Page 45 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and political communication

common. At the same time, the rare reception of foreign representatives
by the Senate ceased. 49
Not only did the emperor receive foreign envoys: he also often acted as
the representative of the empire to hostile or allied peoples. The meeting
on the Danube between the emperor Valens and the Gothic leader Atha-
naric in 369, and that of Valentinian I and the Alamanni king Macrianus
on the Rhine five years later, are indicative of the military–diplomatic
practices of the second to fourth centuries: personal confrontations be-
tween emperors and foreign leaders at one of the three riverine frontiers
50
(Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates) of the empire. Such meetings obviated
diplomacy. The emperor’s presence dispensed with the need for repre-
sentation, and the location of the confrontation on or within the empire’s
borders avoided the projection of a Roman presence into foreign terri-
tory. Initial contacts between the adversaries preceded these meetings,
but only as the battlefield diplomacy of antagonists in close proximity,
not on-going negotiation at a distance. Of course, emperors were not
necessarily present on the frontiers of the empire for every settlement;
but even alliances and treaties negotiated by leading generals seem to
have required subsequent personal ratification between the emperor and
highly ranked representatives of the other party in person. 51
It seems likely that frequent political communications other than mili-
tary conflicts between the empire and the many powers adjacent to its
frontiers must have existed. Certainly, imperial frontiers hosted constant
communication in the form of trade. 52 There is, however, remarkably
little evidence from the late second to the fourth centuries of diplomatic
communication, or of responses to foreign states from the political centre
of the empire. Rather, initial and perhaps most contact was presum-
ably carried out by provincial governors and especially frontier military

49 Millar, ‘Emperors, Frontiers, and Foreign Relations’, 14–15, 23 (quote); Millar, ‘Government and
Diplomacy’, 375–7; Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army, 317–62.
50
Valens: Amm. Marc. xxvii, 5.9; Themistius, Orationes, ed. H. Schenkl, G. Downey, and A. F.
Norman, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1951), i, Or. 10.201–6. Valentinian I: Amm. Marc. xxx, 3.5.Cf. the
negotiations concluding the caesar Julian’s campaign against the Chamavi in 358, held on the
banks of the river Meuse; Eunapius, Fr., 18.6. A later example of negotiations conducted from
mid-stream of an (albeit temporary) water border: Nikephorus, Short History vi: the emperor
Heraclius and the Persian general Shahin parlay from their ships on the Bosporus in 615;cf.
Chronicon Paschale,284–628 AD, trans. Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby (TTH 7; Liverpool,
1989), s.a. 615. Millar, ‘Emperors, Frontiers, and Foreign Relations’, 14; Millar, ‘Government
and Diplomacy’, 369.
51
Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, 183.
52
C. R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore, 1994),
113–31; Peter S. Wells, The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe
(Princeton, 1999), 224–58.
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