Page 135 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The hero as envoy: Sidonius Apollinaris

The Panegyric is an experiment. Of all the activities of the real Avitus –
land-owner, general, administrator – Sidonius selected the role of envoy
as the most flexible and appropriate means to portray Avitus’ relations
with the Goths. The Panegyric casts the familiar figure of the legatus as
a hero with the trappings of political authority. The envoy is portrayed
as a powerful figure: persuasive, authoritative, able to build and maintain
alliances crucial to the strength of the empire. The personality of ties
between Rome and barbarian allies is vested in the envoy, notin the em-
peror he represents. Sidonius’ envoy is a statesman, elevated above a mere
messenger or skilled spokesman. 105 This figure is constantly contrasted,
explicitly or not, with the image of a victorious general. Sidonius draws
on well-established portraits of epic heroes, whose outstanding qualities
are fortitudo and sapientia. Aetius and Litorius are not criticised by Sidonius;
their wars demonstrate their fortitudo. ButAvitus prevails because he, like
Aeneas, combines wisdom with strength. 106 The envoy acquires strength
through alliance with barbarians, not crushing them in battle. Alliance
is notdisguised as philanthropia; rather, it is a very traditional means of
acquiring barbarian service to Roman power. 107
No ideological shift from military to diplomatic solutions underlies
Sidonius’ portrait of Avitus. The approach to the West’s most immediate
problem, the Vandals, remains military. Sidonius merely attempts to ex-
ploit the role of the envoy to find an acceptable formula describing Avitus’
rise to power, by elevating the envoy to the status of a victorious general.
At the time of delivery, Sidonius’ experiment in propaganda succeeded in
manipulating traditional and current political concepts. Sidonius’ choice
of literary strategy in presenting Avitus as a legatus, and the formal ac-
claim of his poem in Rome, give evidence that the frequency of embassies
throughout the West was so commonly understood that Sidonius could
exploit it in his deceptive account of Avitus’ journeys to Toulouse. More,
Sidonius’ propaganda relied upon a perception, shared by the provincial
magnate and his Roman senatorial audience, of a role for envoys in the
politics of the mid-fifth century West which was central and prestigious.
The legatus was an image which could be associated with imperial power.
105
Contrast the description of the role of rhetors as emissaries of their communities in Brown,
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, esp. chap. 2, 35–70: however skilful rhetors might be, the
effectiveness of their appeals ultimately depends on the goodwill of governors who know how
to ‘[play] the game correctly’ (45).
106
Cf. ErnstRobertCurtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask
(Bollingen series 36;New York, 1953), 167–78.
107
On philanthropia in relations with barbarians: Blockley, East Roman Foreign Policy, 108;P.J.
Heather, Goths and Romans,332–489 (Oxford, 1991), 167–8, 177–8; cf. Lawrence J. Daly, ‘The
Mandarin and the Barbarian: The Response of Themistius to the Gothic Challenge’, Historia
21 (1972), 351–79. Barbarian service: Sid. Ap., Carm. vii, 429–30 (speech of a Gothic elder):
[Avito] auxiliaris ero: vel sic pugnare licebit.
109