Page 102 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

by the Goths in the mid-450s was one element of the devolution of im-
perial authority to Toulouse. Communication consequently crossed the
borders of Gothic, Suevic, and imperial territories; what had been an
‘internal’ responsibility now became an ‘external’ issue.
Relations between barbarian rulers and Roman elites in the provinces
were conducted by an ‘internal diplomacy’ reminiscent of the early em-
pire. As with provincial embassies of the earlier empire, governmental
actions – imperial and Gothic protection of the Gallaecians – were ini-
tiated by the petitions of regional communities. Repeated references to
paces between the Sueves and the Gallaecians indicate a formality com-
parable to that of the Sueves’ foedera with the empire and the Goths. We
have little knowledge of the constitutions of either the provincial au-
thorities or the Suevic court, partly because of what may be conscious
exclusion by Hydatius of reference to negotiations between the two. But
it is evident that the maintenance of formal relations between barbarian
military rulers and provincial aristocracies was the precondition for the
stability and expansion of the Suevic kingdom; this too is true of other
western kingdoms.
Notwithstanding Hydatius’ bitter references to the Sueves, the provin-
cials’ appeals to imperial and Gothic authorities for intervention in do-
mestic politics appear to have sought diplomatic, not military, resolution:
the confirmation of their paces. Itwas Suevic expansion outside Gallaecia,
not internal relations with the provincials, which prompted imperial and
Gothic military campaigns against the Sueves. Hydatius’ detailed account
of the effects of the Gothic assault of 456–7, lamenting what would now
be called collateral damage and the plundering of uncontrolled troops,
shows sufficiently why the civilian provincial population would not seek
outside military intervention. There is no reason to believe that Gallaecian
legates to Gaul anticipated the requests to eastern emperors by sixth-
century bishops of Rome, under Gothic and Lombard occupation of
Italy, to ‘exterminate our cruel enemies’. 153
The dispatch and reception of embassies served ‘less obvious ends’
alongside the immediate settlement of conflict or alliances. 154 The re-
ception of envoys could be attended by ceremonial display, performances
aimed at impressing foreign and perhaps domestic audiences with author-
ity and power. Military parades impressed visiting envoys, as the reports
of Suevic legates to Toulouse and Italy show. 155 The presence of foreign

153
Gregory the Great, Registrum epistolarum, ed. Dag Norberg (CCSL 140, 140a; Turnhout, 1982),
Ep. xiii, 38, to Phocas on the Lombards, 603. Cf. Procopius, Wars vii, 35.9–10.
154
Cf. P. Antonopoulos, ‘The Less Obvious Ends of Byzantine Diplomacy’, in Shepard and Franklin
(eds.), Byzantine Diplomacy, 315–19.
155
Hyd., cc. 243 (cited at the beginning of this chapter), 247 [238, 241].
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