Page 49 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and political communication

both. 66 This tradition of ‘internal diplomacy’ was essential to develop-
ments in the West in the fifth century.
Formal approaches to the emperor from his subjects were an intrinsic
element of the administrative structure of the empire. The imperial court,
whether residing in Rome or on campaign, was always thronged by
crowds of provincial emissaries and litigants. Absence on a mission to the
emperor was accepted as a normal duty for provincial aristocrats; under
imperial legislation, members of urban or provincial councils who had
undertaken an embassy were exempt from serving on another mission
for two years, an indication of the frequency with which journeys to the
courtcould be required. 67
Embassies from the cities and provinces constituted the dynamic impe-
tus of most imperial governmental activity, for the bulk of the emperors’
non-military actions were responses to initiatives from local communi-
ties, concerning issues such as disputes between cities, complaints about
provincial governors, or requests for privileges. The political cohesion
of the empire, also, was maintained by this traffic, as urban and provin-
cial councils dispatched delegations to the emperors on all ceremonial
occasions – imperial accessions, victories, decennaliae, dynastic events
such as marriages and births – as expressions of loyalty. Under the em-
pire, individual honorati and land-owners as well as municipal magistrates
and imperial officials were accustomed to expressing their views to the
central government, either directly or through provincial assemblies, via
delegated legati if necessary. 68
Cities and provincial communities appear generally to have been able
to approach the emperor directly, bypassing, with some restrictions, their
provincial governors. Direct appeal to the emperor was a form of ad-
ministration parallel to the hierarchical system of provincial government,
one ‘ascending’ from the provinces rather than ‘descending’ from the
central authority. By these approaches, the needs of cities and provincial

66
For the following: von Premerstein, ‘Legatus’; Jones, LRE ii, 763–6; Kienast, ‘Presbia’; Matthews,
‘Gesandtschaft’, 661–72; Talbert, Senate of Imperial Rome, 408–25; Joyce Reynolds, ‘Cities’, in
David Braund (ed.), The Administration of the Roman Empire,241 BC–AD 193 (Exeter, 1988),
28–31, 39–46; Tor Hauken, Petition and Response: An Epigraphic Study of Petitions to Roman Emperors
181–249 (Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens 2; Bergen, 1998), esp. 296–317;
Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley, 2000), 93–4,
168–9, 175–205; most importantly, Millar, Emperor in the Roman World, 342–50, 363–463, esp.
363–8, 375–94, and Millar, ‘Governmentand Diplomacy’.
67
Millar, Emperor in the Roman World, 363, 375, 379; Paulus, Responsa I apud Justinian, Digest l,
7.8.1. For imperial law on provincial embassies: CTh xii, 12.1–16; Justinian, Codex x, 63.1–6;
Digest l, 7.1–17.
68
E.g. Constitutio of Honorius, 17 April 418, establishing the Concilium septem provincarum: vel
honoratos confluere,vel mitti legatos ...si earum iudices occupatio certa tenuerit,sciant,legatos iuxta con-
suetudinem esse mittendos; MGH Epp. 3, 13–15. On provincial assemblies: Jones, LRE i, 763–6.
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