Page 302 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

attended the dispatch and reception of embassies, and envoys became
themselves the recipients of honour at courts, in addition to their role
as registers of the degree of cordiality exchanged by their principals and
hosts. The formal audience, with its protocols of restricted entry and its
conventions of speech and reply, was itself a ritual around which other
elements of ceremonial could be constructed.
The conditions of the fifth and early sixth centuries conspired to elevate
the prestige of the duty of legation. The survival of provincial communi-
ties, or at least their prosperity under new rulers, could depend upon the
representatives of their emissaries; court officials were ceremonially hon-
oured by hosts when undertaking embassies, and rewarded by their ruler
when successful. The envoy became a potent image to be appropriated
and exploited, as works in a variety of genres attest. Sidonius’ Panegyric on
Avitus is a unique attempt to transfer the respect owed to envoys to im-
perial eulogy, prompted by the awkward circumstance of Avitus’ position
as a usurper. Itis a work of propaganda, delivered atthe specific occa-
sion of Avitus’ consular celebrations, to a precise audience, the Senate
of Rome. These circumstances underscore his presumption of a ready
acquaintance with the phenomenon of provincial and imperial envoys to
western kings. Constantius, Ennodius, and the anonymous biographers
of Orientius of Auch and Vivianus of Saintes also appropriated the secular
image of the envoy for the subjects of their hagiography, a genre whose
specific circumstances are less readily identifiable than those of panegyric.
The new provincial elite of aristocratically born bishops sought to graft
the trappings of prestige associated with their social origin onto epis-
copal office. Ennodius reveals explicitly the model of palatine legations
which underlay his portrait of Epiphanius. The briefer secular eulogies
of Cassiodorus and Senarius exemplify the same professional ethos which
Ennodius seeks to appropriate.
By happy chance, these sources speak to each other in enlightening
ways. Sidonius employs specific literary strategies in order to manipulate
details of Avitus’ career into an endless series of arduous legations on be-
half of his local or wider community. Constantius and Ennodius employ
strikingly similar techniques to achieve very similar images, suggesting at
least indirect influence rather than parallel development. The account by
Ennodius of Epiphanius’ supplication to the Burgundian king Gundobad
almost exactly mirrors that of the classicising historian Malchus concern-
ing the senator and patricius Severus before Geiseric. Ennodius describes
Epiphanius as eschewing the rewards for service sought by palatine envoys;
Cassiodorus presents the career promotions of Senarius and other Italian
palatine officials as just such rewards; while Senarius in turn chooses this
same theme to commemorate himself.
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