Page 111 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The hero as envoy: Sidonius Apollinaris

of poetic panegyric). The narrative of the poem is structured on incidents
of political communication.
Sidonius offers far more generous details than does Hydatius in his ac-
counts of embassies, but the importance of his Panegyric to understanding
the place of embassies in fifth-century politics does not lie in individ-
ual items of data. Rather, it is the assumptions underlying the literary
construction of the poem which are telling. Indeed, despite the frequent
exploitation of Sidonius’ work in modern accounts of Roman–Gothic
relations, analysis of the Panegyric shows itto be leastreliable as a his-
torical source precisely when it addresses the workings of embassies and
communication between the imperial government, Gallic provincials,
and the Gothic monarchy. Sidonius’ hero, Avitus, is a literary creation
who must be always separate in our minds from the real Gallic noble. His
journeys and influence on the Goths of Toulouse are crucial to a work
of propaganda engineered with a delicacy belied by Sidonius’ derivative
and overwrought style. Many of the main elements of Sidonius’ narrative
depend, if not on untruths, at least upon consistently false impressions.
These impressions are built upon common notions which are informative
of the vitality of traditional patterns of political communication in the
new circumstances of the fifth-century West.
For the investigation of certain historical topics, ‘fiction occupies a
3
privileged position’. The value of the Panegyric for this study lies in its
disingenuous presentation of Avitus. Sidonius’ portrait of the emperor
retains many traditional features of imperial panegyric. But the poet sub-
stitutes the most basic ‘virtue’ of an emperor, the quality of victory, with
an unusual image. Avitus is presented primarily as an envoy, a legatus,
whose oratorical skills and personal authority protect Rome more ef-
fectively than military strength. Sidonius appeals, sincerely or otherwise,
to an ideal of a diplomatic alternative to military means of dealing with
the barbarian presence in the West. Praising the rhetorical and persuasive
talents of a subject as an element of eulogy was by no means new with
Sidonius. But his panegyric on Avitus is perhaps the most sustained em-
ployment of this topos, and certainly its only application to an imperial
subject, in ancient literature. The fact that it is odd has made the topos
harder to recognise, and so more deceptive. Sidonius’ portrait displaces a
less generous interpretation of Avitus’ rise: a provincial magnate stepping
into the place of the generalissimo Aetius and supporting his usurpation of
the throne by the threat of the sometime hostile Goths. Though the
Panegyric often seems laborious, Sidonius skilfully manipulates the

3
Keith Hopkins, ‘Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery’, Past and Present 138 (1993), 6, cited in
G. W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley, 1994), ix.
85