Page 77 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

dispatch and reception of envoys was attended by ceremonial and display
at Braga and other barbarian courts as it was at the imperial capitals.
Embassies were a source of information as well as a topic of Hydatius’
Chronicle. Information in some entries was taken directly from envoys
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in Gallaecia. Other travellers to western Spain, too, provided Hydatius
with information. 54 Such visitors must have been a welcome source of
knowledge to Hydatius, especially after he began composition of the
work. Given Hydatius’ prefatory remarks on his geographical distance
from the rest of the Roman world, it is tempting to attribute much of
the unsourced material in the Chronicle to contact between Hydatius and
envoys. But in fact, Hydatius is quite explicit about what information he
derived from envoys; less than half a dozen entries are sourced to envoys,
and there is no reason to assume that any other data are based upon news
from embassies where they are not mentioned. 55 Only once did envoys
bring news of an imperial succession, which could have contributed to
the chronological structure of the work: the death of the emperor Libius
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Severus in 465, reported by Suevic envoys returning from Toulouse. For
no other imperial accession or death does Hydatius indicate the source
for his information. 57 That Hydatius mentions how Severus’ death was
discovered suggests that the haphazard transmission of such news through
diplomatic missions was exceptional.
Some of the information Hydatius did acquire from travellers came
from private interview, but this need not have been the case for news
gained from visiting or returning embassies. 58 The purpose of certain

53 For the following: contrast Muhlberger, Fifth-Century Chroniclers, 211; Burgess, ‘Hydatius’, 67–70;
Burgess, ‘The Third Regnal Year of Eparchius Avitus: A Reply’, Classical Philology 82 (1987), 337
and n. 10; Margarita Vallejo Girves, ‘Relaciones del reino visigodo de Tolosa con el imperio. El
papel de las embajadas’, in Antonio Mendez et al., Los Visigodos y su mundo (Madrid, 1997), 76.
54 E.g. the priest from Arabia, Germanus; Hyd., c. 106 [97].
55 Only Hyd., cc. 177, 197 [170, 192] (in both cases, envoys visiting Gallaecia specifically to make
public pronouncements), 230–1, 242–4, 247 [226–7, 238, 241] (Suevic envoys bearing news on
their return from Gaul) explicitly cite legati as the source for information.
56
The Suevic envoys presumably had been sentabout Gothic–Suevic tensions over the Suevic ex-
pansion into Lusitania; Table 1 no. 31; Hyd., c. 231 [227]; cf. Muhlberger, Fifth-Century Chroniclers,
310. Burgess, ‘Hydatius’, 81 and n. 19, conjectures that information on the dating of Anthemius’
reign came from the Suevic envoys of Table 1 no. 36.
57
Hydatius’ list of imperial dynastic events includes not only the elevation and deaths of the em-
perors, but also the deaths of the augustae Galla Placidia in 450 (c. 148 [140]) and Pulcheria in 453
(c. 157 [149]). As Burgess points out (‘Hydatius’, 68), the hostility towards Valentinian III in the
entry concerning the murder of Aetius makes it unlikely that the envoys subsequently dispatched
by the emperor were Hydatius’ source (cc. 160, 161 [152, 153]). Other examples of major political
news being received in Gallaecia before the arrival of envoys dispatched in association with the
events include Ricimer’s naval victory over the Vandals (cc. 176, 177 [169, 170]) and the fratricidal
accession of Euric (cc. 237, 238 [233, 234]).
58
Private interview: e.g. Hyd., 106 [97]: Hydatius received news of certain eastern ecclesiastical
affairs from the priest Germanus and ‘other Greeks’ (relatione comperimus). Cf. the prefatory remarks
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