Page 72 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

Hydatius only intermittently addresses the subject of most interest to
modern students, the purpose of individual embassies. Sometimes he
is forthcoming: his own embassy to Aetius was undertaken because of
Suevic depraedationes; several later missions of imperial or Gothic envoys
also seem to have sought to intervene in relations between the Sueves and
the provincials. There is no clear statement what sort of settlement the
provincials desired, but in several cases conflict appears to terminate with
the re-establishment of a formal treaty, a pax, between the provincials
and the Sueves. The imperially backed foray of the Goths into Gallaecia
in 456, the fullest narrative in the Chronicle, was disastrous; Hydatius’
description can hardly be seen as advocating military intervention to
control or even remove the Sueves.
The Chronicle contains no remarks on the motives of many embassies,
butthis need notmean thatHydatius was uninformed. 35 In the great
brevity of late Roman chronicles, much information is conveyed para-
tactically. The comes Censorius undertook his third, fatal embassy to the
Sueves in 440 after the Suevic occupation of Lusitania; the simultaneous
embassies of the Vandals and the Goths to the Sueves in 458 came after
the Gothic occupation of Baetica, the strategic stepping-stone to North
Africa. 36 The motivation of these missions is clearly implied. Embassies
outside Spain are curtly characterised: Avitus’ envoys to Marcian went
pro unanimitate imperii; Geiseric’s envoys to Majorian soughta pax. 37
Hydatius makes no comment on the purpose of the most intriguing
missions, the multiple embassies ad gentes sent by Valentinian III after his
murder of Aetius, and those sent by the Gothic king Euric to at least
the Sueves, the Vandals, and the western emperor, after his accession. 38
Perhaps, to Hydatius, no explanation is needed. Hydatius records these
multiple embassies as the most important consequences of the deaths of
Aetius and Theoderic II. He accords them a significance given by no other
source for the period, not because of the missions’ unstated outcomes
but as events politically significant in themselves. The embassies were the
actions of governments in a time of crisis. Irrespective of the instructions
given to each mission, the embassies shared a common purpose: the
maintenance of relations between powers.

Imperial envoys to the Sueves: nos. 6 (Censorius, probably concerning the Suevic occupation of
Lusitania), 7 (the comites Mansuetus and Fronto), 8 (Iustinianus), 10 (Fronto). Gothic envoys to
the Sueves: no. 33 (Salla); possibly no. 2 (Vetto; see below, Table 1,‘Noteon Legatus and Legatio’).
Suevic envoys: nos. 4 (bishop Symphosius), 41 (Lusidius, a leading citizen of Lisbon, cf. c. 246);
cf. the unnamed envoys of nos. 26, 28, 30–1, 36–8.
35
Cf. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians, 190.
36 37
Table 1 nos. 6, 14–15 (cf. below atnn. 105, 118, 127). Table 1 nos. 9, 23.
38
Table 1 nos. 8 (Valentinian III), 34, 35, 39 (Euric), with the consequential embassies sent by the
Suevic king Remismund, nos. 36–8. Gillett, ‘Accession of Euric’, 29–30.
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