rted from human cares. His people mourned for 158
him with the utmost affection. Then turning from its
course the river Busentus near the city of Consentia--for
this stream flows with its wholesome waters from the foot
of a mountain near that city--they led a band of captives
into the midst of its bed to dig out a place for his grave.
In the depths of this pit they buried Alaric, together with
many treasures, and then turned the waters back into
their channel. And that none might ever know the place,
they put to death all the diggers. They bestowed the
kingdom of the Visigoths on Athavulf his kinsman, a
man of imposing beauty and great spirit; for though not
tall of stature, he was distinguished for beauty of face
and form.

[Sidenote: DEEDS OF KING ATHAVULF]

[Sidenote: Marries Galla Placidia 414]

[Sidenote: KING SEGERIC 415]

XXXI When Athavulf became king, he returned 159
again to Rome, and whatever had escaped the first sack
his Goths stripped bare like locusts, not merely despoiling
Italy of its private wealth, but even of its public
resources. The Emperor Honorius was powerless to
resist even when his sister Placidia, the daughter of the
Emperor Theodosius by his second wife, was led away
captive from the city. But Athavulf was attracted by her 160
nobility, beauty and chaste purity, and so he took her to
wife in lawful marriage at Forum Julii, a city of Aemilia.
When the barbarians learned of this alliance, they were
the more effectually terrified, since the Empire and the
Goths now seemed to be made one. Then Athavulf set
out for Gaul, leaving Honorius Augustus stripped of his
wealth, to be sure, yet pleased at heart because he was
now a sort of kinsman of his. Upon his arrival the 161
neighboring tribes who had long made cruel raids into
Gaul,--Franks and Burgundians alike,--were terrified
and began to keep within their own borders. Now the
Vandals and the Alani, as we have said before, had been
dwelling in both Pannonias by permission of the Roman
Emperors. Yet fearing they would not be safe even here
if the Goths should return, they crossed over into Gaul.
But no long time after they had taken possession of Gaul 162
they fled thence and shut themselves up in Spain, for they
still remembered from the tales of their forefathers what
ruin Geberich, king of the Goths, had long ago brought
on their race, and how by his valor he had driven them
from their native land. And thus it ha