Page 121 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The hero as envoy: Sidonius Apollinaris

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Avitus’ rule is to bring renewal to Rome by defeating the Vandals. The
opening of the poem excludes from consideration the other major issue
arising from the events of mid-455: with the death of Valentinian III,
ninety years of dynastic succession from Valentinian I and Theodosius I
ended. 44 No mention of the break is made in the opening lines, and
Valentinian’s death is never mentioned, although those of Aetius and
Petronius Maximus are.
The Theodosians, however, are notignored. Roma’s speech blames
not foreign attack for her distress, but the ineptitude of her rulers. Her
state has come about de Caesare, ‘through the emperors’. 45 Throughout
the Panegyric, the Theodosian dynasty is repeatedly criticised. In Roma’s
speech, the Theodosians are implicitly compared to the standard ‘bad
emperors’. Justas Trajan followed Nero and Vitellius, so now a new
Trajan is needed. 46 The first explicit reference to the extinct dynasty is
Sidonius’ famous description of Valentinian III as semivir amens,ashe
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murders Aetius. The speech of the leader of the Gallic assembly before
Avitus blames the Theodosians, and the ‘boy emperor’ Valentinian III in
particular, for the ‘cruel fortune’ suffered by Gaul. 48
These harsh remarks may reflectgenuine Gallic resentmentagainstthe
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rule of Valentinian III. Their primary role in the Panegyric,however,isto
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compensate for Avitus’ lack of a dynastic claim to the throne. Sidonius
exploits one of the potentials of the panegyric genre, the substitution of
invective for praise. But the invective comes only in passing references.
43 Pierre Courcelle, Histoire litt´ eraire des grandes invasions germaniques, 3rd edn (Paris, 1964), 167. Stein i,
369 contrasts the ‘bellicose’ spirit of the Panegyric with Avitus’ dispatch of envoys to seek redress
from the Vandals (Priscus, Fr., 31.1), but there is no real contradiction. No war could be opened
withoutatleasta formal attemptatreconciliation; cf. atchapter 2 above, nn. 117, 120, 149.
44 For indications of contemporary consciousness of the dynastic break: Hyd., c. 164 [157] (probably
written in 456): Usque ad Valentinianum Theodosi generatio tenuit principatum.
45 Sid. Ap., Carm. vii, 103; cf. Reydellet, La Royaut´ e, 54 n. 25. 46 Carm. vii, 104–18.
47 Carm. vii, 358–9.Cf. Carm. v, 305–11. Reydellet, La Royaut´ e, 52–3, 55–8, sees criticisms of the
Theodosians as expressions of Sidonius’ personal disapproval of the dynasty, which failed to live
up to his ideal of ‘hommes d’action’. This ignores the function of such comments as propaganda
exploited in specific situations. Elsewhere Sidonius described Valentinian III positively: Carm. ix,
300 (carus popularitate princeps); Carm. xxiii, 214 (pius princeps).
48
Carm. vii, 532–43. The rhetoric of this passage is reminiscent of descriptions of the travails of
Gaul under the barbarian attacks and usurpations of the early fifth century by Gallic poets such
as Orientius and the author of the Carmen de providentia Dei; cf. Courcelle, Histoire litt´ eraire, 85–8,
96–101; M. Roberts, ‘Barbarians in Gaul: The Response of the Poets’, in Drinkwater and Elton
(eds.), Fifth-Century Gaul, 97–106.
49
Cf. Strohecker, Der senatorische Adel, 51–2; Stevens, Sidonius, 21, 35.
50
Avitus had no known western competitor who could claim to be a legitimate heir to Valentinian
III. Before Petronius Maximus’ elevation, however, the candidature of Majorian had been sup-
ported by the augusta Licinia Eudoxia; Priscus, Fr., 30 [ = John of Antioch, Fr., 201]. Cf. the
situation in the East in 450, after the death of Theodosius II, when the support of the augusta
Pulcheria gave dynastic legitimacy to Marcian; Kenneth G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Woman
and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), 208–9.
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