HKB
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Often appears with: euric · empire and the rule of provinces · conquest, plunder, and captives · vandals · treaties, truces, and peacemaking · the city and urban life · riothamus · rhine frontier · placidia · ostrogoths · odoacer · nuptial feast
Usually: detachment (4) · narrative (3) · argument (1) · sudden reversal of fortune (1) · the test or trial (1)
“This salutary revolution 126 was hastened by the example of a royal martyr, whom our calmer reason may style an ungrateful rebel.” Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · insight
The passage emphasizes the marriage festivities of Adolphus and Placidia, noting how provincial Romans welcomed the alliance and how Gothic and Roman customs mixed at Narbonne.
the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic lord. 138 133 (return) [ See an account of Placidia in Ducange Fam. Byzant. p. 72; and Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 260, 386, &c. tom. vi. p. 240.] 134 (return) [ Zosim. l. v. p. 350.] 135 (return) [ Zosim. l. vi. p. 383…
Gibbon narrates how the Vandals and Visigoths pressed against Roman authority: Genseric’s alliances after Attila, then Euric’s campaigns in Spain/Gaul, the defense of Clermont, and the arrival and destruction of British troops in Berry.
l. xiv. p. 50, 51.) Montesquieu (Considerations sur la Grandeur, &c., c. xx. tom. iii. p. 497) has made a judicious observation on the failure of these great naval armaments.] During his long and active reign, the African monarch had studiously cultivated the friendship of the Barbarians of Europe, whose arms he might employ in a seasonable and effectual diversion against the two empires. After the…
Gibbon claims that Arianism persisted among the Vandals and Ostrogoths until their kingdoms’ collapse, while Gaul submitted to Frankish rule and Spain returned to Catholicism through the Visigoths’ voluntary conversion.
Africa and Italy. The Barbarians of Gaul submitted to the orthodox dominion of the Franks; and Spain was restored to the Catholic church by the voluntary conversion of the Visigoths. This salutary revolution 126 was hastened by the example of a royal martyr, whom our calmer reason may style an ungrateful rebel. Leovigild, the Gothic monarch of Spain, deserved the respect of his enemies, and the lov…
After Odoacer ends the Western empire, he negotiates with Euric, king of the Visigoths, ceding Roman lands beyond the Alps to him; Gibbon frames Euric’s rise as shaping events across France.
4 (return) [ Sidonius Apollinaris ridicules, with affected wit and pleasantry, the hardships of his situation, (Carm. xii. in tom. i. p. 811.)] As soon as Odoacer had extinguished the Western empire, he sought the friendship of the most powerful of the Barbarians. The new sovereign of Italy resigned to Euric, king of the Visigoths, all the Roman conquests beyond the Alps, as far as the Rhine and th…