Under Alaric’s successor, Athaulf, the first foundations were laid of that great West-Gothic kingdom which we are apt to look on as specially Spanish, but which in truth had its first beginning in Gaul, and which kept some Gaulish territory as long as it lasted. But the Goths passed into those lands, not in the character of avowed conquerors, not as founders of an avowed Gothic state, but as soldiers of the Empire, sent to win back its lost provinces. ♦Condition of Gaul and Spain.♦ Those provinces were now occupied or torn in pieces by a crowd of invaders, _Suevi_, _Vandals_, and _Alans_. ♦The Alans.♦ These last are a puzzling race, our accounts of whom are somewhat contradictory, but who may perhaps be most safely set down as a non-Aryan, or, at any rate, a non-Teutonic people, who had been largely brought under Gothic influences. But early in the fifth century they possessed a dominion in central Spain which stretched from sea to sea. ♦The Suevi in Spain.♦ Their dominion passed for a few years into the hands of the Suevi, who had already formed a settlement in north-western Spain, and who still kept a dominion in that corner long after the greater part of the peninsula had become Gothic. ♦The Vandals in Africa. A.D. 425.♦ The Vandals occupied Bætica; but they presently passed into Africa, and there founded the one Teutonic kingdom in that continent, with Carthage to its capital, a kingdom which took in also the great islands of the western Mediterranean, including Sicily itself. ♦Independence of the Basques.♦ Through all these changes the unconquerable people of the Basque and Cantabrian mountains seem never to have fully submitted to any conquerors; but the rest of Spain and south-western Gaul was, before half of the fifth century had passed, formed into the great West-Gothic kingdom. ♦Gothic kingdom of Toulouse.♦ That kingdom stretched from the pillars of Hêraklês to the Loire and the Rhone, and its capital was placed, not on Spanish but on Gaulish ground, at the Gaulish Tolosa or _Toulouse_. The Gothic dominion in Gaul was doomed not to be lasting; the Gothic dominion in Spain lasted down to the Saracen conquest, and all the later Christian kingdoms of Spain may be looked on as fragments or revivals of it. Spain however never changed her name for that of her conquerors. ♦Gothia.♦ The only parts of the Gothic kingdom which ever bore the Gothic name were those small parts both of Spain and Gaul which kept the name of _Gothia_ through later causes. ♦Andalusia.♦ The Vandals, on the other hand, though they passed altogether out of Spain, have left their name to this day in its southern part under the form of _Andalusia_, a name which, under the Saracen conquerors, spread itself over the whole peninsula. ♦The Franks.♦