THE EMPERORS AT CONSTANTINOPLE
476-527
Contrast between the fates of the Eastern and Western Empires—The East
recovers its strength—Leo I. and the Isaurians—The Emperor Zeno
and the rebellion against him—Wars of Zeno with the two
Theodorics, 478-483—The ‘Henoticon’—Character of the Emperor
Anastasius—Rebellion of the Isaurians—War with Persia, 503-5—The
‘Blue and Green’ Factions—Rebellion of Vitalian—Accession of
Justin I.
At Rome the emperors of the third quarter of the fifth century—all the
ephemeral Caesars whose blood-stained annals fill the space between the
death of Valentinian III. and the usurpation of Odoacer—had been the
mere creatures of the barbarian, or semi-barbarian, ‘patricians’ and
‘masters of the soldiers,’ to whom they owed alike their elevations and
their untimely ends. The history of those troubled years would be more
logically arranged under the names of the Caesar-makers, Ricimer,
Gundobad, Orestes, than under those of the unhappy puppets whom they
manipulated.
But, when we turn our eyes eastward to Constantinople, we are surprised
to find how entirely different was the aspect of affairs. The Western
Empire was rapidly falling to pieces, province after province dropping
out of the power of the emperor, and becoming part of the realm of some
Gothic, Burgundian, or Vandal prince, who paid the most shadowy homage,
or no homage at all, to the ephemeral Caesar at Rome. [Sidenote:
Contrast between Eastern and Western Empires.] The Eastern Empire, on
the other hand, maintained its boundaries intact, and was slowly
building up its strength for renewed activity in the next century. While
nine emperors’ reigns filled no more than twenty-one years at Rome
(455-476), two emperors were reigning for thirty-four years (457-491) on
the Bosphorus. And the character of the rulers of East and West was as
different as their fates: the short-lived Roman Caesars were either
impotent nobodies raised to the throne by the caprice of the barbarian,
or ambitious young soldiers who vainly dreamed that they might yet
redeem the evil day, and save the State. Their contemporaries in the
East, Leo, Zeno, and Anastasius, were three elderly officials, men of
experience, if not of great ability, who followed each other in
peaceable succession, and devoted their declining years to a cautious
defensive policy, with the result that they left a full treasury, a
strong and loyal army, and an intact realm behind them.
At the beginning of the fifth century the eastern half of the Empire had
seemed no less likely than the western to fall under the dominion of the
barbarian, and crumble to pieces. The Goths were cantoned all over
Thrace, Moesia, and Asia Minor, and the Gothic general Gainas had taken
possession of the person and authority of the Emperor Arcadius. Had he
been a man of greater ability he might have made and unmade emperors, as
Ricimer afterwards did in the West. But the schemes of Gainas were
wrecked, and the Empire saved by the great riot at Constantinople in
401, when the Gothic _foederati_ were massacred, and their leader chased
away by the infuriated populace, who thus saved not only their own
homes, but the whole East, from the danger of Gothic domination.
Though the European provinces of the Eastern Empire suffered grievously
from Teutonic ravages during the first eighty years of the century,
there was never again any danger that the barbarians would get hold of
the machinery of government, and subvert the Empire from within. In the
long reign of Theodosius II. (406-450), if no progress was made in
strengthening the realm, at least no ground was lost.
Two external causes were, during this time, operating in favour of the
Eastern Empire. The first was the absolute impregnability of
Constantinople against any invader who could only assault it from the
land side: the town could not be starved out,—as Rome was starved by
Alaric,—and its walls could laugh to scorn all such siege appliances as
that age knew. Though Goth and Hun pushed their ravages far and wide in
the Balkan peninsula, they never seriously attempted to molest the great
central place of arms on which the East-Roman power based itself.
[Sidenote: Importance of Constantinople.] The Western Empire had no such
stronghold—capital, arsenal, harbour, and centre of commerce all in one.
