La diplomatie dans le monde ancien et médiéval

Jeroen Wijnendaele
(Senior Fellow at the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies)

Horaire

09h00-09h30 Accueil des participants

09h25 Mot de bienvenue du directeur Hugh Elton (Trent University)

09h30-10h00 Madeline White (Univ. of Ottawa) ‘Don’t you know we’re Roman too? Myth, Kinship, and Diplomacy in third century Sicily’

10h00-10h30 John Serrati (Univ. of Ottawa), ‘The Fetial Rite in the Roman Republic. War as the Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means’

10h30-11h00 Pause café Session II Chair: Dominique Côté (Univ. d’Ottawa)

11h00-11h30 Isabelle Guérin (Univ. d’Ottawa), ‘Le rôle des Bagaudes dans l’instabilité politique de la Gaule au IIIe siècle’

11h30-12h00 George Amanatidis-Saadé (Univ. d’Ottawa), ‘Mārūṯā de Mayperqat : Le premier évêque-ambassadeur entre Rome et l’Iran’

12h00-13h00 Lunch Session III Chair: Richard Burgess (Univ. of Ottawa)

13h00-13h30 JaShong King (Univ. of Ottawa), ‘Imperial Outrage: Emotion, Law, and Internal Diplomacy in the fifth-century Mediterranean’

13h30-14h00 Hugh Elton (Trent University), ‘Ambassadors in the Great Palace in the fifth and sixth centuries’

14h00-14h15 Pause café Session IVa Chair: Geoffrey Greatrex (Univ. of Ottawa)

14h15-14h45 Lucas McMahon (Univ. of Ottawa), ‘Information security and embassies: Menander Protector at the court of Constantine VII’

14h45-15h00 Pause café Session IVb Chair: Jitse Dijkstra (Univ. of Ottawa)

15h00-15h45 Jeroen Wijnendaele (Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies), ‘‘“Tiger Diplomacy” – Exotic gift giving and global contacts between India, Persia and the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity’

Résumés

George Amanatidis-Saadé: ‘Mārūṯā de Mayperqat : Le premier évêque-ambassadeur entre Rome et l’Iran’

Résumé : En 230 apr. J.-C., Ardashir I (r. 224-242), roi incontesté du nouvel Empire perse, lança une invasion de l’Empire romain avec le but de reconquérir ses territoires ancestraux perdus aux mains des Macédoniens d’Alexandre. Cette rivalité symboliquement héritée n’était pas une invention perse, mais une réflexion du discours déjà présent dans la société romaine depuis très longtemps. De base, le conflit prenait souvent la forme de guerre à grande échelle, mais au fil de quelques siècles, il était devenu évident qu’aucun des adversaires ne pouvait ou ne voulait détruire l’autre, et que les antiques revendications n'étaient que de la propagande. Malgré l'effusion de sang et les tensions résiduelles qui en ont dérivé, la querelle s’était lentement, mais assurément transformée en une compétition internationale sérieuse sur divers fronts non militaires. À travers la violence, on cherchait néanmoins à surmonter les enjeux qui résultent de la coexistence de deux colosses voisins. À l’aube du cinquième siècle, des circonstances uniques ont finalement permis aux relations romano-perses de surpasser la rivalité et d’atteindre leur apogée. Cette réalisation fut créditée à un certain évêque frontalier : Mārūṯā de Mayperqat. À travers ses deux ambassades en c. 399 et 408, il a convaincu le nouveau roi perse Yazdgird I (r. 399-420) d’établir des relations paisibles avec les Romains, de mettre fin à la persécution des chrétiens de son empire, et d'accorder des libertés à ceux cis. Bien que les évêques représentassent leurs villes sur le plan politique et même accompagnassent déjà les armées et les délégations diplomatiques romaines depuis des décennies, aucun n’avait agi en tant qu’ambassadeur d’un si haut niveau diplomatique que Mārūṯā. Une telle innovation diplomatique soulève la question : pourquoi envoyer l’évêque d’une petite ville frontalière au grand roi de la Perse, rival de Rome ? Cette présentation vise donc à examiner de près le choix de Mārūṯā comme ambassadeur à la cour impériale iranienne, ainsi qu’à le placer dans le contexte religieux et géopolitique de la période.

Hugh Elton: ‘Ambassadors in the Great Palace in the fifth and sixth centuries’

Abstract: The textual sources for embassies to the eastern Roman emperor in the fifth and sixth centuries are well-known, in particular the sections of the de Caeremoniis written by Peter the Patrician and Corippus’ epic poem on the accession of Justin II. These describe how an embassy to the emperor was received in theory and in practice. This paper examines the routes taken from the city into the Great Palace and the Consistory to show how the Romans used time and space in the reception of and response to embassies.

