Page 70 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

relations with the Sueves. After his departure, Hermeric was convinced to
restore the pax with the Gallaecians by ‘episcopal intervention’, presum-
ably a delegation of bishops, one of whom was sent by the Suevic king
to the imperial authorities to confirm the agreement. 26 One imagines
Hydatius among the bishops who reached agreement with Hermeric.
In the preface to his Chronicle, Hydatius cites his position as bishop to
give authority to his personal knowledge as a historical source: ‘called to
episcopal office, [I am] not unaware of all the toils of a wretched age’. 27
The truth of this claim is illustrated by his mission of 431–2. On becoming
a bishop, Hydatius gained access to ecclesiastical sources of information,
not least the network of letters circulated throughout the Mediterranean
28
by his fellow bishops. More importantly for the writing of the Chronicle,
Hydatius entered the ranks of those whose position brought them into
contact with the flux of political power. Like many historians and chroni-
clers of antiquity, Hydatius wrote with experience in public life, but
unlike fourth-century writers such as Ammianus Marcellinus, Eutropius,
Festus, Aurelius Victor, or Nicomachus Flavianus, his experience was not
29
in high-level military, legal, or administrative affairs. His authority was
as a bishop, at a time when the episcopal office was increasingly assum-
ing the responsibilities of provincial aristocracies and municipal offices.
Like his contemporaries Priscus and Sidonius Apollinaris, and his near-
contemporary Olympiodorus of Thebes, Hydatius’ most important foray
into public life was as an envoy and orator.
Hydatius’ attention to embassies in the Chronicle, however, does not
merely reflect his personal experience; he does not relate solely those
embassies with which he was personally involved. Instead, he consistently
endeavours to relate exchanges of embassies as an important element of
all political affairs. The far fuller historiae of Procopius and Gregory of
Tours pay similar attention to exchanges of embassies as intrinsic, shaping
elements of events. It is not so much Hydatius’ personal experience as his
awareness that such communications are a crucial factor in the politics of
his own province and the empire as a whole that determines Hydatius’
choice to include a new category in his Chronicle.
The description of embassies in the Chronicle is notformulaic. Whereas
the Consularia Constantinopolitana records embassies with specific day
26
Table 1 nos. 3–4: sub interventu episcopali.
27
Hyd., Praef ., §7 [6]: adlectus ad episcopatus officium,non ignarus omnium miserabilis temporis aerumnarum.
28
Denys Gorce, Les Voyages,l’hospitalit´ e,et le port des lettres dans le monde Chr´ etien des IVe et Ve si` ecles
(Paris, 1925), 193–247; Catherine Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of
Paulinus of Nola (Oxford, 2000).
29
For the professional backgrounds of late antique historians of a later period: Geoffrey Greatrex,
‘Lawyers and Historians in Late Antiquity’, in Ralph W. Mathisen (ed.), Law,Society,and Authority
in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2001), 148–61.
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