Ravenna, where the Western Caesars took refuge in times of storm and
stress, was in every way inferior to Constantinople as a base of armed
resistance to the invader. Though its marshes made it strong, it did not
cover or protect any considerable tract of country, and it was just far
enough from its harbour to allow of an enemy cutting off its supplies.
The second great factor in the vitality of the Eastern Empire was the
prolonged freedom from foreign war enjoyed by its Asiatic provinces.
After the revolt of Gainas in 401, the Goths disappeared from Asia
Minor, and no other invaders made any serious breach into that
peninsula, into Syria, or into Egypt, for a hundred and forty years. Two
short Persian wars, in 420-421 and 502-505, led to nothing worse than
partial ravages on the Mesopotamian frontier. It is true that the
Asiatic provinces of the empire were not altogether spared by the sword
in the fifth century, but such troubles as they suffered were due to
native revolts, chiefly of the Isaurians among the mountains of southern
Asia Minor. These risings were local, and led to no very widespread
damage, nor was the fighting caused by the revolts of the rebel-emperors
Basiliscus and Leontius, in the reign of Zeno, much more destructive.
[Sidenote: Prosperity of the East.] On the whole, the four oriental
‘dioceses’ of the Eastern Empire must have enjoyed in the fifth century
a far greater measure of peace and prosperity than they had known, or
were to know, in the previous and the succeeding ages. It was their
wealth, duly garnered into the imperial treasury, that made the emperors
strong to defend their European possessions. We shall soon see that
their military resources also were to count in a most effective way in
the reorganisation of the East-Roman army.
But the strength of Constantinople and the wealth of Asia might have
proved of no avail had they fallen into the hands of a series of
emperors like Honorius or Valentinian III. We must in common fairness
grant that the personal characters of the Emperors Leo I., Zeno, and
Anastasius I. had also the most important influence on the empire. These
three cautious, persistent, and careful princes, who neither endangered
the empire by over-great enterprise and ambition, nor let it fall to
pieces by want of energy, were exactly the men most fitted to tide over
a time of transition.
Leo, the first of these three emperors, was already dead when Romulus
Augustulus was deposed in the West. He had left his mark on
Constantinopolitan history by his summary execution of Aspar, the last
of the great barbarian ‘masters of the soldiers,’ who rose to a
dangerous height of power in the East; and still more by his very
important scheme for reorganising the army, by enrolling a large
proportion of native-born subjects of the empire in its ranks.
Recognising the peril of trusting entirely to Teutonic mercenaries,—the
fatal error that had ruined the Western Empire,—Leo had enlisted, in as
great numbers as he could obtain, the hardy mountaineers of Asia Minor,
more especially the Isaurians. [Sidenote: Leo and the Isaurians.] His
predecessors had distrusted their unruly and predatory habits, but Leo
saw that they supplied good and trustworthy fighting material, and dealt
with them as the elder Pitt dealt with the Highlanders after the
rebellion of 1745, teaching them to use in the service of the government
the wild courage that had so often been turned against it. Leo had
indeed done all that he could for the Isaurians, and had at last married
his elder daughter Ariadne to Zeno, an Isaurian by birth, and one of the
chief officers of his court.
It was this Zeno who was seated on the throne of the Eastern realm at
the moment that Odoacer made himself ruler of Italy, and to him was
addressed the celebrated petition of the Roman Senate which besought him
to allow East and West alike to repose under the shadow of his name, but
to confide the practical governance of Italy to the patrician Odoacer.
Zeno was neither so able nor so respectable a sovereign as his
father-in-law: two faults, a caution which verged on actual cowardice
and a taste for low debauchery, have blasted his reputation. [Sidenote:
The Emperor Zeno, 475-491.] His enemies were never tired of taunting him
with his Isaurian birth, and recalling to memory that his real name was
Tarakodissa, the son of Rusumbladeotus, for he had only taken the Greek
appellation of Zeno when he came to court. But though he was by birth an
obscure provincial, and by nature something of a coward and a free
liver, Zeno had his merits. He was a mild and not an extortionate
administrator, had a liberal hand, a good eye for picking out able
servants, was sanguine and persevering in all that he undertook, and
pursued in Church matters a policy of moderation and conciliation, which
may bring him credit now, though in his own time it provoked many
strictures from the orthodox. The worst charges that can be laid to his
account were acts that were prompted by his timidity rather than by any
other motive,—two or three arbitrary executions of officers whom he
rightly or wrongly suspected of plotting against his life. After three
rebellions which came within an ace of success, it is not unnatural that
he grew somewhat nervous about his own safety.
