one of the Arabic governors of Hispania, Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa. In legend and literature According to a legend that was for centuries treated as historical fact, Roderic seduced or raped the daughter of Count Julian, known in late accounts as Florinda la Cava. This tale of romance and treachery has inspired many works. Roderic appears in Nights 272 and 273 of the 1001 Nights. In the story, he opens a mysterious door in his castle that was locked and sealed shut by the previous kings. He discovers paintings of Muslim soldiers in the room and a note saying that the city of Toledo will fall to the soldiers in the paintings if the room is ever opened. This coincides with the fall of Toledo. Roderic is a central figure in the English playwright William Rowley's tragedy All's Lost by Lust, which portrays him as a rapist usurped by Count Julian and the Moors. The Scottish writer Walter Scott, and the English writers Walter Savage Landor and Robert Southey, handled the legends associated with these events poetically: Scott in "The Vision of Don Roderick" in 1811; Landor in his tragedy Count Julian in 1812; and Southey in "Roderick the Last of the Goths", in 1814. The American writer Washington Irving retold the legends in his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (1835), mostly written while living in that country. These consist of "Legend of Don Roderick", "Legend of the Subjugation of Spain", and "Legend of Count Julian and His Family". In Alexander Pushkin's unfinished poem Rodrik (rus. Родрик) Roderic survives the last battle, becomes a hermit and gets a promise of victory from Heaven. Roderic has been the subject of two operas: Rodrigo by George Frideric Handel and Don Rodrigo by Alberto Ginastera. Roderic appears as a minor character in the first half of Portuguese early Romantic writer Alexandre Herculano's novel Eurico, o Presbítero ("Euric, the Presbyter", 1844). Roderic's story is told the British West End musical La Cava (2000). Sources Bachrach, Bernard S. "A Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy, 589–711." The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 1 (1973), pp 11–34. Collins, Roger. The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–97. Blackwell Publishing, 1989. Collins, Roger. Visigothic Spain, 409–711. Blackwell Publishing, 2004 Drayson, Elizabeth. "Ways of Seeing: The First Medieval Islamic and Christian Depictions of Roderick, Last Visigothic King of Spain". Al-Masāq, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2006), pp 115–28. Hodgkin, Thomas.