Page 230 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

of the king. Income from these lands was used directly for the expenses
of the royal palace, and apparently for the payment of the Gothic offices,
such as the comes Gothorum, created by Theoderic. 104 The claim that the
office of comes patrimonii regularly formed an exception to Theoderic’s
practice of excluding Goths from high civil offices may be doubted, but
it clearly was important for the operation of the royal palace. 105 Itwas
natural that this post would be filled by a trusted palatine officer.
Theoderic’s envoy was from a lesser family of the Roman senatorial
class. Equipped with the traditional training in rhetoric which was the
basis for public office, he entered palatine service at a young age at some
time after 493, gaining a place at court sufficiently influential for his aid
to be sought by Ennodius. He was in contact with some of the most
important men in Italy. Amongst other duties, he repeatedly undertook
embassies for the king, and came to be seen as a specialist in this task.
For his services he was honoured in 509 with an important and lucrative
post, illustris rank, entry to the Senate, and, later, with the patriciate. The
ethos of such Roman aristocrats, upon whom the civil administration
of the empire and the barbarian kingdoms depended, is shown by the
laudatory tone of Cassiodorus’ letters and Senarius’ epitaph.

In the course of his career, Senarius undertook twenty-five embassies.
This is an indication of the ubiquity of political communication in the
western kingdoms; narrative sources do not record so many embassies
dispatched by Theoderic for the whole of his reign, let alone only for
the period to 509. Senarius’ journeys clearly included missions of the
highest political importance. He states that he communicated between
rulers (he was the ‘voice of kings’), and he stresses his role both in securing
alliances and in restraining aggression. What were the circumstances of
these journeys?
Some may have been within Italy. The communications of the court of
Ravenna with both the Senate and the Church of Rome are termed lega-
tiones in the sources, indistinguishable from overseas embassies; missions

104
Stein, ‘Untersuchungen’, 384; Ensslin, Theoderich, 172.
105
Exception: Mommsen, ‘Ostgothische Studien’, 402; Stein ii, 51; Ensslin, Theoderich, 171;
Wolfram, History of the Goths, 293. The evidence is solely onomastic, resting on the unfamiliarity
of the names of three of the four known comites patrimonii, Senarius, Wilia, and Bergantinus (even
the fourth, Julianus, has been claimed as a Goth, on the basis of an erroneous manuscript reading;
Thomas S. Burns, A History of the Ostrogoths (Bloomington, 1984), 171). Neither Senarius nor
Bergantinus, however, was Gothic (for Bergantinus: Sundwall, Abhandlungen, 100–1; Ensslin,
Theoderich, 171). Wilia, the sole probable Goth, held the office during the turbulent final years
of Theoderic’s rule, when the Ostrogoths faced hostility from the Vandals; Cass., Variae v, 18–19.
At this time, relations between the government and sections of the Roman population of Italy
hadbrokendown(Anon. Val. xiv, 85), which may explain the appointment of a Goth to this
office crucial for the operation of Theoderic’s court.
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