Page 63 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

for this one source. Indeed, Hydatius’ accounts of embassies are preserved
in only one manuscript; his description of political events did not accord
with the historiographic practices of medieval users and redactors any
more than with that of his contemporaries. 2
Though he records events throughout the Roman empire, Hydatius
is best informed on his own, relatively unimportant province in western
Spain, the seat of the kingdom of the Sueves since 411. Until recently,
modern scholarship has tended to bypass his work in favour of sources
concentrating on Italy and Gaul, the centres of the old empire and the
new Frankish kingdom, and from general disdain for the genre of the
Christian chronicle. But of late Hydatius has been better appreciated as
arguably the best source for the history of the West in the fifth century. He
provides a relatively lengthy and reliable narrative of events; perhaps more
importantly, the details of his account offer the richest basis for analysing
the constituent elements of public affairs in his time: the conventions and
participants of the business of politics. Notwithstanding his provincial
focus, the outline Hydatius gives of the patterns of relationships between
authorities within and outside Gallaecia is valuable, for it is an outline
lacking for almost all other fifth-century barbarian kingdoms.
Two aspects of Hydatius’ Chronicle are instructive for the role of diplo-
matic communication in the fifth century. The author’s unique attention
to embassies as political phenomena demonstrates the importance which a
provincial community leader recognised in communications among bar-
barian and Roman authorities, and highlights the general but misleading
omission of diplomatic embassies from other sources. The patterns of
contact revolving around Suevic Gallaecia in Hydatius’ account, though
falling far short of a full diplomatic history of the West, reveal the com-
plex infrastructure of communication underlying the break-up of the late
Roman West. Both aspects deserve detailed investigation.

hydatius and embassies

Hydatius records some forty-two embassies. The first, sent by the Persian
shah Shapur III to the emperor Theodosius I in 384, is recorded in
the Consularia Constantinopolitana, an annotated list of Roman consuls.
Hydatius drew information for the first few years of his Chronicle from a
3
version of this fasti list. The forty-one remaining embassies are recorded

2
Manuscript: Phillipps 1829, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin; see Burgess, Chronicle, 11–26
(11 n. 4 for date) and cf. 154–72.
3
Hyd., c. 11; cf. the extant recension of the Consularia Constantinopolitana (MGH AA 9 and Burgess,
Chronicle, 215–45), s.a. 384; Marcellinus comes and the Chronicon Paschale (both in MGH AA 11),
s.a. 384, are also drawn from the same source. On the Cons. Const. and its relations with other
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