THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW ORDER 25relations between the Romans and the Visigoths in Spain were to be
built is far from clear.^27
Before the 490s the greatest concentration ofVisigothic population
was probably still to the north of the Pyrenees. But the royal admin-
istration kept the recently acquired territories in the peninsula firmly
attached to Euric's Empire, which stretched from the Loire and the
Rhone to the straits of Hercules. Gothic counts were appointed to
supervise the principal Roman towns, command and administer jus-
tice for the Visigothic garrisons, and act as intermediaries between
their charges and the royal court at Toulouse. An extant inscription
testifies to the benefits conferred by the restoration of order by the
Visigoths after the troubles of the middle of the century. It relates to
the repairing in 483 of part of the Roman bridge over the Guadiana
in Merida, carried out by the Gothic official Salla, and Zeno, bishop
of the city, on the authority of King Euric.^28 In such practical ways the
inhabitants of the peninsula had much to gain from Visigothic rule.
The reigns of Euric, and of his son Alaric II (484-507), mark the
highest point in the peace and prosperity of the Spanish provinces
between the great barbarian invasion of 409 and the re-establishment
of a strong and united Visigothic kingdom by Leovigild and Reccared
in the late sixth century.
This period of Euric and of Alaric II is also notable as a time of
considerable law-making by the Visigothic kings and their largely
Roman advisers. These years saw what is held to be the first promul-
gation of written law for the Visigoths, the Code of Euric and subse-
quently in 506 the production of a revised body of Roman law for
their subjects, in the Breviary of Alaric. As the individual laws, espe-
cially those of the Code, have occasionally been drawn upon as evi-
dence for particular features of Romano-Gothic society at this time,
and as the nature of law-making and the legal standing of the two
components of the population of the kingdom can only be under-
stood in the light of an appreciation of the nature and mutual rela-
tionship between the two law-books, some consideration of them is
necessary.
The Code of Euric only survives in a fragmentary state, and in no
more than one manuscript, the erased part of a palimpsest at that.^29
So its physical survival into the modern world has been little short of
the miraculous. But its poor showing in terms of manuscript survival
should not be seen as detracting from its importance in its own day:
the reason for the limited manuscript transmission is that the Code