Page 93 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The provincial view of Hydatius

the pax with the provincials, securing his position locally and complying
with Theoderic’s wishes. 121 Renewed Suevic expansion in the 460s drew
protests not from imperial authorities but from Theoderic. 122 From 456
to the death of Theoderic II in 467, the Goths stood in the same relation
to the Gallaecians and the Sueves as had the imperial army in Gaul under
Aetius in the 430s and 440s.

Vandal diplomacy
The focus of Hydatius’ account is the relations between the provincials,
the Sueves, the imperial authorities, and the Goths. On the periphery
of his vision are contacts with the Vandals. Hydatius records embassies
to or from the Vandals on six occasions after their occupation of North
Africa. That he preserves any record at all of the Vandals is testimony
to the dangerously prominent role played by the long-lived Vandal king
Geiseric; the Vandals were, geographically, as far from Gallaecia as the
Franks, who are barely mentioned in the Chronicle, and the actions of
the Vandals rarely affected the Sueves in Gallaecia. 123 Butpolitically and
militarily, the Vandals in Carthage posed a constant threat, real or poten-
tial, to Rome, Constantinople, and indeed the Sueves. Despite periodic
treaties with the empire and even a proposed marriage alliance between
the families of Valentinian III and of the Vandal king Geiseric, the Vandal
control of Rome’s historic nemesis Carthage, the main granary of the
West and port to a major fleet, offered the Vandal king too much au-
tonomy and too great an opportunity for extortion and naval warfare for
any alliance to be more than conditional. 124 Vandal piracy throughout

[216]). Cyrila’s purpose is revealed by the succeeding events: the Suevic factional ruler Frumarius
dies, and Remismund, clearly tied to Theoderic, is accepted as their king by the Sueves (Hyd.,
c. 223,cf. 226 [219, 222]). This parallels the events of 456: once attempts to negotiate failed,
Theoderic sent a military force to replace an uncooperative Suevic ruler with a Gothic nominee.
(On Courtois’ arguments for a lacuna in the manuscripts at this point: Muhlberger, Fifth-Century
Chroniclers, 285–99.)
Subsequent Gothic embassies concerning the Sueves’ treatment of the Gallaecian provincials:
Table 1 nos. 32, 33, 40. Itis unclear on whose behalf the envoy Opilio acted (Table 1 no. 40);
the fact that Hydatius names him may mean that he was a provincial rather than a Goth or a
Sueve (above, atn. 34), butin c. 237 [233] Hydatius also names a Gothic envoy; cf. PLRE ii,
807; Tranoy i, 172; ii, 125; Burgess, Chronicle, 119.
121
Hyd., c. 223 [219]: Remismund . . . pacem reformat elapsam; Muhlberger, Fifth-Century Chroniclers,
254–5. But by the following year the Sueves were harassing the Aunonian plebs; Table 1 nos. 32,
40.
122
This seems the best explanation for Table 1 nos. 21, 22, 30–1.
123
Embassies: Table 1 nos. 14, 18 and 20, 23, 27, 37, 39. Franks: Hyd., c. 98 [88]. Vandal actions
directly affecting Sueves: Table 1 no. 14 (embassy in 458); Hyd., c. 131 [123] (a Vandal raid on
the Gallaecian coast in 445).
124
On the Vandals under Geiseric: Schmidt, Histoire des Vandales,chap. 2, 54–122; Courtois, Les
Vandales et l’Afrique,part 2,chap. 1, 155–214; Clover, ‘Geiseric the Statesman’; Philip de Souza,
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