Page 34 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

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procedures. Rome’s dealings with Persia affected political relationships
and diplomatic practice in the West; the appeal of the Ostrogoths, be-
sieged in Italy by Belisarius in the late 530s, to the shah Chosroes I for
help is only the most dramatic example. 18
With the fragmentation of the western provinces and establishment of
smaller, autonomous kingdoms, established routes of internal communi-
cation, from imperial centre to provinces, were superseded by multilateral
relations between imperial and royal courts – multilateral, because not
only did the imperial courts and their senior civil and military magistrates
in the provinces conduct relations with each of the new states, but each
new kingdom negotiated with its peers also. To call these states ‘foreign’
to the empire is misleading: all parties recognised the cultural, politi-
cal, and demographic continuities shared by the imperial East and the
post-imperial West, and though the ruling elites of each kingdom were
distinguished – by Romans – with barbarian labels, this did not preclude
administrative and social ties operating across the nominal borders. 19
The imperial government had always needed to attend to relations
with barbarian groups outside its borders. During the course of the fifth
century, the rise to power of the Hunnic khanate made dealings with
European barbarians high priority. Contacts with the Huns were charac-
terised by extreme sensitivity to the niceties of diplomatic procedure. 20
Again, patterns of communication were not restricted to contact between
the two imperial courts and the Hun leadership; apart from the semi-
independent relations with the Huns conducted by the magister militum
Aetius, the Huns were also involved in a complex network of alliances
and conflicts with the rulers of the new western kingdoms. In 451, Attila
turned his attention from the imperial provinces in the Balkans towards
the West; later writers record his pretexts of war as an alliance with the
Vandals in North Africa, a quarrel with the Goths of Toulouse, involve-
ment in factional disputes within the Frankish nobility in northern Gaul,
and a claim to marriage with the Theodosian dynasty. 21 The western
kingdoms were constantly in contact not only with each other and with
the imperial court, but also with groups outside former imperial ter-
ritories. In the collection of the official correspondence which he had

17
R. C. Blockley, East Roman Foreign Policy: Formation and Conduct from Diocletian to Anastasius
(ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 30; Leeds, 1992).
18
Procopius, Wars ii, 2.1–11, 14.11; vi, 22.17–20. Cf. the hyperbole of Sid. Ap., Ep. vii, 9.5, Carm.
45–54.
19
The interrelationship between ‘Roman’ and ‘barbarian’ identities (and populations) in this period
is a topic of valuable if controversial debate; see Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic
Italy,489–554 (Cambridge, 1997); and the papers in Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity.
20
E.g. B. Croke, ‘Anatolius and Nomus, Envoys to Attila’, Byzantinoslavica 42 (1981), 159–70.
21
Jordanes, Get., 184–6; Priscus, Fr., 20–1.
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