Their rule extended to the Loire till they were driven back to the Garonne by the Franks in the sixth century, and lasted in Spain and Aquitaine to 711 when it succumbed to Arab conquest. The Wisigoths conquered a country already under Roman law, with a mixed population of German as well as Celtic and Iberian tribes. They were not the first German intruders. They were invaders, but not altogether at enmity with the Romans. Their princes, after the break-up of the Roman power, issued gold coins--solidi and tremisses--in close imitation of those of the Eastern Empire. Goth and Roman were encouraged to marry on equal terms. And though there are traces of a scale of payments in composition for homicide, it bears little trace of the tribal principle of the solidarity of the kindred. There is no scale of payments directly under the head of homicide, and we are left to gather incidentally what the wergeld (if it can be so called) may have been. In a clause[96] added between 653 and 672 it was enacted that upon the kidnapping of the child--son or daughter--of a free man or woman, the criminal was to be delivered over into the power of the child’s father, or mother, brother or nearest parentes, so that they may have power to kill him or sell him. And if they desired it, they might demand the composition for homicide from the criminal, _i.e._ 500 solidi (some MSS. 300 solidi), the crime being to the parents no less grave than homicide. If the child could be recovered, half the composition for homicide was to be paid, and if the criminal could not pay he was to become their slave. This doubtful mention of 500 solidi or 300 solidi finds some explanation in a later clause. [Sidenote: The wergeld graduated according to the age of the individual.] Indirectly, again, we get the scale in force for homicides in L. VIII. Tit. IV. s. 161, of about the same date. It enacted that injuries done by vicious animals, known to be such, were to be paid for _sicut est de homicidiis_ by the ‘constituted composition’--_compositio constituta_--and then the following scale is given: