176 (return) [ Id sane infortunii regibus pedem ex acie referentibus saepe contingit. Den Hazil of Grenada, in Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana. tom. ii. p. 337. Some credulous Spaniards believe that king Roderic, or Rodrigo, escaped to a hermit’s cell; and others, that he was cast alive into a tub full of serpents, from whence he exclaimed with a lamentable voice, “they devour the part with which I have so grievously sinned.” (Don Quixote, part ii. l. iii. c. 1.)] 177 (return) [ The direct road from Corduba to Toledo was measured by Mr. Swinburne’s mules in 72 1/2 hours: but a larger computation must be adopted for the slow and devious marches of an army. The Arabs traversed the province of La Mancha, which the pen of Cervantes has transformed into classic ground to the reader of every nation.] 178 (return) [ The antiquities of Toledo, Urbs Parva in the Punic wars, Urbs Regia in the sixth century, are briefly described by Nonius (Hispania, c. 59, p. 181-136). He borrows from Roderic the fatale palatium of Moorish portraits; but modestly insinuates, that it was no more than a Roman amphitheatre.] From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader spread his conquests to the north, over the modern realms of Castille and Leon; but it is heedless to enumerate the cities that yielded on his approach, or again to describe the table of emerald,179 transported from the East by the Romans, acquired by the Goths among the spoils of Rome, and presented by the Arabs to the throne of Damascus. Beyond the Asturian mountains, the maritime town of Gijon was the term180 of the lieutenant of Musa, who had performed with the speed of a traveller, his victorious march of seven hundred miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the bay of Biscay. The failure of land compelled him to retreat: and he was recalled to Toledo, to excuse his presumption of subduing a kingdom in the absence of his general. Spain, which in a more savage and disorderly state, had resisted, two hundred years, the arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few months by those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission and treaty, that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause of the Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres; and in the national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined a contest with the antagonist who had vanquished the united strength of the whole.181 That strength had been wasted by two successive seasons of famine and pestilence; and the governors, who were impatient to surrender, might exaggerate the difficulty of collecting the provisions of a siege. To disarm the