Page 194 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Sidonius; rather, it is constant intrusions across the Alps into Italy: ‘[the
Goths], taking no heed of the new emperor, did not cease to assail the
confines of the Italian empire, which he had stretched across the Gallic
Alps; Nepos, for his part, wished to defend strenuously the border given to
him by God to rule, lest ill-advised presumption become customary’. 226
Ennodius’ apparently limiting description of Nepos’ rule over an ‘Italian
empire’ has attracted more comment than the actual cause of conflict.
In 473, before Nepos’ reign, Euric had sent a leading general into Italy,
where he was defeated and killed by imperial commanders. Ennodius
refers to subsequent harassment, after Nepos’ accession in early 474, per-
haps repeated raids rather than large-scale attempts to annex territory. 227
Since Nepos chose to summon Ligurian nobles to a council of ways and
means to discuss the Gothic intrusions, the area concerned must have
been the Cottian or Maritime Alps regions, parts of the Italian prefecture
which straddled the Alps, and uncomfortably close to the province of
Liguria. 228 Epiphanius’ mission was to secure an agreement from Euric
against further intrusions into Italy. It would therefore have been quite
unrelated to the discussions, so scathingly criticised by Sidonius, which
ceded the Auvergne region of Gaul to Toulouse.
Epiphanius’ missions protect the security of Liguria, not of all Italy
or the western empire. 229 There are parallels with the vitae of Germanus
and of Orientius: Germanus pleads for the Armorican rebels, nothwith-
standing their insurgency against the empire; Orientius seeks to prevent
the imperial attack on the Goths, though they had recently sought to
annex imperial territory, in order to prevent warfare in Aquitania; ear-
lier in Vita Epiphani, Ennodius’ hero soughtto preventthe emperor

226 Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 80: illi [sc. Gothi] Italici fines imperii,quos trans Gallicanas Alpes porrexerat,
novitatem spernentes non disineret incessere,e diverso Nepos,ne in usum praesumptio malesuada duceretur,
districtius cuperet commissum sibi a deo regandi terminum vindicare. Cf. 88 (Epiphanius’ speech to
Euric): Nepos ... ad haec nos impetranda destinavit,ut...terrae sibi convenae dilectionis iure socientur.
For the interpretation which follows, cf. Paul the Deacon, Hist. Rom. xv, 5.
For interpretation of quos . . . porrexerat, see Stevens, Sidonius, 210 and Cesa, Commentary to
Vita del Epifanio, 165, againstCook, Life of St Epiphanius. The passage implies either an otherwise
unattested extension of the Italian prefecture west of the Alps by Nepos (perhaps in the sense
of restoration of the Alpine provinces after Euric’s assault of 473), or a more general assertion of
imperial power in Gaul (possibly Nepos’ appointment of Ecdicius as magister utriusque militiae).
Sundwall, Eurich, 75.
227
473: Chron. Gall. 511, 653 (Wolfram, History of the Goths, 189, 452 n. 144, redating Vincentius’
death to c. 476 is unfounded; cf. PLRE ii, ‘Vincentius 3’, 1168). Nepos’ accession: as caesar at
Ravenna, early 474 (at which point he presumably controlled north Italy); as augustus atRome,
19 or 24 June 474 (Jordanes, Get., 338; PLRE ii,‘JuliusNepos 3’, 777). Itis unclear from
Ennodius’ accountwhether Nepos was presentatthe Ligurian council.
Raids rather than annexation: perhaps indicated by the failure of Chron. Gall. 511 to mention
Gothic incursions into Italy after 473.
228
Council: Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 81. Alps: Jones, LRE,Map 1.
229
Cf. N¨ af, ‘Die Zeitbewusstsein des Ennodius’, 121.
168