Agila I.

Agila I.

Agila I (* before 549 ; † March 555 in Mérida ) was king of the Visigoths from December 549 to March 555 .

Agila was elected king after the assassination of his predecessor Theudigisel . As early as 550 the city of Cordoba rose against him. Agila tried to suppress the rebellion, but the insurgents caused him a heavy defeat; he lost his son, the royal treasure and a large part of his army. As a result, he was so weakened that there was another revolt against him in 551, which was led by the noble Athanagild . Athanagild seized the city of Seville and tried to disempower Agila, which he initially failed. Athanagild then asked the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian for help. In the summer of 552 imperial troops landed under the patricius Liberius in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Together with Athanagild's forces, they inflicted defeat on Agila. But they couldn't beat him decisively; The war raged for three years until Agila was murdered by his own supporters. Thereupon Athanagild was generally recognized as king. The Eastern Romans stayed in the country, annexed the territories they had conquered in the former Baetica , which were organized as the province of Spania and received their own magister militum , and now fought against Athanagild for their part. It was not until 625 that the Goths succeeded in driving the imperial troops out of southern Spain.

literature

• Gerd Kampers: History of the Visigoths. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2008.
• Edward A. Thompson : The Goths in Spain . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1969, pp. 16f. and 323-329.

Remarks

1. ↑ On the reasons and circumstances of his death and the assessment of the change of power in historiography, see Konrad Bund: Falling from the throne and deposition of rulers in the early Middle Ages , Bonn 1979, pp. 557–559.

predecessor	Office	successor
Theudigisel	King of the Visigoths 549–555	Athana picture