the deep purposes of his soul; he disdained
to imitate the luxury of the vanquished; but he indulged the sterner
passions of anger and revenge. The ambition of Genseric was without
bounds and without scruples; and the warrior could dexterously employ
the dark engines of policy to solicit the allies who might be useful
to his success, or to scatter among his enemies the seeds of hatred and
contention. Almost in the moment of his departure he was informed
that Hermanric, king of the Suevi, had presumed to ravage the Spanish
territories, which he was resolved to abandon.

Impatient of the insult, Genseric pursued the hasty retreat of the Suevi
as far as Merida; precipitated the king and his army into the River
Anas, and calmly returned to the sea-shore to embark his victorious
troops. The vessels which transported the Vandals over the modern
Straits of Gibraltar, a channel