fortifications in their territory. They complained and sent deputations that were ignored by Aequitius, the magister armorum per Illyricum. However, by that year the construction of these forts was behind schedule. Maximinus, now praetorian prefect of Gaul, arranged with Aequitius to promote his son Marcellianus and put him in charge of finishing the project. The protests of Quadian leaders continued to delay the project, and in a fit of frustration Marcellianus murdered the Quadian king Gabinius at a banquet ostensibly arranged for peaceful negotiations. This roused the Quadi to war. Valentinian did not receive news of these crises until late 374 AD. In the fall he crossed the Danube at Aquincum into Quadian and Marcomannic territory. After pillaging the lands of today's western Slovakia nearly without opposition, Valentinian retired to Savaria to winter quarters. In the spring he decided to continue campaigning and moved from Savaria to Brigetio. Once he arrived on November 17, he received a deputation from the Quadi. In return for supplying fresh recruits to the Roman army, the Quadi were to be allowed to leave in peace. However, before the envoys left they were granted an audience with Valentinian. The envoys insisted that the conflict was caused by the building of Roman forts in their lands. Furthermore, they said individual bands of Quadi were not necessarily bound to the rule of the chiefs who had made treaties with the Romans, and thus might attack the Romans at any time. This attitude of the envoys so enraged Valentinian I that he suffered a stroke that ended his life. In 434 Attila devastated the area and started the mass migrations that destroyed the Western Roman Empire. Later the area began to be occupied by Slav tribes. The first written source suggesting that Slavic tribes established themselves in what is now Slovakia is connected to the migration of the Germanic Heruli from the Middle Danube region towards Scandinavia in 512. In this year, according to Procopius, they first passed "through the land of the Slavs", most probably along the river Morava. A cluster of archaeological sites in the valleys of the rivers Morava, Váh and Hron also suggests that at the latest the earliest Slavic settlements appeared in the territory around 500 AD. They are characterized by vessels similar to those of the "Mogiła" group of southern Poland and having analogies in the "Korchak" pottery of Ukraine. Archaeological remains