Page 257 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Negotium agendum

Selection
The selection of envoys was a regular function of municipal and provin-
cial bodies. Cities, assemblies, and other provincial bodies generally chose
legates from among the ranks of their own nobles, though a profes-
sional orator, already familiar with the court to be approached, could be
employed. 33 Under the empire, completion of a provincial embassy to
court was often rewarded with specific immunities or privileges. The duty
could also be exploited for patronage relations at the local level. The desir-
ability of undertaking legations for social and possibly pecuniary rewards
could therefore lead to fierce competition and even fraud. 34 Eulogistic
sources which portray their subjects being petitioned by peers to under-
take embassies, rather than actively seeking nomination, are somewhat
sycophantic. Election to the episcopate was clearly no bar to undertak-
ing legations on secular issues. Ennodius portrays Epiphanius comfortable
among other Ligurian nobles; the Senate of Rome, which regularly chose
from among its own senior members for legates to the western or eastern
imperial courts or that of their successors in Ravenna, also on occa-
sion selected bishops as envoys. 35 The increasing role of bishops from
the late fifth century, as the church became the repository of rhetori-
cal as well as other education, is to be expected. 36 None the less, the
impression given by hagiographical sources, that bishops were preferred
by provincial assemblies and by courts, is a function of the genre’s ex-
clusive focus on the honour of its subject. It is belied by references to
provincial envoys by Hydatius and Sidonius which suggest that lay no-
37
bility outnumbered bishops until the 470s atleast. Similarly, nobles and
professional rhetors, not clergy, appear as provincial envoys to the courtof
Theoderic in non-ecclesiastical sources. 38 As leading figures within the

33 Selection from local nobles: e.g. Sid. Ap., Ep. v, 20. Use of professional orator: e.g. Arator, a
Ligurian educated at Milan and Ravenna and former advocatus, served as envoy to Theoderic on
behalf of the province of Dalmatia; Cass., Variae viii, 12.3, 7.
34 Privileges of undertaking embassies to imperial court: CTh vi, 22.1.2; viii, 5.23; xii, 1.25, 36.
Expectation of rewards: e.g. Sid. Ap., Ep. v, 20.2; Procopius, Wars ii, 2.4; vii, 16.29 (debate on
relative value of reward for envoy by honour from his hostor from his homeland). Fraud: CTh
xii, 12.15.
35
Senate and bishops: Pope Innocent I, to Honorius (Zosimos v, 45.5); Cass., Variae x, 13.1 (episcopi);
cf. Procopius, Wars vii, 16.4–32 (the deacon Pelagius, later pope).
36
G. A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times
(Chapel Hill, 1980), 180–1; M. Heinzelmann, ‘Studia sanctorum: ´ education, milieux d’instruction
etvaleurs ´ educatives dans l’hagiographie en Gaule jusqu’` alafindel’´ epoque M´ erovingienne’,
Haut Moyen-Age: culture, ´ education et soci´ et´ e (Nanterre, 1990), 105–38.
37
Hyd., cc. 219, 239 [215, 235](the vir nobilis Palogorius, Opilio); cf. 251 [245](the praesens cives
Lusidius sent by Remismund to Anthemius). Sid. Ap.: Carm. vii, 207–14, 316–56 (Avitus); Epp.
i, 5, 9 (Sidonius); v, 20 (Pastor); vii, 9.19 (Simplicius); vii, 12.3 (Tonantius Ferreolus).
38
I.e. the lay advocate Arator (for Dalmatia) and Parthenius (presumably for Provence); PLRE ii,
126–7, 833. Cf. Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 154–7.
231