THE RELIEF OF ARLES

Arles suffered through the siege for most of 508. Finally, in the summer of 508, freed from the pressure of a Byzantine blockade, Theoderic sent out a force of soldiers under the command of Ibba to relieve the city. The army arrived in the vicinity of Arles sometime in the autumn, and defeated the Burgundians and Franks in a great battle, at which, according to Jordanes' inflated estimate, 30,000 Franks perished. By the end of 508, having lifted the siege of Arles, Ibba left with his army to continue operations against the Burgundians. The following year he drove them out of Narbonne, and with the aid of another Ostrogothic army in the east, forced them to retreat to the Durance, their former boundary with the Visigoths. Theoderic then incorporated the territory east of the Rhône and south of the Durance as the praetorian prefecture of the Gauls, abolished by the Visigoths in 476/77. The decision was symbolic as well as practical. In reestablishing the prefecture, Theoderic signaled his intention to save the region from the “barbarians” and reincorporate it into the “Roman” empire, as he had restored it. In 510/11 he appointed as prefect Petrus Marcellinus Felix Liberius, a patrician and distinguished Roman official, who had most recently served as praetorian prefect of Italy (493/4–500).

As before 476, the seat of the prefecture as well as of the vicariate was located at Arles. Provincial governors were not established, however, since the prefecture was so small. Instead, Gothic counts were set over cities or groups of cities, whose internal governance remained about the same as under the Visigoths.