Page 261 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Negotium agendum

members of his office, and the quaestor, whose duties involved the over-
sightof visiting envoys and drafting of diplomatic correspondence as well
52
as counsel to the ruler. The individual’s talents in oratory might particu-
53
larly recommend him. Finally, there is a striking number of individuals
who undertook multiple palatine embassies, recommended apparently
by their previous experience in undertaking legations, whether to the
same party or another. 54 As the writings of Cassiodorus and Senarius
demonstrate, palatine officials drew status and personal gain from suc-
cessful completion of embassies. 55 Itwas notuncommon for palatine
legates to be charged with more than one task, negotiating ecclesiastical
issues for an episcopal court while conducting political affairs with the
emperor or king to whom they had been sent. 56
Besides civilian magistrates, military commanders, too, could serve as
envoys. Hydatius is the only fifth-century source to record as envoys

52
Members of the office of the magister officiorum: e.g. Malalas, Chron. xviii, 57 (Justinian dispatches
a magistrianus to the Gothic king Athalaric).
53
Lee, Information and Frontiers, 45 and n. 142. Oratorical skill was still an important criterion for
selection of envoys in late sixth-century Merovingian Gaul: e.g. Gregory of Tours, Hist. iii, 33
(Secundinus, sapiens et retoricis inbutus litteris), cf. v, 43 (Gregory derides an envoy from the Gothic
king Leuvigild as virum nulli ingenii aut dispositiones ratione conperitum).
54
E.g. Trygetius twice, from Valentinian III to Geiseric 435 and Attila 452 (Prosper, Chron., 1321,
1367); Censorius three times, from Aetius to the Sueves in Gallaecia (above, chapter 1, Table 1,
nos. 3, 5, 6); Consentius quotiens, from Valentinian III to Theodosius II (Sid. Ap., Carm. xxiii,
228–62); Faustus Niger twice, from Theoderic to Zeno and Anastasius (above, n. 47); Phylarchus
twice, from Leo to the renegade magister utriusque militiae Marcellinus of Dalmatia and then to
Geiseric in 462/3, and to Geiseric again in 467 (Priscus, Fr., 39.1, 52; Fr. Class. Hist., 343, 361);
Senarius twenty-five times, including twice to ‘the East’ and twice to ‘the West’ in one year,
from Theoderic (Senarius, Epitaph, lines 9–13); Alexander three times and Peter patricius four
times, from Justinian to the Persians and the Ostrogoths (PLRE iii, 41–2, 996–7); the deacon
Pelagius, by Pope Vigilius to Justinian, by the city of Rome to Totila three times, and by Totila to
Justinian (Procopius, Wars vii, 16.4–32; 20.23–5; 21.17, 18–25); Secundinus plerimque legationem,
from the Frankish king Theudebert I to Justinian (Gregory of Tours, Hist. iii, 33); Bishop Egidius
of Rheims three times, from Childebert II (Gregory of Tours, Hist. vi, 3, 31; vii, 14); Ebregisel
saepe, for Frankish rulers to Visigothic Spain (Gregory of Tours, Hist. ix, 28); the abbot Gunthar
saepe, between Frankish kings (Gregory of Tours, Hist. x, 31 § 17); the spatharius Grippo, from
Childebert II to the emperor Maurice (Ep. Austr., 25–39, 43–7; Gregory of Tours, Hist. x, 2, 4;
see Paul Goubert, Byzance avant l’Islam ii.1: Byzance et les Francs (Paris, 1956), 165–73). For
eastern examples, see Lee, Information and Frontiers, 45–7 (emphasising the increase throughout
the fourth to sixth centuries in evidence for individuals repeating embassies). For a later period,
cf. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, 175–81, 229–32.
55
So too in late sixth-century Gaul: e.g. Secundinus, who undertook many embassies for the
Frankish king Theudebert, ob hoc iactantia sumpserat et nonnulla contra rationem exercebat (Gregory
of Tours, Hist. iii, 33).
56
E.g. on the Acacian schism: the vir inlustris Latinus and vir spectabilis Medusius, 476 (Collectio
Avellana, 57); the western magister officiorum Andromachus, c. 489 (PLRE ii, 89); the patricius
Fl. Rufius Postumius Festus, c. 497 (Collectio Avellana, 102); the eastern magister scrinii memoriae
Gratus, in 518 (PLRE ii, 519; Moorhead, Theoderic, 116 n. 62). On the Three Chapters con-
troversy: an unnamed legatus from a royal courtin Gaul (either ChildebertI, Chlothar I, or
Theudebald; PLRE iii suggests the latter: ‘Leudardus’, 786)(Epistolae aevi Merowingici collectae
(MGH Epp. 3) 4).
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