Page 82 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

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claimed an unspecified pretext to breach this renewed agreement. Like
the Goths of Toulouse, the Sueves demanded hostages from the provin-
cial population as part of the pax with the Gallaecians. 70 Stripped of
pejorative rhetoric, Hydatius’ descriptions of peace settlements, before
and after 430–1, suggests that treaties were formally concluded by both
the Sueves and the Romans. 71 The paces were notmere reprieves from
constant raids.
Hydatius travelled not to the western imperial court resident in Italy,
but to the field camp of one of the western generalissimos. This has been
seen as an early sign of Aetius’ assumption of quasi-imperial authority in
dealing with barbarian peoples in the provinces, and part of his personal
72
dominion of western politics. Aetius’ role was not without precedent.
As the successors of Theodosius I did not lead military campaigns, the
traditional role of the emperor in treating personally with barbarian lead-
73
ers devolved onto the leading commanders of the mobile forces. Most
famously, the settlement of Vallia’s Goths in Aquitania Secunda in 418 was
arranged by the then magister utriusque militiae and patricius Constantius. 74
The approach to Aetius was necessitated by conditions of imperial ad-
ministration in Spain. The reorganisation of western armies in the 410s
and 420s, following the suppression of the usurpers in the time of the em-
peror Honorius, established new infantry forces and a new commander in

69 Provincials’ defeat of Sueves and restoration of pax: Hyd., c. 91 [81]: Suevi . . . pacem quam
ruperant... restaurant (429); cf. certain Gallaecians’ successful defence against a Gothic band, in-
flicting large casualties, in 457;c. 186 [179].
Pretext for renewed hostilities: Rursum Suevi initiam cum Callaecis pacem libata sibi occasione con-
turbant 96 [86](431). For examples of occasio with the sense of causa in late Latin: ThLL 9.2332
iba; A. Blaise and H. Chirat, Dictionnaire latin–franc¸ais des auteurs chr´ etiens (Turnhout, 1954), 571
§§ 3–4.
70 Hostages: Hyd., c. 100 [91]. Hostages held by Goths of Toulouse: Sid. Ap., Carm. vii, 215–18,
with chapter 3,n. 63 below (Roman provincials given as hostages to Gothic settlers during or
after 418 settlement in Aquitaine). Cf. Paulinus of Pella, Eucharisticos, ed. W. Brandes, in Poetae
Christiani minores i (CSEL 16; Vienna, 1888), lines 379–82 (during the siege of Bazas by Goths
under Athaulf in 414/15, an unnamed Alanic king, who occupies the city in order to repel the
besiegers, gives his wife and one son as hostages to the citizens as sureties of his good intentions).
Other possible examples of hostage-taking in Hydatius: Hyd., c. 91 [81] (when the Sueves first
broke the pax in 430, they seized Gallaecian familiae, perhaps to serve as obsides); Hyd., c. 131
[123]withn. 129 below (possible forced taking of Gallaecean hostages by Vandals in 445); Hyd.,
cc. 188, 196 [181, 191] (after the devastating Gothic attack of 456, the divided Sueves again
successfully approached the provincials for a pax, which soon collapsed when the Sueves killed
certain provincial honesti; these may have been luckless hostages given over for the renewed pax).
71
E.g. Hyd., c. 113 [105]: Suevi . . . pacis iura confirmant.
72
E.g. O. Seeck, ‘Flavius Aetius’, RE i, 701; J. M. O’Flynn, Generalissimos of the Western Roman
Empire (Edmonton, 1983), 89–90.
73
John Lydus, De magistratibus ii, 11. Michael Whitby, ‘From Frontier to Palace: The Personal Role
of the Emperor in Diplomacy’, in Shepard and Franklin (eds.), Byzantine Diplomacy, 295–303.
74
Later proclaimed emperor. Prosper, Chron., s.a. 419; Hyd., c. 69 [61].
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