Page 290 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Procopius exploits the dramatic potential of embassy narratives with
portraits of bold and eloquent envoys before hostile monarchs, images
drawn from the same secular ethos as Cassiodorus’ eulogies of court
servants. 201
Formal embassies constituted the infrastructure for this communica-
tion and negotiation. Letters too played an important role in commu-
nication, not only the short notes of credence conventionally sent with
envoys but also substantive letters intended to be independently per-
suasive. Procopius, however, carefully distinguishes between communi-
cations which depend on the orations and negotiations of envoys, and
those for which substantive letters (including field dispatches), borne by
mere letter-bearers, are the effective means of communication. 202 The
traditions and conventions of formal embassies which had constituted
a significant part of the internal administration of the Roman empire,
and which provided the medium of political exchange throughout the
prolonged break-up of the Roman West, continued to serve as the frame-
work of communication during the essentially internal conflict of the war
between Constantinople and Italy.
Justinian’s wars redirected the channels of political communication
throughout the West. The long fifth century is characterised by the gradu-
ated fragmentation of the western imperial provinces among, for the most
part, small groups of more-or-less allied barbarian groups, living within
the territories they controlled and assuming control of Roman political
institutions with varying degrees of consensus and legitimacy. The wars
of the 530s and 540s, by contrast, were large-scale annexations of terri-
tories by an external force. The Constantinopolitan intrusion had clear
precedents: the eastern campaigns of Theodosius I and Theodosius II to
suppress western usurpers in 388, 394, and 424; naval campaigns against
the Vandals in the 430s and 460s; interference with the Ostrogothic king-
dom in the mid-500s. Justinian’s wars, however, never really ended. The
Byzantine toehold in Spain prompted conflict there until the 620s; the
imperial presence in Italy, sharply reduced after the Lombard invasion of
568, was contested until the advent of the Normans in Italy in the early
eleventh century. The historical memory of Justinian’s wars, as much as
the actual imperial presence in Italy and Spain, sustained the constant
possibility of further attempts on the West, beckoned not least by the

201
E.g. Procopius, Wars v, 7.13–25 (Peter patricius and Theodahad); vii, 16.4–32, 20.23–5 (the
deacon Pelagius and Totila). For dramatic embassy narratives in earlier Greek historians: Priscus,
Fr., 23.3, 31.1; Malchus, Fr., 5 (Fr. Class. Hist., 317, 335, 411).
202
Letter-bearers: e.g. Procopius, Wars vi, 24.1–11; 26.1–15, 25–26; vii, 9.6–20, 10.15–16.
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