Page 62 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Chapter 2

THE PROVINCIAL VIEW OF HYDATIUS

In 467, the Gothic army of Toulouse assembled before its new king Euric.
The soldiers, fully armed, were watched by several envoys sentto Euric
by Remismund, king of the Sueves in western Spain. Circumstances were
tense, for the Sueves and the Goths were on the verge of conflict. As the
assembly proceeded, the envoys witnessed a strange sight, which they
took to be a portent. The metal blades of the Goths’ weapons changed
colour; the natural metallic hues drained away, replaced for a time by
green, rose-red, saffron-yellow, or black.
This story is recorded by Hydatius of Lemica, a bishop of the western
Spanish province of Gallaecia, towards the end of his continuation of the
Chronicle of Eusebius and Jerome. It is fitting that the most picturesque
incidentin Hydatius’ Chronicle concerns an embassy, for embassies are
1
an important topic in his record. Late antique chronicles are generically
brief, yet Hydatius gives considerable room to accounts of embassies. His
presentation of events is unique; no other western narrative source gives
such prominence to the actual mechanics of political communication.
This apparently minor difference in content deserves to be recognised
and underscored, for it is the key to gaining insights into the nature and
conduct of fifth-century developments. Extensive patterns of communi-
cation, though characteristic of the time, would be barely discernible but

1
For editions, see ‘Note on Editions, Commentaries, and Translations’ below. The incident was
one of three prodigies witnessed and reported by the Suevic envoys (Hyd., cc. 242–4 [238]at 243).
Unlike the other two, it is not a common topos (Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Philologische
Studien Zur Chronik des Hydatius von Chaves (Palingenesia 47; Stuttgart, 1994), 146). There is a
near-contemporary comparandum: Procopius, Wars iv, 2.5–7 (the effect may be explicable by
natural chemical change of the metals). Later writers exploited the ambiguity of the portents:
Fredegar, Chron. ii, 56 (portending Gothic defeat at the battle of Vouill´ e); Isidore, Hist. Goth., 34
(part of a generally encomiastic account of Euric). Jacek Banaszkiewicz, ‘Les hastes color´ ees des
Wisigoths d’Euric (Idace c. 243)’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 72.2 (1994), 225–40, strains
the text to present a triumphalist view of Euric (for a more modest view of Euric at the time of
his accession: Gillett, ‘The Accession of Euric’).
Important topic in Chron.: Muhlberger, Fifth-Century Chroniclers, 211; Suzanne Teillet, Des
Goths ` a la nation gothique: les origines de l’id´ ee de nation en Occident du Ve au VIIe si` ecle (Paris, 1984),
222–3; Burgess, ‘Hydatius’, 69–70.
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