Page 65 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

recorded by other fifth-century continuators of Eusebius and Jerome.
Only Hydatius regularly notes the dispatch and return of embassies.
Embassies are not altogether absent from other chronicles and anno-
tated consular lists. Embassies appear occasionally: in works derived from
city chronicles as records of ceremonial events; as elements of rhetoric;
and, on rare occasions, as specific, politically important events. But none
of Hydatius’ peers paid the same regularity of attention to the passage of
embassies.
City chronicles were local records of public religious and ceremonial
occasions and of other recurring or singular special events important to
urban life, maintained by municipal authorities and used as sources by a
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number of both eastern and western chronicles. Only a few legations
are recorded in extant city chronicles. The city chronicle tradition of
Constantinople noted the arrival at the imperial city of embassies from
foreign peoples bearing gifts and seeking the emperors’ amicitia. 10 The
city chronicles of Constantinople and Italy also recorded the unwilling
embassy of Pope John I to the emperor Justin I on behalf of Theoderic
in 525, an unprecedented visit of the bishop of Rome to the eastern
imperial capital and a major ceremonial occasion. 11
Several authors of chronicles choose to colour particular events or
themes with accounts of individual embassies. Prosper, a contemporary
of Hydatius who abridged and continued Eusebius/Jerome, does not
regularly record embassies, although he gives much attention to relations
between the empire and the new barbarian kingdoms in the West in the
first half of the fifth century. But he does describe, in some detail, two
embassies, both undertaken by Pope Leo I (the first while still a deacon
of Rome), one to the leading general Aetius in Gaul in 440, the other,
more famously, to Attila in northern Italy in order to prevent his march
on Rome. Prosper was an enthusiastic supporter of Leo, who is praised
elsewhere in the Chronicle; the embassies are mentioned solely in Leo’s
honour. 12 Similarly, Cassiodorus in his annotated consular list records

9
Croke, ‘City Chronicles’; Croke, Count Marcellinus and His Chronicle (Oxford, 2001), 177–8.
10
Marcellinus comes, Chron., s.aa. 384.1 (above, n. 3); 448.1, 496.2: gifts to the eastern emperors from
‘India’; cf. Chronicon Pascale, s.a. 384. Malalas, Chron. xviii, 73, 106: ‘Indian’ embassies bearing
gifts, presumably Axumites, cf. xviii, 15, 56. Victor of Tunnuna, Chronica (MGH AA 11), s.a.
563.2: firstAvar envoys in Constantinople. John of Biclar, Chronica (MGH AA 11), s.aa. 569.1,
573.6, 575.3: envoys from the Garamantes, Maccurritae, and Saracens seek amicitia.Croke,‘City
Chronicles’, 175, 179;Croke, Count Marcellinus, 113, 119.
11
Constantinople: Marcellinus comes, Chron., s.a. 525. Italy: Anon. Val. xv, 88–93; Andreas Agnellus,
Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis, 39, both given in MGH AA 11 (Mommsen’s Consularia Italica),
pp. 328, 333. Novelty and ceremonial: Liber pont., 55 (the embassy was greeted by the emperor
Justin I at the fifteenth milestone before Constantinople).
12
Prosper Tiro, Epitoma Chronicon (MGH AA 9), 1341, 1367;cf. 1375:Leo’s supplicatio to Geiseric
before the gates of Rome in 455. See below, chapter 4,atnn. 3–6.
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