were independent (this Aurasium is a mountain of Numidia, about thirteen
days' journey distant from Carthage and fronting the south); and indeed
they never came under the Vandals again, since the latter were unable to
carry on a war against Moors on a mountain difficult of access and
exceedingly steep.

After the death of Honoric the rule of the Vandals fell to Gundamundus,
the son of Genzon, the son of Gizeric. [485 A.D.] For he, in point of
years, was the first of the offspring of Gizeric. This Gundamundus
fought against the Moors in numerous encounters, and after subjecting
the Christians to still greater suffering, he died of disease, being now
at about the middle of the twelfth year of his reign. [496 A.D.] And his
brother Trasamundus took over the kingdom, a man well-favoured in
appearance and especially gifted with discretion and highmindedness.
However he continued to force the Christians to change their ancestral
faith, not by torturing their bodies as his predecessors had done, but
by seeking to win them with honours and offices and presenting them with
great sums of money; and in the case of those who would not be
persuaded, he pretended he had not the least knowledge of what manner of
men they were.[33] And if he caught any guilty of great crimes which
they had committed either by accident or deliberate intent, he would
offer such men, as a reward for changing their faith, that they should
not be punished for their offences. And when his wife died without
becoming the mother of either male or female offspring, wishing to
establish the kingdom as securely as possible, he sent to Theoderic, the
king of the Goths, asking him to give him his sister Amalafrida to wife,
for her husband had just died. And Theoderic sent him not only his
sister but also a thousand of the notable Goths as a bodyguard, who were
followed by a host of attendants amounting to about five thousand
fighting men. And Theoderic also presented his sister with one of the