14 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINThe sequence of events that led to the entry of the Germanic
barbarians into Spain on either 28 September or 13 October in the
year 409 is hard to determine, not so much owing to a lack of evi-
dence, as to the existence of many contradictions in the surviving
accounts. For Spain the years 407 to 418 are, by fifth-century stand-
ards, surprisingly well documented. The nearest thing to a contempo-
rary eye-witness account of some of the principal events may be found
in the Seven Books of History against the Pagans of the Spanish priest
Orosius, who was born at Braga, probably in the 380s, and left Spain
in 413-14 for Mrica. He wrote his History in 418 at the request of
Augustine, taking his account from the Creation up to the time of his
writing.5 Unfortunately, his description of the events of his own life-
time is disappointingly brief and lacking in detail. For one thing, the
whole didactic purpose of his work militated against his giving a
substantial account of recent happenings. His intention was to show
that the Romans had suffered worse disasters under the previous
pagan dispensation than in the new Christian one. Another contem-
porary History is that of Olympiodorus of Thebes, covering the years
407 to 425.^6 Only fragments of his most valuable work survive and, as
an Easterner, his information on events in the far west was received
at second hand, most likely from a now lost account which he prob-
ably read during a visit to Rome in 425. However, his account is often
fuller and more circumstantial than that of Orosi us, and the lacunae
in his text can be reconstructed to some extent from the writings of
the Byzantine historians Sozomen (fl. c. 440) and Zosimus (first half
of the sixth century), who both used Olympiodorus'swork. Zosimus's
New History is itself damaged, its account terminating abruptly in the
year 410. Another excellent source is to be found in the Chronicle of
Hydatius, which covers not only the events of the early years of the
century, but is the principal fount of information on the history of
the peninsula thereafter, up to the conclusion of its entries in 469.
Hydatius was a bishop, though the identity of his see remains uncer-
tain. He was probably Galician born in the last decade of the fourth
century in the small town of Ginzo de Lima (Lemica) in that prov-
ince. He intended his chronicle to be a continuation of that of Jerome,
whom as an adolescent he met on a visit to Bethlehem, probably
around the year 410. He seems to have begun writing fairly late on
in his life, for whereas the quantity and detail of the information that
he provides for the 430s to the 460s is considerable and of unim-
peachable value, his references to earlier years are relatively scant
and not as informative as for the later ones.