Isabelle Guérin: ‘Le rôle des Bagaudes dans l’instabilité politique de la Gaule au IIIe siècle’

Résumé : Les Bagaudes est un terme employé pour désigner un certain groupe de gens qui se sont armées au IIIe siècle en Gaule. Les Bagaudes, qui sont très peu documentés dans les sources anciennes, auraient pu avoir un rôle interne sur le cas des usurpations en Gaule. En effet, possiblement dirigés par des élites qui jouissaient alors d’un gain de pouvoir, les Bagaudes ont ajouté aux troubles de l’époque. Ils avaient un but d’autodéfense contre les invasions « barbares ». Les paysans, alliés avec une élite, avaient espoir de restabiliser eux-mêmes la Gaule, car l’armée romaine s’était montrée incompétente à protéger la Gaule. Les Romains ont perçu cela comme un acte de rébellion contre l’autorité romaine, mais la réévaluation des sources anciennes semble montrer que les Romains étaient eux-mêmes compatissants avec les Bagaudes, car ils comprenaient possiblement la situation et le besoin de protection des Gaulois. Très peu documentés, les Bagaudes ont été perçus de manière très péjorative par les sources anciennes. De nouveaux soulèvements en Gaule apparaissent au Ve siècle et les historiens anciens ont lié ces mouvements avec ceux des Bagaudes du IIIe siècle. Les sources du Ve siècle perçoivent ces Bagaudes comme des brigands et des criminelles. On voit donc qu’avec le passage du temps, les historiens ont changé l’interprétation du mot « Bagaude » et que par conséquent le souvenir de ce groupe de gens est devenu lié à des actes criminels contre l’autorité romaine. Les Bagaudes sont donc très similaires aux usurpateurs en Gaule. Les Romains ont perçu les usurpateurs comme des hommes avides de pouvoir qui souhaitaient s’opposer à l’empereur romain. Or, dans de nombreux cas, les empereurs gaulois ont choisi de rester en Gaule. Pour eux, la défense de la Gaule était une nécessité et l’empereur romain, souvent non présent près des frontières de la Gaule, était perçu comme inefficace. Ainsi, de nombreuses élites influentes ont profité de la situation pour s’élever au pouvoir et tenter d’apporter la sécurité en Gaule. Or, tout comme les Bagaudes, les auteurs romains ont perçu ces prises de pouvoir comme un acte de rébellion contre l’autorité romaine. Cette conférence aura pour but de définir qui était les Bagaudes, quels étaient leurs intentions et finalement d’analyser les conséquences de leurs actions.

JaShong King: ‘Imperial Outrage: Emotion, Law, and Internal Diplomacy in the fifth-century Mediterranean’

Abstract: ‘...If any person should fail in this matter, he confesses to a certain extent he is not a Roman.’ This strange statement, occurring at the end of one of the new laws, or novels, of the western emperor Valentinian III, can seem to some as baffling as it is accusatory. After all, what does it mean for someone to not be a Roman if everyone was supposedly a Roman? In addition, why is such a clearly emotional statement inserted into a law, especially when we tend to imagine them as filled with long-winded and dispassionate legal specifics?

This emotionality within certain late Roman imperial laws, or constitutions, is not an uncommon phenomenon. In particular, it is often visible within a corpus of surviving unabridged constitutions, including those of Valentinian III, gathered after the publication of the Theodosian Code in the mid fifth century CE, just a few decades before the demise of the western imperial office.

In order to conjecture at this and other emotional statements within late Roman laws, we need to investigate them from perspectives other than the jurisprudential; we need to look at the rhetoric as an aspect of the politics. Within this framework, strong negative emotion in a law reveals where the emperor wants to put his thumb on the scale when he tries to favor or adjudicate between competing Roman political interests. In essence, an emperor wields emotionality when he needs to perform ‘internal diplomacy.’

Through the use of modern social media techniques like sentiment analysis, we can quantitatively measure negative emotionality or outrage within the text of a law and match those results to the known historical circumstances of a law's issuing. From there, we can see exactly how late Roman emperors utilized emotion within laws as a form of internal diplomacy, as they navigated the chaotic political landscape of the fifth-century Roman Empire.

