Page 266 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

From the provisions in the Code for the maintenance and prevention of
abuse of the cursus publicus, one law is preserved (concerning penalties for
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the misappropriation of official horses and wagons). The editors of the
Breviarium seem to have assumed the continued existence of the cursus
publicus, and made provision for the prevention of abuse, but specified
none of its purposes: provision of the army, transport for government of-
ficials, or transport of municipal embassies. This silence is equivocal, and
reflects the different primary functions of the Code as a near-complete
record of imperial legislation, and of the Breviarium as an efficient, shorter
reference source for law in a provincial region (a function seen, for exam-
ple, in the omission of the bulk of the title on the cursus publicus in order
to reduce the lengthiest and most repetitive title in the Code to a single
title concerned with criminal misuse). The Breviarium does notprovide
a template of administrative arrangements.
The title in the Breviarium on the cursus publicus includes, like most titles,
a legal gloss (interpretatio); it differs little from the original law except that
the word evectio is expanded to publica evectio. The qualification perhaps
reflects a looser semantic range and more general application for evectio
in the early sixth century. 80 The phrase publica evectio is used also by
one hagiographic source in reference to transport provided by a Gothic
king in Gaul in the late fifth century. The same work also mentions
the provision at royal command of transport and accommodation, and
suggests the maintenance of mansiones, staging posts of the cursus publicus,
in the Burgundian kingdom of the early sixth century. The value of
this evidence is ambiguous: the extant text is Carolingian but seems to
be based on an earlier work composed close to the narrative time. 81
Publica evectio is used by Gregory of Tours for transportprovided atroyal
command, and evectio is used by other pre-Carolingian sources also. 82
What if any public system existed to provide this transport in sixth- and
seventh-century Gaul is unknown.
There is some evidence to suggest that governments in the western
kingdoms did continue to ensure the availability of transport and pro-
visions for embassies and those travelling on official business, but that
the responsibility for actually providing these services and goods shifted

79
Cursus publicus: CTh viii, 5.1–66; CTh viii, 5.59 = Breviarium viii, 2.1 with interpretatio.
80
CTh viii, 5.59 = Breviarium viii, 2.1, interpretatio.
81
Vita Marcelli (for date and edition, see chapter 4 above, n. 136) v, 3 (evectio publica from the Pyrenees
region to Toulouse); ix, 2 (Gundobad provides accommodation for Marcellus’ return voyage from
Lyons to Die sub octavo lapide Viennensis urbis in fiscali praedio mansionem). Evectio is attested only in
pre-Carolingian sources (see following note); the terminology of the second passage is consistent
with a Carolingian composition.
82
Gregory of Tours, Hist. ix, 9 (587); cf. ii, 24 (setin the 470s). Pre-Carolingian sources: Niermeyer,
Lexicon, 383 s.v. evectio.
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