THE SEVENTH-CENTURY KINGDOM IIImore heavily on the kingdom than its practical potential to interfere
would have warranted was the Byzantine Empire. Mter the death of
the emperor Maurice in 602, the Empire underwent crisis after crisis
throughout the course of the seventh century, facing enemies on two
fronts: in the east the Persians and then from 634 the Arabs, and in
the Balkans the Avars from beyond the Danube and the Slavs at-
tempting to settle south of it in imperial territory. The Empire was
also riven by serious internal religious and social divisions. In general
it was in no condition to launch the kind of expeditions against the
Germanic kingdoms that had been possible in the sixth century. Even
when Constans II (641-668) moved the imperial capital from Con-
stantinople to Syracuse he was unable to make any headway against
the Lombards in Italy. Nor could Byzantine Mrica pose an independ-
ent threat to the Visigothic kingdom. Indeed by the very end of the
century, if the unanimous testimony of the Arab historians is to be
believed, the Visigoths had returned to Mrica for the first time since
they were evicted in the reign of Theudis (531-548), and gained
control of at least Ceuta on the continental mainland. However, for
all of the relative weakness of their formerly threatening neighbours
and the final expulsion of Byzantine forces from the peninsula by
Suinthila in 624, the Visigothic kings remained acutely sensitive to
the dangers of external aggression, and to the possibility of discon-
tented groups within the realm conspiring with hostile powers be-
yond the frontiers. Several laws, both civil and ecclesiastical, were
passed imposing secular and spiritual penalties upon those who
either plotted with or fled for refuge to any of the kingdom's
enemies.^39
The almost obsessive fear of the kings and their advisers of the
dangers to be apprehended from the actions of inimical powers had
its roots not so much in their active hostility towards their neigh-
bours, as in the inherent weaknesses of the political structure of
Visigothic society. Royal authority was still very fragile. The difficulties
of internal order and external vigilance meant that the essentially
military character of Visigothic kingship went on unchanged into the
seventh century. The kings had to be able to fight, and fight success-
fully. Unlike the Franks, the Visigoths had never adhered to a single
royal dynasty; in this they were like the Lombards, whose history is
marked by frequent dynastic changes and even a ten-year interval
when they had no king at all (574-584).40 Visigothic kings had to be
visibly and successfully warriors, thus the succession of minors created