Page 56 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Thebes, Priscus, Malchus, Nonnosus, and Menander Protector all have
valuable, detailed accounts of diplomatic interchange between the eastern
Roman empire and its neighbours. 94 It has been suggested that these
authors illustrate a shift in fifth- and sixth-century eastern historiography
from warfare to diplomacy as the main emphasis of historia, a shiftwhich in
turn reflects the increasingly formalised relations between the Roman and
95
Persian states. While the development of regularised relations between
the great powers is sufficiently well attested, it is less certain that eastern
historiography underwenta corresponding shiftof emphasis.
Most of the extant fragments of the classicising historians owe their sur-
vival to later Byzantine excerpters and readers who had particular interests
in diplomatic exchange. This is explicit in the cases of Priscus, Malchus,
and Menander Protector; the significant fragments of their works are
mediated by deliberate selection in the Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum
and Excerpta de legationibus barbarorum (Excerpts concerning the Embassies of
the Romans and the Barbarians), partof the series of Excerpta from classical
and late Greek authors ordered by the tenth-century Byzantine emperor
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. 96 The selection criteria for extracts
from earlier works were defined by the well-educated emperor, and re-
flect the strategic preoccupations of tenth-century Byzantium. Constan-
tine VII himself, no soldier emperor, was the author of a diplomatic
manual. 97 Olympiodorus and Nonnosus owe their partial survival to
Photius, the ninth-century Constantinopolitan scholar (and, later, im-
perial bureaucrat and Patriarch), and to his massive ‘good book guide’,
the Bibliotheca, which summarises nearly 400 books, many now otherwise
lost. 98 Photius too had a personal and professional interest in embassies

94 Olympiodorus of Thebes, Priscus and Malchus: ed. and trans. in Blockley, Fr. Class. Hist. ii.
Nonnosus: ed. and trans. in Photius, Biblioth` eque,ed. Ren´ eHenry, 8 vols. (Paris, 1959–77), i,
codex 3; English trans. in Photius, The Bibliotheca, trans. N. G. Wilson (London, 1994), 27–9.
Menander Protector: The History of Menander the Guardsman, ed. and trans. R. C. Blockley
(ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 17; Liverpool, 1985).
95
Historiography: Blockley, Fr. Class. Hist. i, 61; Blockley, The History of Menander, esp. 17–18;cf.
the reviews by Brian Croke, Phoenix 37 (1983), 175–8 and Averil Cameron, Phoenix 42 (1988), 282.
Cf. the title of a German translation of Priscus: Byzantinische Diplomaten und ¨ ostliche Barbaren, trans.
Ernst Doblhofer (Byzantinische Geschichtsschreiber 4; Graz, 1955). Roman–Persian relations:
Blockley, East Roman Foreign Policy; Dodgeon and Lieu, Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian
Wars;Lee, Information and Frontiers; Geoffrey Greatrex, Rome and Persia at War,502–532 (ARCA
Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 37; Leeds, 1998).
96
Excerpta historica iussu imperatoris Constantini Porphyrogeniti confecta, ed. U. Boissevain, C. de Boor,
and T. Buttner-Wobst, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1903–10), i: Excerpta de legationibus, ed. C. de Boor (1903).
97
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio i, ed. G. Moravcsik, trans. R. J. H.
Jenkins, 2nd edn (Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae 1; Washington, DC, 1967); ii: Commentary,
ed. R. J. H. Jenkins (London, 1962).
98
Photius, Biblioth` eque,codices 3 (Nonnosus) and 80 (Olympiodorus). Other fragments of Olympi-
odorus are listed and translated by Blockley in Fr. Class. Hist. i, 107–12; ii, 153–220.
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