The Roman power in Spain was broken by those populations, who gave to Spain the important foreign elements of the fifth century. These are said to be the Alans, the Vandals, the Suevi, and the Goths. Concerning the first of these there is a doubt. The true Alani were a people from the parts between the rivers Volga and Jaik to the north, and the range of Caucasus to the south--people whose nearest neighbours were the Circassians and Russians, or, at any rate, their ancient equivalents: people whose affinities were Asiatic; and whose nearest kinsmen were the Huns, the Avars, the Khazars, and the Turks. Now I do not say that the presence of such a population in Spain, in the first ten years of the fifth century (about A.D. 408) is impossible; perhaps, indeed, it is probable. The Huns, with whom the Alans were allied, were then hanging, like a cloud charged with thunder, over Europe, about to carry carnage and desolation as far westward as the plains of Champagne. And the Alans will help them. So I do not deny that they may have invaded Spain. I remark, however,--as good authorities have done before me--that, except in Spain, the Suevi are almost always in alliance with the _Alemanni_; a nation with a name so like that of the _Alani_, as for confusion to be likely. Such confusion, I think, existed here: in other words, I believe that the invaders of Spain were the Suevi and _Alemanni_--not the Suevi and _Alani_. If the view be wrong, we must admit an intermixture--inconsiderable, perhaps, in amount--of _Turk_ blood. The Vandals--for reasons given elsewhere--I believe to have been no Germans at all, but Slavonians under a German leader, the ancestors of the present Serbs of Silesia and Lusatia: since the express statement of Idatius is that they were _Vandali Silingi_. Now the _Silingi_ can easily be shown to have been the old Silesians. The existence of Slavonic blood in Spain was first indicated by the present writer; and as _Andal_-usia took its name from the Vandals in question, the local ethnologist may be well employed in seeking for Slavonic elements in a quarter where they have not hitherto been suspected. As the Vandals, too, of Andalusia were the Vandals of Genseric, Gelimir, and the kings of northern Africa, it must be Slavonic rather than German blood, which is not unreasonably supposed to exist amongst some of the mountaineers of Algeria. Whether the Vandals occupied Andalusia to the comparative exclusion of the Goths is uncertain. The Suevi of Spain must have been but little different from those Burgundian Germans who conquered Germany. They formed part of the same confederacy, and only differed from their allies in proceeding further southwards.