Zeno’s reign was more troubled in this way than those of his predecessor
and successor. His well-known lack of daring tempted men to conspire
against him, but they reckoned without his cunning and his perseverance,
and in every case came to an evil end. Zeno could count on the active
support of his countrymen the Isaurians, who now formed the most
trustworthy part of the army, and on the passive obedience, or at worst
the neutrality, of the mercantile classes and the bureaucracy, who
disliked all change and disorder. Hence it came to pass that court
conspiracies, or local revolts of divisions of the army, were not enough
to shake his throne.
The first half of Zeno’s reign may be divided into three parts by these
three conspiracies. The emperor had hardly ascended the throne when the
first of them broke out: it was a palace intrigue hatched by the
Empress-Dowager Verina, who detested her son-in-law. The conspirators
took Zeno quite by surprise, they failed to catch him, for he fled from
Constantinople at the first alarm, but they got possession of the
capital, and proclaimed Basiliscus, the brother of Verina, as Augustus.
[Sidenote: Revolt of Basiliscus, 475-477.] The mob of the city, with
whom Zeno was very unpopular, joined the rising, and massacred the
Isaurian troops who were within the walls; their leader’s absence seems
to have paralysed the resistance of the soldiery. Zeno meanwhile escaped
to his native country, and raised an Isaurian army: Syria and the
greater part of Asia Minor remained faithful to him, and he prepared to
make a fight for his throne. Luckily for him, Basiliscus was a
despicable creature,—it was he who had wrecked the great expedition
against the Vandals which Leo I. had sent out seven years before. He
soon became far more hated by the Constantinopolitans than Zeno had ever
been; it is doubtful whether his arrogance, his financial extortions, or
his addiction to the Monophysite heresy made him most detested. The army
which he sent out against Zeno was intrusted—very unwisely—to a general
of Isaurian birth, the _magister militum_ Illus, who allowed himself to
be moved by the prayers and bribes of the legitimate emperor, and
finally went over to him. Having recovered all Asia Minor, Zeno then
stirred up in Europe Theodoric the Amal against his rival, and induced
the Goth to beset Constantinople from the West, while he himself
blockaded it on the Eastern side. The town threw open its gates, and
Basiliscus, after a reign of twenty months, was dragged from sanctuary
and brought before his nephew’s tribunal. Zeno promised him that his
blood should not be shed, but sent him and his sons to a desolate castle
in Cappadocia among the mountain-snows, where they were given such
scanty food and raiment in their solitary confinement, that ere long
they died of privation (477).
It was just after his triumph over Basiliscus that Zeno received the
ambassadors of Odoacer, and was saluted as Emperor of West and East
alike, in spite of his advice to the Romans to take back as their Caesar
their old ruler, Julius Nepos, who was still in possession of part of
Dalmatia, though he had lost Italy three years before. Perhaps Zeno
might have been tempted to interfere with something more than advice in
the affairs of the West, if his second batch of troubles had not fallen
upon him, in the form of his long Gothic war with the two Theodorics—the
sons of Theodemir and Triarius—which began in the year following his
restoration.
THE EASTERN EMPERORS, 457-518,
WITH THEIR FAMILIES.
[Names of Emperors in Capitals.]
