Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

35 Diplomacy and espionage 245
questions regarding Roman and Sasanian policies along the Euphrates and
Tigris.
However, there is no doubt that it was precisely these areas where
exchange took place or was initiated, be it through official channels and
diplomatic activities or through other modes of interaction between the two
cultures. In what follows we want to examine how and via which channels
the observed exchange of information took place. Which groups were able
to gain from such communication, which ideas and attitudes were transmitted,
and, not least, who were the carriers of information relating to the
opponent? Undoubtedly, diplomatic exchange, to which we have already
repeatedly referred, features prominently when it comes to the transmission
of detailed knowledge about the neighbour. 6
35: Diplomacy and espionage
Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae 89–90
(Reiske pp. 398–410)
(89) What needs to be observed when a great ambassador of the Persians arrives.
It is necessary that when a great ambassador is announced, the magister sends
to the border area an illustrious magistrate or silentarius or tribune or also one
of the notables or magistriani, or he may send whomever he resolves worthy of
the arriving person, in order that he receives him and guides him safely through
Roman territory. The one who is sent gets [p. 399] to Nisibis, and he greets him,
and if he has a letter of the emperor, he hands it over to him, (if not, one by the
magister), and he urges him to come in. Possibly the magister does not write either,
but the invitation arises solely through the mandata, to the effect that he come with
good spirit and in good health. And he goes out with him. It is necessary that the
magistrates of Dārā meet him together with their soldiers in the border area and
that they receive the ambassador and his men. And if there is something that needs
to be talked about at the border, it is talked about, because the magistrate from
Nisibis is accompanying him together with a Persian force as far as the border.
If there are no talks, it is still by all means necessary that he accompanies him
together with a force and that whereas the Romans receive him and those with
him, the other Persians remain on Persian territory, and that he alone with his
retinue gets to Dārā and be attended to. It is the duty of the magistrates of Dārā to
show much alertness and foresight so that the Persian force does not come along
by some pretext of the ambassador, and in turn follows him and captures the city
by ruse. But the magistrates must give much thought to this force [p. 400] and
must be secretly watchful and prevent such scheme. As is customary, the ducici 7
6 See Blockley 1980: 89–100; Sako 1986; Lee 1986: 455–61 and 1993a: 166–84; Scott 1992: 159–66.
7 Reiske’s Latin translation explains this term as ‘homines ad officium ducum illorum thematum, per quae
traiectus fit, pertinentes’ (p. 400).