Page 67 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

embassies in each of these texts is as a marker of prestige. Foreign legates
paying homage to imperial authority, and the imperial envoy attendant
at the consular celebrations of Theoderic’s appointed successor, signify
the status of their recipients; Pope Leo’s role as deliverer of the western
empire displays his secular as well as spiritual authority.
Not only Hydatius’ models and near contemporaries, but his users, too,
omitted embassies from their historical accounts. The Chronicle of 511,
an exiguous revision and continuation of Eusebius/Jerome composed
either in Gaul or in Spain, is the earliest extant work to use Hydatius
as a source; it deletes all his references to embassies. 18 So too do most
manuscript traditions of Hydatius. His early medieval redactors display
little interest in preserving record of embassies: they either wholly omit
Hydatius’ chapters describing embassies, or retain his general account of
relevantevents butleave outmention of embassies themselves. 19
Hydatius differs from his models, other chroniclers of his time, and his
users in his regular attention to exchanges of embassies. The contrast is
significant. Embassies, part of the mechanics of communication by which
major events were brought about, were not of themselves considered to be
topics appropriate for inclusion in chronicles. In chronicle writers besides
Hydatius, reference to embassies is incidental to other purposes. Given the
generic brevity of late antique chronicles and their focus on major events,
this omission is understandable; outside Hydatius, embassies appear regu-
larly only in lengthy historical works such as Procopius, Malalas, or
20
Gregory of Tours. In many ways, Hydatius was the faithful continuator

18 Chronica Gallica ad a. 511 (MGH AA 11, partof Mommsen’s Chronica Gallica); for the possibility
of a Spanish origin: Gillett, ‘Accession of Euric’, 36–8.
19 The texts of the six main redactions of Hydatius’ work are conveniently presented in Burgess,
Chronicle, Appendix 4, 154–72. Three, the Chronica Gallica 511, the lost Alcobaciensis MS, and the
Chronicon Luxoviense (M), omit all twenty-nine chapters in Hydatius directly relating to embassies.
Texts descended from a late sixth-century Spanish epitome (H) omit all but one (the capture of
Censorius while on an embassy; Table 1,no. 6). Isidore, Hist. Goth. preserves four, mostly relating
to the Goths of Toulouse (Table 1, nos. 23 [probably], 28 and 29, 33,and 34). Only the second
book of the Chronicle of Fredegar preserves a significantnumber of chapters describing embassies:
ten, again mostly about the Goths; about half differ considerably from the best MS of Hydatius
(Table 1, nos. 9, 11, 13, 17–20, 21–3, 33, 39, possibly 41). For embassies in Fredegar: below,
chapter 6,atnn. 219–22.
20
On the impact of genre on record of embassies, cf. Barnwell, ‘War and Peace’, esp. 131–2.
Malalas, Chron. includes embassy accounts in a range of chronographic, historical, and lit-
erary styles: brief notes from city chronicle sources (Chron. xviii, 73, 106; Elizabeth Jeffreys,
‘Chronological Structures in the Chronicle’, in Elizabeth Jeffreys, Brian Croke, and Roger Scott
(eds.), Studies in John Malalas (Byzantina Australiensia 6; Sydney, 1990)); a summary of an envoy’s
account of his reception in an exotic court (Chron. xviii, 56); detailed records of exchanges, in
one instance perhaps drawing on personal knowledge (Chron. xvii, 9–10; xviii, 57; xviii, 34,
36, 44, 50, 53–4, 56, 60–1, 65, 68, 70, 72, 76; on the latter, see Roger Scott, ‘Diplomacy in
the Sixth Century: The Evidence of John Malalas’, in Shepard and Franklin (eds.), Byzantine
Diplomacy, 159–65); and dramatic fictions (Chron. xiv, 10, 23). Malalas’ detailed accounts occur
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