Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533

Abstract

Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533. By ANDREW GILLETT (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2003; pp. 335. £47.50). THIS is a useful book on an important and largely neglected theme, the role of embassies and envoys in the Late Antique West. The period between AD 411 and 533 witnessed the emergence of the first ‘barbarian kingdoms’ in Gaul, Spain and North Africa and the increasing fragmentation of the Western Roman Empire, and within this rapidly changing environment the existing classical forms of political communication acquired a new significance. Gillett first sets the role of envoys in this period against the background of earlier Greek and Roman traditions (Ch. 1). He then proceeds to trace, through the analysis of specific texts (Chs. 2–5) and of the ceremonial organisation of embassies (Ch. 6), how those traditions were adapted to express the complex relationships between local Roman populations and their new barbarian rulers in the fifth and early sixth centuries.