time to
"the Balkan peninsula" south of the Danube, Asia Minor, Syria, and
Egypt, and presided over by the elderly, politic, but unpopular
Anastasius. This State is Catholic, though, as we shall hereafter see,
not in hearty alliance with the Church of Rome.

Westward from the Empire, along the southern shore of the
Mediterranean, stretches the great kingdom of the _Vandals,_ with
Carthage for its capital. They have a powerful navy, but their kings,
Gunthamund (484-496) and Thrasamund (496-523), do not seem to be
disposed to renew the buccaneering expeditions of their grandfather, the
great Vandal Gaiseric. They are decided Arians, and keep up a stern,
steady pressure on their Catholic subjects, who are spared, however, the
ruthless brutalities practised upon them by the earlier Vandal kings.
The relations of the Vandals with the Ostrogothic kingdom seem to have
been of a friendly character during almost the whole reign of Theodoric.
Thrasamund, the fourth king who reigned at Carthage, married Amalafrida,
Theodoric's sister, who brought with her, as dowry, possession of the
strong fortress of Lilybaeum _(Marsala),_ in the west of Sicily, and who
was accompanied to her new home by a brilliant train of one thousand
Gothic nobles with five thousand mounted retainers.

In the north and west of Spain dwell the nation of the _Suevi,_ Teutonic
and Arian, but practically out of the sphere of European politics, and
who, half a century after the death of Theodoric, will be absorbed by
their Visigothic neighbours.

This latter state, the kingdom of the _Visigoths,_ is apparently, at the
end of the fifth century, by far the most powerful of the new barbarian
monarchies. All Spain, except its north-western corner, and something
like half of Gaul--namely, that region which is contained between the
Pyrenees and the Loire, owns the sway of the young king, whose capital
city is Toulouse, and who, though a stranger in blood, bears the name
of the great Visigoth who first battered a breach in the walls of Rome,
the mighty Alaric. This Alaric II. (485-507), the son of Euric, who had
been the most powerful sovereign of his dynasty, inherited neither his
father's force of character (485-507) nor the bitterness of his
Arianism. The persecution of the Catholics was suspended, or ceased
altogether, and we may picture to ourselves the congregations again
wending their way by unblockaded paths to the house of prayer, the
churches once more roof