Page 47 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and political communication

the Persians, and Prosper had been stationed on the empire’s eastern
56
front. Senior military commanders, comites or magistri, are prominentin
other embassies recorded by Ammianus, and Eunapius states that it was
usual for emperors to select as envoys ‘men who had won distinction in
the army, or magistri militum’. 57
Eunapius’ observation presents a second factor determining the selec-
tion of envoys, for he continues: ‘or men who were next in rank to these
and had been selected for [civilian] office’. Status was important; not, as
in the Greek cities, the individual’s position in regard to his aristocratic
peers or the urban community, but his rank in the service of the emperor
and the perception of his seniority in the eyes of foreign rulers. Shapur
dismissed the first embassy on the pretext that its members were insuffi-
ciently distinguished (though the composition of the second mission was
almostidentical). 58
Thirdly, the Roman administration, as is well known, had no equiva-
lent to a specialised department of foreign affairs for policy creation or
implementation. 59 No office in the imperial bureaucracy embraced the
duties of a ‘professional’ diplomat. Rather, officials were chosen to un-
dertake missions ad hoc at the emperor’s pleasure or on the advice of his
consistorium; Eustathius, who held no public office at all, was included
on the first mission on the advice of Constantius’ praetorian prefect
Musonianus. 60 Mere proximity to the emperor was an important factor
in selection. Two members of Constantius’ embassies to Shapur were tri-
buni et notarii, and other tribuni feature as legates elsewhere in Ammianus. 61
The position of tribunus et notarius, though primarily a stenographic post,
seems often to have served as a factotum for the imperial consistory, and
itis notsurprising thatholders of this office should be chosen as the em-
peror’s emissaries. From the fourth century, magistri officiorum often feature
in accounts of embassies. Their role, however, was only to provide sup-
port facilities for embassies and to arrange the emperors’ audiences with
foreign envoys. The office was not vested with responsibility for foreign

56 57
PLRE i, ‘Lucillianus 3’, 517–19; ‘Prosper’, 751. Eunapius, Vitae vi, 5.3.
58
Cf. R. Mathisen, ‘Patricians as Diplomats in Late Antiquity’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 79 (1986),
34–49.
59
Millar, ‘Emperors, Frontiers and Foreign Relations’, 4–7; Matthews, ‘Gesandtschaft’, 665;Gruen,
The Hellenistic World, 203–49; Eckstein, Senate and General, xviii–xx; A. D. Lee, ‘Diplomacy’, in
Bowersock et al. (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide, 411–12.
60
Amm. Marc. xvii, 5.15. For Eustathius’ career: PLRE i, ‘Eustathius 1’, 310; he is noteven known
to have held a teaching position, unlike his wife Sosipatra; PLRE i, 849.
61
Amm. Marc. xix, 11.5: Constantius II sends two tribuni to the Sarmatian Limigantes in 359.
A fifth-century example is Consentius, tribunus et notarius in the consistory of Valentinian III,
used as an envoy to Constantinople; Sid. Ap., Carm. xxiii, 214–32.
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