On 1 January 414, a splendid wedding took place in Narbonne: Athaulf, King of the Visigoths, married Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius the Great and sister of Honorius, Emperor of the Roman West. The German king wore a toga, poets chanted nuptial songs and fifty young slaves dressed all in silk presented the bride with fifty plates laden with gold and silver. The marriage was symbolic and immensely famous at the time; it was seen as the achievement at long last of a union of Rome and Germany, of the Latin and barbarian worlds. Some, like the historian Idatius even regarded it as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel foretelling the marriage between the king of the North and the daughter of the South. Alas, within two years, Athaulf was dead, stabbed by one of his warriors at Barcelona, and Galla Placidia, beaten and violated, was eventually sent back to her brother for a ransom of 6,000 barrels of corn. Thus, between Narbonne and Barcelona, began the 300-year-long history of Visigothic Spain, a history whose beginnings, in their high hopes and high drama, seem like an encapsulation of all that followed. It was a brutal history; a time of senseless violence, cruel tortures and plunder (Galla Placidia herself, along with the gold and silver displayed at her wedding, was part of the booty seized by the Visigoths when, four years earlier, they had captured and sacked Rome).