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Jordanes
Extract from the "Gothic
History" (AD 469)
Theodorid (King of the Visigoths)
died in the thirteenth year of his reign.
His brother Euric succeeded him with such eager haste that he fell under
dark suspicion. Now while these and various other matters were happening
among the people of the Visigoths, the Emperor Valentinian was slain by
the treachery of Maximus, and Maximus himself, like a tyrant, usurped the
rule. Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, heard of this and came from Africa to
Italy with ships of war, entered Rome and laid it waste. Maximus fled and
was slain by a certain Ursus, a Roman soldier.
After him Majorian undertook the government of the Western Empire at the
bidding of Marcian, Emperor of the East. But he too ruled but a short
time. For when he had moved his forces against the Alani who were
harassing Gaul, he was killed at Dertona near the river named Ira. Severus
succeeded him and died at Rome in the third year of his reign. When the
Emperor Leo, who had succeeded Marcian in the Eastern Empire, learned of
this, he chose as emperor his Patrician Anthemius and sent him to Rome.
Upon his arrival he sent against the Alani his son-in-law Ricimer, who was
an excellent man and almost the only one in Italy at that time fit to
command the army. In the very first engagement he conquered and destroyed
the host of the Alani, together with their king, Beorg.
Now Euric, king of the Visigoths, perceived the frequent change of Roman
Emperors and strove to hold Gaul by his own right. The Emperor Anthemius
heard of it and asked the Brittones for aid. Their King Riotimus came with
twelve thousand men into the state of the Bituriges by the way of Ocean,
and was received as he disembarked from his ships.
Euric, king of the Visigoths, came against them with an innumerable army,
and after a long fight he routed Riotimus, king of the Brittones, before
the Romans could join him. So when he had lost a great part of his army,
he fled with all the men he could gather together, and came to the
Burgundians, a neighboring tribe then allied to the Romans. But Euric,
king of the Visigoths, seized the Gallic city of Arverna; for the Emperor
Anthemius was now dead.
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