_x_
|
+------+------+
| |
LEO I.,=Verina. Basiliscus,
457-474. | usurper, 475-477.
| ANTHE-
| MIUS,
| Emperor of
+--+----------------------------------+ the
West,
Rusumbladeotus | | 467-472.
the Isaurian. | Flavius of | |
| | Dyrrhachium. | |
| | | | |
+-----+-----+ | +-------+------+ | |
| | | | | | |
| Arcadia=ZENO,===Ariadne=ANASTASIUS I., | Leontia=Marcianus,
| | 475- | 491-518. | rebel
Longinus, | 491. | Caesaria=Secundinus. in 479.
rebel in | | |
492. | | |
| | |
Zeno, LEO, +-----+-----+
d. 480. d. 474. | |
Hypatius, Pomeius,
rebels in 532.
The Ostrogoths had never gone westward, like their kinsmen the
Visigoths. They had lingered on the Danube, first as members of the vast
empire of Attila the Hun, then as occupying Pannonia in their own right.
But, in the reign of Leo I., they had moved across the Save into the
territory of the Eastern Emperors, and had permanently established
themselves in Moesia. There they had settled down and made terms with
the Constantinopolitan Government. But they were most unruly vassals,
and, even in full time of peace, could never be trusted to refrain from
raids into Thrace and Macedonia. [Sidenote: Early life of Theodoric.]
The main body of their tribe now acknowledged as its chief Theodoric the
son of Theodemir, the representative of the heaven-born race of the
Amals, the kings of the Goths from time immemorial. Theodoric was now a
young man of twenty-three, stirring and ambitious, who had already won a
great military reputation by victories over the Bulgarians, the
Sarmatians, and other tribes who dwelt across the Danube. He had spent
ten years of his boyhood as a hostage at Constantinople, where he had
learnt only too well the weak as well as the strong points of the
East-Roman Empire. His after-life showed that he had there imbibed a
deep respect for Roman law, order, and administrative unity; but he had
also come to entertain a contempt for the timid Zeno, and a conviction
that his bold tribesmen were more than a match for the motley mercenary
army of the emperor, of which so large a proportion was still composed
of Goths and other Teutons, who could not be trusted to fight with a
good heart against their Ostrogothic kinsmen.
But Theodoric the Amal was not the only chief of his race in the Balkan
peninsula. He had a namesake, Theodoric the son of Triarius, better
known as Theodoric the One-eyed, who had long served as a mercenary
captain in the imperial army, and had headed the Teutonic auxiliaries in
the camp of the usurper Basiliscus. When Basiliscus fell, Theodoric the
One-eyed collected the wrecks of the rebel forces, strengthened them
with broken bands of various races, many of whom were Ostrogoths, and
kept the field against Zeno. He retired into the Balkans, and
occasionally descended to ravage the Thracian plains; but meanwhile he
sent an embassy to Zeno, offering to submit if he were given the title
of _magister militum_, which he had held under Basiliscus, and taken
with all his army into the imperial pay.
Zeno indignantly refused to entertain such terms, and resolved to take
in hand the destruction of the rebel. [Sidenote: The two Theodorics.] He
sent an Asiatic army into Thrace to beset the son of Triarius from the
south, and bade his warlike vassal the son of Theodemir to attack his
namesake from the north, on the Moesian side. The younger Theodoric
eagerly consented, for he grudged to see any other Gothic chief than
himself powerful in the peninsula, and looked down on the son of
Triarius as a low-born upstart, because he did not come like himself
from the royal blood of the Amals.[4]
Footnote 4:
By his name (Triarius) the father of Theodoric the One-eyed must have
been a Roman or a Romanised Goth, but the One-eyed had himself married
a wife who was close akin to Theodoric the Amal, for his son Recitach
is called the Amal’s cousin.
The campaign against Theodoric the One-eyed turned out disastrously for
the imperial forces. The Roman army in the south missed the track of the
rebel, whether by accident or design, while Theodoric the Amal with his
forces got entangled in the defiles of the Balkans, and surrounded by
the army of his rival. He had been promised the co-operation of the army
of Thrace, but no Romans appeared, and his projects began to look dark.
His one-eyed rival, riding to within earshot of his camp, taunted him
with his folly in listening to the orders and promises of the emperor.
