Page 222 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Like Cassiodorus’ eulogy in the letters of appointment, Senarius’ epi-
taph dwells on his services as an envoy. Eleven of the eighteen lines of
the epitaph are dedicated to his journeys for the court. The first line
of the poem is an epithet characterising Senarius as an envoy, and eight
other such attributes follow. Senarius dwells on the geographical distance
he had travelled and the range of courts he had visited, the number of
embassies he had undertaken, and the constant success of his missions.
His appointment as comes patrimonii, and his later rank as patricius,are at-
tributed to these duties; his service in Theoderic’s consilium and as exceptor
pass unmentioned.
The epitaph complements Cassiodorus’ letters on Senarius’ appoint-
ment. The theme of royal patronage is present (line 3), as is a general
appeal to the virtues (line 17). The poem itself is an expression of the
author’s pride in eloquence. But Senarius has greatly elaborated the theme
of embassies. The epitaph is an indication of the status of the envoy’s duties
among servants of the court.
The literary merits of the poem deserve attention. Though brief, it
is a skilful composition. The epitaph uses an abundance of metaphor,
characteristic of late antique writing, but it is without the hyperbolic
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excess of Sidonius. The hexameters are metrically correct, noteworthy
though not unexpected from a contemporary of Boethius. Despite the
solemnity of the imagery, Senarius has leavened the poem with several
puns, including witty plays on conventions of epitaph. The word viator
often appears as a vocative in the opening lines of Latin epitaphs, inviting
the traveller passing by the graveyard to contemplate the former life of
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the tomb’s occupant. Viator also appears prominently in the first line of
Senarius’ epitaph, but as an epithet of the speaker himself, the ‘former,
ceaseless wayfarer of the world’. The phrase ‘former, ceaseless’ is para-
doxical, also characteristic of late antique writing, in the collocation of
sine fine with quondam, another word conventionally used in the opening
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lines of epitaphs. The whole firstline has Virgilian reminiscences: sine
fine (which seems intended to modify viator but is close in proximity to
mundi) suggests Virgil, Aeneid i, 279: imperium sine fine dedi, Jupiter’s gift
of endless rule to Roman power; the opening words Ille ego sum... quon-
dam recall those of the preliminary quatrain prefixed to the Aeneid: Ille ego
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Cf. Macpherson, Rome in Involution, 151–63. For the piling-up of the epithets of Senarius as an
envoy in Epitaph, lines 4–6, cf. Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 165, where Epiphanius is called pacis
suasor,concordia auctor,egregie moderator (also Christianae lucis iubar).
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Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana, 1942), 230–4. For examples:
Maria Luisa Fele et al., Concordantiae in carmina latina epigraphica (Hildersheim, 1988), ii, 1257–8,
s.v. viator.
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Roberts, The Jeweled Style, 20, 134–5, 140–1.
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