Page 270 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

kept up an intermittent correspondence for the next decade. Parthenius,
a grandson of the emperor Avitus, met the poet Arator as a student in
Ravenna when acting as a representative from Provence to Theoderic
perhaps c. 508; they spent happy times together, reading Caesar’s Com-
mentaries and Christian (presumably Gallic) poets. The two were still
in contact in 544 when Arator, by this time a cleric of the church of
Rome, sent a copy of his verse composition of the Acts of the Apostles
from Rome to Parthenius, now magister officiorum and patricius under the
Merovingian kings in Gaul. Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, father-
in-law of Boethius, while in Constantinople probably as an envoy of
either Theoderic or the Senate of Rome, met the grammarian and pan-
egyricist Priscian in Constantinople, and was later dedicatee of three of
Priscian’s works. 102 Literary products could be offered to a host ruler
also. Anthimus, a comes of the court of either the eastern emperor or
Theoderic in Italy, apparently served as an envoy to his ruler’s name-
sake, the Frankish king Theuderic I in Gaul, to whom he later wrote
a treatise in epistolary format on the medical properties of food and
diet. 103
More licentious ties, too, could be cultivated, though with legal and
emotional risks. In Procopius’ Wars, Theodahad makes a veiled threat to
Peter patricius that the common respect for the security of envoys could
be justly ignored if the legate was accused either of insulting a ruler
or of adultery; the latter charge was perhaps more easily concocted. 104
The poet Maximianus devotes an elegy to his regrets for an affair with a
younger woman he encountered in Constantinople, where he had been
sent, presumably by Theoderic, to seek peace. 105

Stages of reception,audience,and departure
Ennodius, in Vita Epiphani, describes five receptions of Epiphanius as an
envoy atimperial and royal courts. The few details given in these ac-
counts, and passing references in other sources, recall the protocol of the

102
Ennodius and Laconius: Ennodius, Opera 38, 86, 252 = Epp. ii, 5; iii, 16; v, 24. Parthenius and
Arator: Arator, Epistula ad Parthenium, PL 68, 245–52; PLRE ii, ‘Arator’, 127, ‘Parthenius 3’,
833–4. Symmachus and Priscian: Priscian, De figuris numerorum; de metris Terentii; de praeexercita-
mentis rhetoris: libri tres,in Grammatici latine, ed. H. Keil (Leipzig, 1859; repr. Hildersheim, 1981),
Praef ., 405; PLRE ii, ‘Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus iunior 9’, 1045.
103
Anthimus, De observatio ciborum, ed. E. Liechtenham in Corpus medicorum latinorum (Leipzig,
1915–68), viii; trans. S. H. Weber, Anthemius: De observatione ciborum (Leiden, 1924). PLRE ii,
‘Anthimus 2 and 3’, 100.
104
Procopius, Wars v, 7.15–16, 18; similarly Menander Protector, Fr., 9.3 (Blockley, 109). Inter-
course (presumably with slaves) was offered as part of hospitality amongst the Huns; Priscus, Fr.,
11.2 (Fr. Class. Hist., 261).
105
Maximianus, Elegia v.
244