Page 100 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Gallaecia; the political actors present in Hydatius’ Spain were represented
in all the western states. Hydatius’ unique record may be used as a de-
scriptive model for the diplomatic activity which underlay fifth-century
history. Several main characteristics of political communication in the
late antique West are evident in his account: the frequency and impor-
tance of diplomatic traffic, albeit neglected by other historical sources;
the complex interaction of authorities, both among the monarchs of the
western kingdoms and the empire, and between various social groups
within individual kingdoms; the concurrent maintenance of many bi-
lateral relations by each power; and the political functions of embassies
other than negotiation of immediate issues.
Political communication dominates Hydatius’ account, especially in
the latter half. Despite his evident and self-confessed limitations as a his-
torian, Hydatius knew of many embassies throughout the fifth-century
West. The same must have been true of other writers whose chronicles
survive. Some, like Prosper and Marcellinus comes, who had contacts to
the papal or imperial courts, clearly had greater potential than Hydatius to
be informed on secular affairs. Butconventions of genre and individual
agenda precluded record of diplomatic traffic. Formal communication
between realms was, to Hydatius, as important a political activity as war-
fare. If he is not forthcoming on the purpose of embassies, neither is he
on the aims of war; modern students are obliged to infer the motives
behind most battles in this period, as they must for Hydatius’ embassies.
Certain events which appear in other sources as military victories register
asdiplomaticsettlementsinHydatius,anindicationnotonly of the insepa-
rable ties between war and diplomacy but also, again, of the constraints
of late antique literary genres. 151
Surviving narratives or references to embassies should be recognised
as almostrandomly preserved evidence of a phenomenon so common as
to be, in general, undeserving of record. They should not be treated
as exceptional, and consequently given distorted significance when ex-
ploited in modern accounts. Almost all major political events must have
been preceded by many busy embassies, mostly unrecorded. It is incon-
ceivable, for example, that marriage alliances between barbarian royalty
were not negotiated at length through exchanges of embassies, though we
hear of almost no such negotiations until the late sixth-century Histories
of Gregory of Tours. It is clear from other sources that the repeated em-
bassies prior to the Goths’ assault on the Sueves in 456 were typical of

151
Cf. I. N. Wood, ‘Continuity or Calamity? The Constraints of Literary Models’, in Drinkwater
and Elton (eds.), Fifth-Century Gaul, 9–18.

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