Page 35 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and political communication

written for the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy, Cassiodorus prominently dis-
plays diplomatic letters to rulers, giving pride of place equally to eastern
emperors, kings governing former imperial provinces, and rulers beyond
imperial boundaries. 22
Warfare constituted a specific venue for foreign diplomacy. In late
antiquity as before, generals in the field possessed a certain latitude in
dealing with enemy powers. Few battles were fought to extinction; after
a demonstration of resources and an initial trial of strength, commanders
were in a position to negotiate a settlement, to establish a truce and
perhaps the framework for a permanent agreement. This authority was
an important element in the foreign relations of the fifth century, when
military engagements were sometimes resolved by permanent settlement
of barbarian groups on Roman soil. The activities of generals represent
an extension of imperial authority in foreign affairs.
Within the empire, the Christian church employed means to commu-
nicate between its major and peripheral centres, and with secular author-
ities, derived from the conventions of civic embassies. Bishops regularly
dispatched envoys to communicate with other ecclesiastical and secular
authorities; the only extant set of instructions to envoys written under the
later Roman empire are those of Pope Hormisdas to clerics sent to the
emperor Anastasius in 515 and 519. 23 The role of embassies within
the Church itself and between the Church and secular rulers is a complex
issue which is not treated in full here; it calls for a separate study. Here may
it suffice to note that these points of contact, too, comprise what contem-
poraries called legationes and negotium. Very likely, some of the twenty-five
embassies declared by Theoderic’s envoy, mentioned above, consisted of
journeys to the bishops of Rome and perhaps to Constantinople in or-
der to resolve Church schisms, alongside the representations to hostile
western kings which the same envoy certainly undertook. 24
Of all the contexts within which political communication operated, it
is most important for this study to stress the domestic: the many aspects
of late Roman society and government which were regulated by nego-
tiations conducted through envoys according to recognised conventions.
Imperial provinces were administered not only through centralised bu-
reaucratic machinery, but also by constant interchange between provincial
cities and their imperial or royal rulers. Provincial approaches to the im-
perial court always retained the forms of foreign embassies. The Senate of

22
See chapter 5, below.
23
Collectio Avellana, 116 (with Collectio Avellana, 115, 116a, 116b); 158 ( = Hormisdas, Indiculi of
515, 519). John Matthews, ‘Gesandtschaft’, trans. R. Werner-Reis, Reallexicon f¨ ur Antike und
Christentum x (Stuttgart, 1977), 675–84. See below, chapter 6,pp. 227–30.
24
Below, chapter 5.
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