Page 46 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

outposts. It is perhaps not solely the result of the sources’ silence that
foreign relations under the empire appear to be ‘Romanocentric’. Even
in its relations with newly powerful Sassanian Iran, the imperial gov-
ernment seems not to have maintained regular communications. Before
the relatively well documented fourth century, there are few examples
of imperial emissaries dispatched to foreign peoples, and it has been ar-
gued that much of the contact which did occur between Roman and
Persian territories was essentially the outcome of private initiatives such
as religious pilgrimage rather than of formal government initiatives. 53
Nevertheless, the fourth-century evidence suggests that the use of civil-
ian and military officials, and also private individuals, as envoys to Persia
and to the northern barbarians was a standard if not frequent practice in
times of military confrontation. 54
Four factors involved in the selection of the emperors’ envoys to
foreign rulers are illustrated in the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus
and Eunapius of Sardis of two embassies sent in 358 by Constantius II
to the shah Shapur II, concerning Persian claims to Mesopotamia and
55
Armenia. The first embassy, consisting of the comes rei militaris Prosper,
the tribunus et notarius Spectatus, and the philosopher Eustathius, failed to
deter Shapur’s preparations for war; a second mission, comprising the for-
mer comes domesticorum Lucillianus and the tribunus et notarius Procopius,
was no more successful.
Justas generals were often sentas envoys to former antagonists in fifth-
century bc Greece, so the choice of the two military officers, the comites
Prosper and Lucillianus, probably exploited their military experience with
the Persians. Lucillianus atleasthad previously commanded troops against

53 Evidence of contacts from early to late empire: Monica Affortunati, ‘Ambasciatori germanici
in Italia dal II sec. a.C. al II sec. d.C’, in Barbara and Piergiuseppe Scardigli (eds.), Germani
in Italia (Rome, 1994), 105–15 (for northern European tribes). Primarily ‘private’ nature of
Roman contacts with foreign regions: Matthews, ‘Hostages, Philosophers, Pilgrims’, esp. 45
(though several of the ‘informal’ factors of contact discussed operated under a governmental
umbrella, i.e. hostages, and the Christian missionaries supported by the emperor Constantius II).
Roman–Sassanian relations to fourth century: Benjamin Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman
Army in the East (Oxford, 1992); M. H. Dodgeon and S. N. C. Lieu (eds.), The Roman Eastern
Frontier and the Persian Wars,AD 226–363: A Documentary History (London, 1991); for attested
embassies: 17, 19–20 (Alexander Severus), 131–4 (Galerius).
54
Millar, ‘Emperors, Frontiers, and Foreign Relations’, 5–6 (to the list at n. 36 of fourth-century
evidence of Roman envoys, add Claudian, Cons. Stil. i, 51–68: Stilicho’s mission to Persia c. 383),
18; Millar, ‘Governmentand Diplomacy’, 370–2.
55
Amm. Marc. xvii, 5.1–15, 14.1–3 (firstembassy); xvii, 14.3; xviii, 6.17 (second embassy);
Eunapius, Vitae sophistarum, ed. G. Giangrande (Rome, 1956), vi, 5–10, trans. in Philostratus
and Eunapius, Lives of the Sophists, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright (LCL; London, 1921), 395–9.See
also Consularia Constantinopolitana (MGH AA 11), s.a. 358: Persian envoys visit Constantinople
in April 358.
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