Page 232 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

with its capital at Braga. This is not impossible, although relations between
Theoderic and the Sueves are not attested elsewhere. It is perhaps more
likely, however, that by both Iberus and maris Oceani... litora Senarius
means the kingdom of the Visigoths, which since 418 had embraced the
Atlantic coastline of south-western Gaul and, from some time after the
470s, controlled the greater part of the Iberian peninsula. 111
More precise information on Senarius’ missions would be gained if
he could be identified as one of the legati who were entrusted with the
diplomatic letters preserved in the earlier books of Cassiodorus’ Variae.
But, as discussed above, it is just these diplomatic correspondences from
which the names of court servants have been most consistently deleted.
Nevertheless, some indication of Senarius’ missions can be gained from
the Variae. Itmay reasonably be assumed thatSenarius’ appointmentas
comes patrimonii in September 509 rewarded more than just his years of
service to the court. The timing may have been determined by recent
events in which Senarius played an important role, earning appointment
to the illustrissimate. Certainly the years immediately preceding Senarius’
advancement, from 504 to 509, gave ample opportunity for an envoy of
Theoderic to engage in important negotiations.
The early years of Theoderic’s rule in Italy were spent consolidat-
ing the Goths’ military security by gaining recognition of Theoderic as
ruler of Italy from the emperor Anastasius, and by establishing a net-
work of marriage-alliances throughout the West, tying Theoderic to the
royal houses of the Franks, the Vandals, the Goths of Toulouse, and the
Burgundians. 112 These arrangements lasted until the mid-500s. In 504/5,
Ravenna and Constantinople contested the control of Pannonia. The
Ostrogoths succeeded in bringing the province under Italian control, but
at the cost of good relations with the government of Anastasius. Soon
afterwards, in 506/7, the stability of the West was threatened by tensions
in Gaul between the Franks under their aggressive king Clovis and the
Visigoths under Alaric II. Theoderic’s interests had already been compro-
mised recently by Clovis’ eastern expansion, which had forced Alamannic
refugees into Ostrogothic territory. Theoderic strove to prevent warfare
between the Franks and the Visigoths through a combination of arbi-
tration and deterrence, but to no avail. In 507, the forces of Alaric and
111
Gothic occupation of Spain: Thompson, Romans and Barbarians, 190–4.For maris Oceani . . .
litora, cf. Hydatius’ description of the settlement of the Goths in Aquitania in 418: Gothi . . . sedes
in Aquitania a Tolosa usque ad Oceanum acceperunt,Hyd.,c. 69; modified by the author of the Chr.
Gall. 511: a Tolosa in Burdegalam [Bordeaux] ad Oceanum versus,c. 565.
112
Recognition: Anon. Val. xii, 57, 64. Marriage alliances: Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 163; Anon. Val.
xii, 63, 68, 70, 72; Jordanes, Get. lvii, 295–6; lviii, 297; Procopius, Wars v, 12.22. Cf. Bury
i, 461–2; Ensslin, Theoderich, 84–90; Ensslin, ‘Romverbundenheit’, 509–36; Wolfram, History of
the Goths, 284–90, 306–15; Moorhead, Theoderic, 35–9, 51–4.
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