24 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINhe returned to Gaul to pursue affairs there, mainly in the interests of
Ricimer. He left those parts of Spain over which he had secured some
hold, that is Baetica, southern Lusitania and Carthaginiensis, to the
care of various military commanders.^25 No settlement of Goths in the
peninsula seems to have occurred at this point. In 466 Theoderic II
was murdered by his brother Euric, who replaced him as king (466-
484). In the reign of Euric, Visigothic control over those parts of
Spain wrested from the Sueves was firmly established, and a function-
ing administration restored. What is more, Roman control of
Tarraconensis was finally terminated. This was brought about, prob-
ably in the mid 470s, by a two-pronged invasion of the province by
Visigothic armies from Gaul. One under-count Gauterit crossed the
Pyrenees by one of the western passes, probably Roncesvalles, and
proceeded down the Ebro valley, occupying Pamplona, Zaragoza and
other unspecified towns. Another column led by Heldefred and Vin-
cent the 'Duke of the Spains' besieged and took Tarragona and other
coastal cities.^26 This Vincent, to judge by his title, was formerly a
Roman imperial military official. There must have been several oth-
ers like him who, in the final disintegration of the Western Roman
Empire in the 470s, and the extinction of its theoretical existence in
480, threw in their lot with the Germanic rulers.
New Law and Old
IN the years from 456 to the final decade of the cenury, the Visigoths,
although they administered and garrisoned most of the peninsula,
did not seek to settle on its land. Whether the system of 'hospitality'
whereby a proportion of the lands and slaves of the local Roman
landowners were assigned to the occupying Germans, which had been
employed in the Visigothic settlement in Aquitaine in 418, was ex-
tended to Spain in this period is unknown. Had the system, Roman
in its devising, been used in relations between Romans and Sueves, it
is most probable that the Visigoths would have taken over the hold-
ings of the dispossessed Sueves, rather than return them to their
former owners. However, nothing is known of this either way, nor is
it certain whether in the system of 'hospitality' the assigned lands
were handed over to leading Germans and their followers for settle-
ment and direct exploitation, or whether this was essentially a fiscal
measure whereby the revenue from the allotted estates went to the
barbarian 'guests'. Thus the economic basis upon which future