Introduction

‘The city of Toledo was the first one founded in Hispania and all the Spanish cities were subject to it.’ Thus begins the short story of Octavianus, King of Hispania who ruled from Toledo, and his enemy Septemsiderus, preserved in the tenth-century codex of Roda. Octavianus, the story continues, summoned Septemsiderus who, for an unexplained reason, refused to obey the king's order. Preparations for war ensued. The two characters marshalled their armies to face each other in battle, but, as the clash neared, Septemsiderus halted his troops, raised his prayers to God, and Octavianus's forces were miraculously destroyed. The victor settled in Lugo, and his seven children founded eponymous cities in Galicia, Leon, and northern Portugal, a geographical focus that probably betrays the origin of the anonymous author.

This story, as Ann Christys has pointed out, must be set against the background of the ambiguous status of Toledo among Christian thinkers in the centuries following the Arab conquest. Although later Latin chronicles and histories would emphasize the connection between the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo and the early medieval Christian kingdoms, this association was far from established before the tenth century, when the story of Octavianus and Septemsiderus was probably written.