38 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINOne law of Theudis has survived, relating to voluntary gifts to judges.^13
The king was assassinated in 548, apparently by a personal enemy,
who pretended madness until in a position to perform his deed.
When dying, Theudis pardoned his murderer on the grounds that he
too had once slain his own ruler, perhaps referring to complicity in
the killing of Amalaric.
The next king, Theudisclus (548-9), was no doubt chosen for his
military achievements. It was he who in 541 had forced the Frankish
kings Childebert I and Chlotar I, who had sacked Pamplona and were
besieging Zaragoza, to buy their escape from Spain. However, his
reign was brief, for after a year he was murdered at a banquet in
Seville, apparently by a cabal of outraged husbands, whose wives he
had interfered with.l4 The antecedents of his successor Agila (549-
54) are unknown, but his reign is principally notable for its failures. IS
In about 550 the city of Cordoba rebelled, apparently the result of
some insult the king offered to the cult of its patron saint, the martyr
Acisclus. When Agila attempted to suppress the revolt by force, his
army was defeated, his son killed, and the royal treasure lost. Cordoba
was not restored to the authority of the Visigothic kings until 572.
After so humiliating a defeat, it is not surprising to find Agila being
challenged by a member of his own nobility. In 551 Athanagild re-
belled, probably in Seville. He also appealed to the Emperor Justinian
for assistance, with fateful consequences. The imperial expedition
that was despatched in answer to this appeal rendered little assistance
to either side in the Visigothic civil war, but instead busied itself with
establishing a narrow enclave of Byzantine territory along the south-
eastern coast of the peninsula, with its centre at Cartagena. Agila
failed to make any headway against Athanagild, who probably gained
control of most of Baetica, and in 554 he was murdered by his own
men in Merida.
The Byzantine control of the south-eastern coast that resulted from
the appeal for their aid was to last for over seventy years. They were
finally expelled in 624. Their authority never extended very far in-
land, certainly not to Cordoba and the valley of the Guadalquivir, as
has sometimes been thought.^16 For one thing, their aim never seems
to have been one of substantial conquest inside the peninsula, even
were this possible. The principal purpose of their establishment seems
to have been the greater security of their recently reconquered North
African provinces. The activities of the Visigoths under Theudis around
Ceuta may well have made the fear of their expansion into Africa a