Page 134 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

in southern Gaul, his local influence as a former and current imperial
magistrate, and even his earlier military activities against the Goths. The
misleading epic of Avitus and the Goths was a tactful way of denying this
charge. 103

the portrayal of the envoy
The social and political forces shaping Sidonius’ world are the same as
those in Hydatius’ Gallaecia. Relations between local aristocracies and
barbarian rulers have become the focus of political action in the provinces.
The empire has a stronger presence in southern Gaul than in western
Spain, and the authority of imperial office supports the influence of local
magnates such as Avitus, just as it had in previous centuries. But relations
between Avitus and the Goths are primarily unofficial, determined by
Avitus’ standing as a local magnate. Where Hydatius portrays only conflict
between Gallaecian leaders and the Sueves, Sidonius’ writings reveal a
range of relations between Gauls and Goths, from hostility to cooperation.
The presentation of these relationships to a non-provincial audience had
to be very carefully crafted.
Understandably, Sidonius’ panegyric on Avitus is a mixture of old
and new: the traditional imagery of Roman military prowess, and the
innovative presentation of barbarian alliance as a basis of authority. The
new circumstances are carefully qualified. Avitus is shown as independent
of the Goths, swaying them with his personal authority. His fitness to
command the imperial army is fully established, yet his relations with
the Goths are consistently dissociated from his military career. The value
of his personal contacts with Toulouse is contrasted with the failure of
exhausting warfare as a way to control the Goths. The plot of the Panegyric
determines the character of its protagonist. At some expense to the truth,
Avitus is portrayed repetitively fulfilling the functions of an envoy; doing
so is the defining feature of the literary character of Avitus. 104

103
The emphasis on Avitus’ private contact with the Goths explains the quaint portrait of Avitus
teaching Roman law and Virgil to the young Theoderic II; Sid. Ap., Carm. vii, 495–9, taken
literally by almost all modern accounts. Theoderic II’s liberal education, however, need not be
fictitious. Sidonius suggests that Toulouse maintained a tradition of secular education; Carm. vii,
436, Palladia ...Tolosa; cf. Ausonius, Parentalia iii, 11, Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium
xvii, 7; xix,in The Works of Ausonius, ed. R. P. H. Green (Oxford, 1991), 28, 54. See in general
Pierre Rich´ e, ‘La survivance des ´ ecoles publiques en Gaule au Ve si` ecle’, Le Moyen ˆ Age 63 =
4th ser. 12 (1957), 421–36.
104
Mause, Darstellung des Kaisers, 100–1, correctly observes that ‘[Sidonius] lobt . . . nicht den Kaiser
Avitus, sondern seinen Weg zum h¨ ochsten Amt . . . [According to Sidonius, Avitus comes to
power] durch eine permanente Rastlosigkeit’, though it is misleading to see Avitus’ defining
activities as ‘vor allem ...die kriegerische Bet¨ atigung’ (101,cf. 104).
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