Page 81 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

the provincials or the empire, sometimes not. Contact between all the
western courts and the Vandals in Africa are recorded with tantalising
brevity. The combinations and permutations of these diplomatic prin-
cipals indicate the complex networks underlying political and military
developments.

Gallaecian provincials and imperial and royal authorities
Relations between the western powers differed in many ways from mod-
ern international relations. The Roman aristocracies, especially in the
provinces, played a part duplicated by no modern private individuals.
This is well illustrated by the embassies to and from the provincials of
Gallaecia. The Gallaecians repeatedly appealed to the imperial govern-
ment, and later to the Goths of Toulouse, for intervention between them-
selves and the Sueves. Yet it is evident that they could also treat with their
barbarian neighbours on their own authority.
Provincial embassies are first seen in the mission to Aetius undertaken
66
by Hydatius and the return legation sent by the general in 431–2. In 430
(soon after the departure of the Vandals from Baetica to North Africa), the
Sueves under King Hermeric violated a pax with the Gallaecian provin-
cials, attacking inland areas where certain provincials retained strongholds.
The provincials defended themselves and defeated the Sueves, and the pax
was restored. 67 The following year the Sueves again abrogated the pax.
Presumably lacking confidence that they could again defeat the Sueves,
the provincials sought imperial intervention. Bishop Hydatius was sent
to northern Gaul to seek the general Aetius.
This repetitious conflict and Hydatius’ description of the Sueves as
a ‘treacherous tribe’ have cast the barbarians as untrustworthy raiders,
oblivious to the obligations of treaties, ‘marauders, nothing else’. 68 But
Hydatius’ elliptical presentation is tendentious. During the first conflict, it
was the Sueves, not the Gallaecians, who suffered the worst from ‘slaugh-
ter and captivity’. The pax restored in 430 is previously unmentioned in
the Chronicle. Hydatius may indicate that the Sueves, the following year,

66
Table 1 nos. 1 and 3.
67
Hyd., c. 91 [81]. The mediae partes Gallaeciae perhaps refers to the inland region of the conventus
of Braga, where Aquae Flaviae, Hydatius’ putative episcopal see, was located; Tranoy ii, 63,
Map iii. This would explain why Hydatius was chosen as envoy in 431.
68
Hyd., c. 208 [203]: gens perfidia,cf. c. 219 [215]: Suevi promissionum suarum ut semper fallaces et
perfidi. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians, 164 (quotation), 209; cf. e.g. ‘La Galicia sueva vista por
los escritores ind´ ıgenas contempor´ aneos’, in Erwin Koller and Hugo Laitenberger (eds.), Suevos-
Schwaben: Das K¨ onigreich der Sueben auf der iberischen Halbinsel (411–585) (T¨ ubingen, 1998), 27–9.
Vituperation of barbarians as untrustworthy was an ancient commonplace with much currency
in the fifth century (e.g. Sid. Ap., Ep. vi, 6.1).
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