THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW ORDER 17with the army units under his command. He seems to have had little
difficulty in capturing Constans at Vienne, and there he had his former
master executed. As a result of this revolt, Constantine was forced to
abandon his ambitions in Italy, and after his son's death was himself
beseiged by the rebel general at ArIes. This siege was still in progress,
when in 411 an imperial army from Italy invaded Gaul to dispose of
the rival usurpers. At its approach, Gerontius fled back towards Spain,
whilst Constantine in ArIes was soon forced to surrender to the im-
perial forces. Gerontius's career too was soon terminated. His sol-
diers, impatient at his failure, attacked him, and despite an epic
resistance, he was forced to kill his wife, his Alan bodyguard, and
himself, when the mutineers were able to set fire to the house over
their heads. His creature, the emperor Maximus, fled to take refuge
with their barbarian allies, whilst the army that had once supported
him and Gerontius made its peace with the generals of the emperor
Honorius.1O
Meanwhile, what had the barbarian invaders of 409 been doing?
The sources are vague, but both Orosius and Hydatius refer to wide-
spread destruction and violence as having resulted from their entry.
Olympiodorus cites a case of cannibalism in one Spanish city as a
result of the ensuing famine. In his account, Hydatius is deliberately
apocalyptic, drawing on images from the prophecy of Ezechiel.l1 But
whilst disorder and starvation probably did result from the unrestrained
presence of the confederate barbarians in 409-10 in the peninsula,
no details exist as to which regions in particular were affected, nor
what the movements of the invaders were precisely. But at some point,
put chronologically by all of the sources before the overthrow of the
usurper Constantine in 411, they ceased their wanderings and, divid-
ing up the peninsula between them, settled in different regions. They
were still occupying those lands when Orosius wrote his account of
recent years in 417-18. It seems that the southernmost province,
Baetica, was occupied by the Siling Vandals, Lusitania and Cartha-
giniensis by the Alans, whilst the Hasding Vandals and the Sueves
were crowded together into Galicia in the north-west, the smallest
province of all.
Not surprisingly, argument exists as to how this division took place,
and who was responsible for initiating it. One view is that it was
entirely the product of a treaty between the barbarians and one of
the rival Roman regimes that then existed, and that they were there-
fore established in those provinces as federates. The contrary opinion