Page 103 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

envoys at court was itself an indication of a ruler’s potency. 156 The status
of an envoy was consequently important, indicating sensitivity to the re-
cipient’s domestic needs; known imperial envoys to the Sueves all held
the rank of comes, while Gallaecian legates to Gaul included a bishop and
a vir nobilis. Other aspects of diplomatic communication too may have
been for domestic consumption. Hydatius’ knowledge of particular de-
tails of embassies to or from the Suevic royal court suggests that those
incidents had been intentionally noised abroad. Did Hydatius’ record of
Suevic kings’ brusque dismissal of certain Gothic embassies originate in
well-publicised bluster of the court of Braga in the face of opposition to
its expansionist aims? Embassies evidently were a source of information
as well as political phenomena themselves. As such, they could be ex-
ploited by their principals as channels of propaganda while simultaneously
fulfilling their obvert purpose. Public circulation of the news of Avitus’
embassy to Marcian for imperial recognition, and of Aegidius’ approach
to Geiseric, are perhaps cases of disinformation and brinksmanship con-
ducted through embassies, examples of the use of communications for
political or strategic aims. So too may be the reports of military musters
seen atToulouse and atRome by Suevic envoys.
Hydatius’ Chronicle shows through the eyes of a contemporary how
relations between authorities throughout the West were conducted. It
is a model for understanding a period of busy communication and ne-
gotiation, conducted along lines of traditional administrative embassies,
now operating in a new context. The political circumstances Hydatius
describes for the Suevic regions can be taken as an example for other parts
of the fifth-century West. Hydatius’ younger contemporary Sidonius
Apollinaris describes, however differently, the same world, with its care-
fully negotiated relations between local aristocracies, regional imperial
officers, barbarian rulers, and imperial authority. In various writings,
Sidonius demonstrates an aspect of western political communication only
hinted at by Hydatius: the high prestige associated with successfully com-
pleting embassies, and the social capital this conveyed. Sidonius and other
Gallic and Italian writers seek keenly to exploit this status, for both literary
and social gains.

156
E.g. Sid. Ap., Ep. viii, 9, versus lines 19–54.

77