Page 36 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Rome, too, dispatched formal legations to the emperors. ‘Such embassies,
undertaken by leading citizens on behalf of their communities, are among
25
the best-attested civic functions of Roman society.’ The civil adminis-
tration of the empire has been viewed as ‘a diplomatic system’, and the
constant traffic of petitions and rescripts between the provinces and the
court as ‘internal embassies’, equivalent to the empire’s communications
with other nations. 26
In the fifth century, the internal diplomacy of provincial administra-
tion became the interstate communication of the western kingdoms.
Provincial bodies now played a role in negotiating the major political and
military changes of the period, alongside imperial and royal courts, gen-
erals in the field, and ecclesiastical networks. In antiquity and the Middle
Ages, communication with foreign powers was not the exclusive right of
governments. The following description of the later Middle Ages well
outlines the situation in late antiquity:
The right of embassy was not spoken of in theory or regarded in practice as
diplomatic representation, a symbolic attribute of sovereignty. It was a method
of formal, privileged communication among the members of a hierarchically
ordered society, and its exercise could be admitted or denied according to the
relations of the parties concerned and the nature of the business at hand. 27
When the barbarian monarchs assumed control of the West, most ad-
ministrative structures and patterns of authority remained intact. New
centres of authority were superimposed over late Roman society without
displacing the existing network of communication. Provincial commu-
nities negotiated not only with their barbarian rulers but also, as before,
with imperial authorities; provincial bishops under non-Catholic kings
appealed to the bishop of Rome to settle schisms within the orthodox
church. Following the paths and practices of traditional provincial em-
bassies, the negotiations of these bodies were as important to the political
development of the fifth century as the actions of monarchs.
Emperors and kings wielded immense authority, and foreign policies,
like internal ones, may often have reflected the personal outlook of indi-
vidual monarchs. The rapprochement of Theodosius I with the Goths in the
Balkans, Marcian’s avoidance of war with the Vandals, and Justinian’s ag-
gression towards the same barbarians, were all policies divergent from
those of their immediate predecessors, described by contemporary

25
John Matthews, ‘Roman Life and Society’, in John Boardman et al. (eds.), The Oxford History of
the Classical World (Oxford, 1986), 754.
26
Fergus Millar, ‘Government and Diplomacy in the Roman Empire during the First Three
Centuries’, International History Review 10 (1988), 352–7.
27
Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston, 1955; repr. New York, 1988), 23.
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