In other respects the king was invested by the laws with much outward reverence. Whoever conspired against his life was punished with death; or if the capital penalty was remitted, the delinquent was blinded, shaven, and doomed to perpetual confinement. He who even affronted the king was, if rich, mulcted in half his possessions; if poor, he remained at the monarch’s disposal. Whoever defamed the character of a dead king, was punished with fifty stripes. Yet, with all this studied respect, no monarchs were ever so unfortunate as those of the Visigoths--none whose empire, liberty, or even life, was so insecure. From Atawulf to Roderic, the greater number were assassinated or deposed. We cannot fail to be struck with the national pride of the Goths: they alone were styled _nobiles_, while the rest of the community were _viliores_. Under the latter humiliating term were included not merely _servi_ and _liberti_, or slaves or freedmen, but even the _ingenui_, or free-born, whatever might be their wealth or consideration; and, to preserve the privileged caste uncontaminated, marriages were rigorously forbidden between the victors and the vanquished, until Recesuinto abolished the prohibition. Not only was the slave who presumed to marry a free woman put to death, but the free woman, who either married or sinned with a slave, was burned at the stake with him. Again, the relative importance of the three classes, nobles, freemen, and slaves, was carefully graduated by the laws. For the same crime a greater punishment was awarded to the second than the first, and to the third than the second. If from the civil we pass to the military state of the country, we shall find that the Goths were one vast nation of soldiers, the words soldier and man being considered almost as synonymous. The obligation of service was imperative on all freemen; nor were the sons of the king admitted to his table until they had made their essay in arms. Slaves were also admitted to join the levies, since every owner was required to take with him to the field one-tenth of the number he possessed. All Goths capable of bearing arms, whether lay or clerical, were subject to military duty; and heavy were the penalties with which he was visited who absented or hid himself to escape the conscription.