Page 131 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The hero as envoy: Sidonius Apollinaris

Avitus’ arrival exploits images of submission and concord, the essential
nature of the Goths’ relationship with Avitus in the Panegyric.
There is little doubt that Sidonius’ presentation of the Goths’ un-
premeditated nomination of Avitus is intentionally misleading. Petronius
Maximus died in Rome on 31 May, and Geiseric entered Rome on 2
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June. Avitus was proclaimed five weeks later. Sidonius implies (without
stating) that Avitus was unaware of the recent events in Rome before
setting out to Toulouse, for he places the announcement of the news
among the Goths during his account of the general’s visit, and makes
Theoderic II mention Maximus’ death to Avitus, as if informing him. 91
The length of time between Maximus’ death and Avitus’ elevation make
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it unlikely that Avitus did in fact travel to Toulouse ‘for a dead man’. So
too does Sidonius’ own chronology. Sidonius states that Avitus went to
Toulouse just over three months after his appointment as magister utriusque
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militiae. This means that Avitus set out in mid to late June at the earliest,
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already several weeks after the death of Maximus. Sidonius’ narrative is
carefully constructed, misleading without stating actual falsehoods.
Chronicle sources offer different, if brief, versions of Avitus’ accession.
Hydatius states that Avitus was twice acclaimed emperor by the army of
Gaul and the Gallic honorati, firstatToulouse and subsequently atArles. 95
If Hydatius’ report is accurate, either he counted the Goths as part of
the exercitus Gallicanus et honorati, or Avitus travelled to Toulouse with a
contingent of the imperial army, which acclaimed him there. In either
event, Hydatius’ account contradicts Sidonius’, for Sidonius mentions

Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: From Arcadius and Honorius to the Accession of Anastasius
(Washington, DC, 1992), 136–51, 233–41, plates 12–17, 33–4; RIC x, 59, 64, 72–3, 145.
The image of the emperors side-by-side, associated with the ‘virtue’ Concordia,may,however,
have continued to appear in other imperial art during the time of Theodosius II and Valentinian
III: cf. Merobaudes, Carm. i, 1–2, an ekphrasis of a mosaic or fresco in an imperial palace,
presumably in Rome or Ravenna, in the early 440s.
90 Seeck, Regesten, 402.
91 Sid. Ap., Carm. vii, 450–1, 512–14;butcf. 464 and Loyen, Sidoine i, 185 n. 83: Sidonius makes
Avitus describe Maximus ambiguously as princeps modo – emperor ‘now’ or ‘formerly’? The
narrative is often accepted at face value, e.g. Stevens, Sidonius, 28.
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Wolfram, History of the Goths, 179.
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Sid. Ap., Carm. vii, 391–2: vixque hoc [sc. the pacification of barbarian groups] ter menstrua totum
luna videt.
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The date of his appointment is not known. Maximus came to power on 17 March; Avitus was in
Gaul at the time, so he could not have received news of his appointment earlier than late March;
PLRE ii, 751. Sidonius was aware that Maximus’ reign had finished before Avitus travelled to
Toulouse; cf. Sid. Ap., Ep. ii, 13.4: Maximus’ reign was paulo amplius quam bimenstris (cf. Cass.,
Chron.,c. 1262: Maximus intra duos menses . . . extinctus, and the enumerations of days at n. 17
above).
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Hyd., c. 163 [156]: Ipso anno in Galliis Avitus Gallus civis ab exercitu Gallicano et ab honoratis primum
Tolosa,dehinc apud Arelatum Augustus appellatus;c. 183 [176]: Avitus . . . Gallis et Gothis factus fuerat
imperator.
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