Lucas McMahon: ‘Information security and embassies: Menander Protector at the court of Constantine VII’

Abstract: Common wisdom holds that a key function of the ambassador is to be a spy. As elite men trusted by the sovereign or state with sensitive diplomatic duties, ambassadors were “in the know” in the sense that not only did they possess a great deal of non-public knowledge about the polity in which they came from, they were also well-placed to know what sort information it was valuable to acquire when abroad. Yet the process of confining ambassadors and controlling what they see is by no means a universal practice, for example, the Republic of Genoa only prohibited citizens from visiting the residences of foreign ambassadors in the sixteenth century. In the medieval Eastern Roman Empire, however, ambassadors were kept under strict guard. A great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to spectacle and awe in receiving foreigners at the court, but much less has been given to the practical matters of information security in what ambassadors were permitted to see and hear. This paper will examine embassies and information security in tenth-century Byzantium by looking at the text of Menander Protector. Menander’s sixth-century text describes diplomatic relations between Rome and Persia but only survives in the Excerpta de legationibus gentium ad Romanos, compiled under the direction of Constantine VII. The specific question is what degree of continuity can be detected in the security arrangements described by Menander? Did Constantine have this text copied merely as an antiquarian exercise, or did such practices enjoy continuity from late antiquity to middle Byzantium? And do practices from the Sasanian world find reception in the Abbasid?

John Serrati: ‘The Fetial Rite in the Roman Republic. War as the Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means’

Abstract: The primary responsibility of the fetial priests in the Roman Republic lay with declarations of war. As described by Livy (1.32.5-14), once the government determined that a foreign people had committed an offence against Rome or one of its allies, the fetiales undertook a number of ambassadorial missions to the potential enemy and demanded recompense. After a period of time, the fetiales called upon the gods to witness that the Romans had been unjustly treated. The priests thus declared the conflict to be ius and ceremonially cast a special spear onto the foreign soil. This rite served as the formal declaration of war on the part of the Roman people. Evidence demonstrates that the fetial rite in various forms was not exclusive to Rome and was utilised by a number of Italian peoples. While the rite served as a form of interstate arbitration, scholars have often been too quick to downplay its religious purposes. This paper aims to undertake an exploration of the rite’s origins outside Rome and how it served as an early tool of interstate arbitration and diplomacy for the peoples of the Italian peninsula. More importantly, the paper will centre the fetial rite within Roman religion, illustrating that its primary purpose was to ensure that a conflict was an ius bellum (‘just war’), and was thus in line with the pax deorum.

Madeline White: ‘Don’t you know we’re Roman too? Myth, Kinship, and Diplomacy in third century Sicily’

Abstract: When the Romans arrived on the Western tip of Sicily in the mid-third century BCE, the city of Eryx had a decision to make: remain loyal to the Carthaginians, who had conquered their town at the beginning of the First Punic War, or try to strengthen their alliance with the Romans, who by the end of the First Punic War had control over the entire region. The people of Eryx chose to reinforce their alliance with the Romans and chose to do so in an interesting way: they began an advertising campaign. Through coinage, temple dedications, and literature, the Erycinians sought to connect themselves to Rome by claiming shared mythological ancestry through Aeneas as both cities’ founder. By examining how Eryx used the shared ancestral myth to strengthen their connection to Rome, this paper will explore the influence and use of shared history and mythology in forming diplomatic relations in Mid-Republican Rome.

Jeroen Wijnendaele: ‘“Tiger Diplomacy” – Exotic gift giving and global contacts between India, Persia and the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity’

Abstract: ‘In the year 448, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II received a tiger from India’. This tantalizing piece of information was recorded, without further elaboration, by a chronicler working at the Imperial Court in Constantinople in the early sixth century. Yet this event was not unique. Already under the first Emperor Augustus, similar exchanges took place between India and the Roman Empire. The geopolitical landscape of western Eurasia, however, had changed dramatically in the centuries separating Augustus and Theodosius. During the first four centuries AD, the Roman Empire was the sole political entity encompassing the Mediterranean World and its European hinterland. In the first half of this period, its sovereignty was unchallenged. Yet during the third century, the geopolitical landscape of Eurasia changed dramatically. This is a period that witnessed the collapse of the Han dynasty in China and a tripartite division of its Empire, the rise of the Gupta Empire in India, the rapid replacement of the ancient Arsacid dynasty by that of the Sasanians in Persia, and major succession crises within the Roman empire that transformed it into a vastly more centralized state. Not only do these form quasi-contiguous complex polities stretching from the Atlantic to the Yellow Sea; they also represent the largest polities to have arisen during the first half of the first millennium CE and some of the most complex pre-modern political formations to have ever existed. This paper wants to respond to an increasing awareness that the cultures of ancient and late antique Eurasia were enmeshed in much broader political, cultural and economic systems. It wants to focus on the exchange of exotic animals as a means to foster international diplomatic ties between highly complex polities. This is a topic that has received relatively little attention in current scholarship, yet has the potential of approaching the history of this period from a truly global perspective.