Page 83 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

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Spain, the comes Hispaniarum. This army, known only from its attempts
to check the Asding Vandals, was not destined for a glorious future. Its
intervention in conflicts between the Vandals and the Sueves precipi-
tated the Vandal occupation of Baetica in 419, and its subsequent attempt
to dislodge the barbarians resulted in defeat. 76 In 429 the Vandals deci-
mated the imperial forces in Spain, probably attempting to prevent the
77
Vandal passage to North Africa. The Sueves’ ambitions in 429–31 to ex-
pand beyond Gallaecia and to overthrow existing arrangements with the
Roman provincials were encouraged by the simultaneous destruction of
the imperial military in Spain and the departure of the Vandals.
In 431,asaformer magister utriusque militiae per Gallias and now magis-
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ter utriusque militiae praesentalis, Aetius was not only one of the supreme

75
Possibly upgraded 419/21 toa magister utriusque militiae equivalent to the magister utriusque mili-
tiae per Gallias; Jones, LRE i, 192, 196–7; iii, 36 n. 44, 353–4; Hyd., cc. 74 [66](the comes
Hispaniarum Asterius), 77 [69](the magister utriusque militiae Castinus); Not. dig. Oc. vii, 118–34
(comes Hispaniarum, not listed in the distributio of ibid. v). The comes Asterius occupied a praetorium
in Tarragona in ?419; Augustine, Epistolae ex duobus codicibus nuper in lucem prolatae, ed. Johannes
∗
Divjak (CCSL 88; Vienne, 1981), Ep. 11 8.2, cf. lviii–ix. The exclusive assignmentof Castinus
and other magistri utriusque militiae to Spain is disputed by A. Demandt, ‘Magister Militum’, RE
Suppl. xii, 635, 667–9, 671; cf. J. Sundwall, Westr¨ omische Studien (Berlin, 1915), 51 no. 44,‘Fl.
Asturius’. Cf. Javier Arce, ‘La Notitia dignitatum etl’arm´ ee romaine dans la diocesis Hispaniarum’,
Chiron 10 (1980), 605–6.
76 In 421; Hyd., cc. 74, 77 [66, 69].
77 Chron. Gall. 452,c. 107 (s.a. 431); Seeck, Untergang vi, 111–12; Norman H. Baynes, ‘A Note on
Professor Bury’s History of the Later Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies 12 (1922), 220–1; Stein
i, 320. The evidence of Chron. Gall. 452 has been dismissed as a duplicate of Castinus’ campaign
of 421, Hyd., c. 77 [69] (L. Schmidt, Histoire des Vandales, trans. H. E. del Medico (Paris, 1953), 36
n.1; Christian Courtois, Les Vandales et L’Africa (Paris, 1955), 55 n. 4,cf. 56 n. 5, 156; Thompson,
Romans and Barbarians, 172–3, 299 n. 70). But there is no reason to attribute a chronological error
of eight years to the author of Chron. Gall. 452 (cf. Clover, ‘Geiseric the Statesman’, 9–10 n. 1).
The entry has also been interpreted as a reference to the battle in 429 between the Vandals and
the Sueves, Hyd., c. 90 [80] (Clover, ibid., 9–10 n. 1; Muhlberger, Fifth-Century Chroniclers, 171
n. 77), but the passage refers to the defeated army as milites; it is unlikely that the author would
refer to the Sueves so, when elsewhere he consistently refers to barbarians by tribal names.
Cassiodorus, Chron., c. 1215 (s.a. 427) records a campaign against the Vandals by the Goths
immediately prior to the crossing into Africa. This is clearly a separate campaign from that of
421; cf. Cass., Chron., 1203; Jordanes, Get., 166 (the date of 427 in both sources is derived from
Prosper’s dating of the Vandal entry of Africa). The Goths were probably auxiliaries to a Roman
force, as they had been in 421. It is possible that the Suevic forces in Lusitania, which Geiseric
attacked before departing Baetica, were also Roman allies (Hyd., c. 90 [80]; Courtois, Vandales,
56 n. 5), but it is more likely that this was the beginning of the Suevic push to occupy the rest of
the peninsula.
Salvian, De gubernatione Dei, ed. F. Pauly (CSEL 8; Vienne, 1883), vii, 11.46, 12.53, links the
crossing to Africa with a Vandal defeat of the Romans and their Gothic auxiliaries, but does not
indicate how close in time these events were.
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Epigraphic evidence of Aetius’ tenure as magister utriusque militiae per Gallias: L’Ann´ ee ´ Epigraphique,
1950 ( = Revue Arch´ eologique ser. vi, 36 (1950)), no. 30. His tenure was either 425–9, during which
he is attested only as comes (W. Ensslin, ‘Zum Heermeisteramt des sp¨ atr¨ omischen Reiches’, Klio 24
(1931), 476–7; PLRE ii, ‘Aetius 7’, 22), or 429–30, between his attested appointment as a magister
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