‘Madman,’ he cried, ‘betrayer of your own race, do you not see that the
Roman plan is always to destroy Goths by Goths? Whichever of us falls,
they, not we, will be the stronger. They never will give you real help,
but send you out against me to perish here in the desert.’ Then all the
warriors of the Amal shouted that the One-eyed was right, and that they
would not fight against their brethren in the other camp. The son of
Theodemir bowed to their will and joined himself to the son of Triarius.
Uniting their armies, they moved down into the valley of the Hebrus, and
advanced toward Constantinople. They sent Zeno an ultimatum, in which
the Amal demanded more territory for his tribe, and a supply of corn and
money, while the One-eyed stipulated for the post of _magister militum_,
and an annual payment of 2000 pounds of gold. Zeno, who was very anxious
to keep the younger Theodoric on his side, proffered him a great sum of
money, and the hand of the daughter of the patrician Olybrius, if he
would abandon his namesake the rebel. But the Amal refused to break the
oath that he had sworn to his ally, and marched westward to ravage
Macedonia up to the very gates of Thessalonica. Zeno sent his troops
into winter-quarters, as the season was late, and made one final attempt
to stave off the impending danger by offering terms to Theodoric the
One-eyed. Less true to his word than the Amal, the elder Theodoric
listened to the emperor’s offer, and, on being promised the title of
_magister militum_ and all the revenues that he had enjoyed under
Basiliscus, led his troops over into the imperial camp (479).
For the next two years the son of Theodemir ranged over the whole Balkan
peninsula from Dyrrhachium to the gates of Constantinople, plundering
and burning those parts of Macedonia and Thrace which had hitherto
escaped the ravages of the Huns of Attila and the Ostrogoths of the
previous generation. [Sidenote: Wars of Zeno and Theodoric the Amal.]
The generals of Zeno met with little good fortune in their attempts to
check him, the only success they obtained being a victory won by a
certain Sabinianus in 480, who cut off the rear-guard of Theodoric as it
was crossing the Albanian mountains, and captured 2000 waggons and 5000
Gothic warriors. But Sabinianus made himself too much feared by Zeno,
who, on a suspicion of treachery, had him executed in the following
year. It was not till 483 that the Amal, having wasted Thrace and
Macedon so fiercely that even his own army could no longer find food, at
last came to terms with Zeno, on being made _magister militum_, and
granted additional lands in Moesia and Dacia for his tribesmen. The son
of Triarius had died a year earlier: he had again burst out into
insurrection against the emperor, and was mustering an army on the
Thracian coast when he was slain in a strange manner. A restive horse
threw him against a spear which was standing by the door of his tent,
and he was pierced to the heart. His son Recitach continued his
rebellion, but Theodoric the Amal, who wished to see no other Gothic
chief but himself in the Balkan peninsula, slew the young man, and
incorporated his warriors with the main body of the Ostrogoths.
The utter helplessness which Zeno showed in dealing with the two
Theodorics may be attributed in a large measure to his troubles at home.
In 479, the year when he had failed to support Theodoric the Amal in the
Balkans, his throne had nearly been overturned by a rising in
Constantinople. Marcianus and Procopius, the two sons of Anthemius, the
late emperor of the West, who were popular with the citizens of the
capital, formed a plot for overthrowing the emperor, in which they
enlisted many men of importance. They surprised the palace and massacred
the body-guard, but Zeno escaped, brought over his faithful Isaurians
from Asia, and crushed the rebellion after a vigorous street fight. In
482-3 he had a prolonged misunderstanding with his commander-in-chief
Illus, the Isaurian general who had put down the rebellion of Basiliscus
five years before. Zeno neither banished nor fully trusted him. He left
him in office, but was nervously on his guard, and always thwarting his
Minister. It is said that, with or without his consent, the Empress
Ariadne endeavoured to procure the assassination of Illus.
In 483, the year in which Theodoric the Amal made his peace with Zeno, a
certain Leontius raised a rebellion in Syria. Illus, who was sent to put
him down, had grown tired of serving his suspicious and ungrateful
master, and joined in the revolt. [Sidenote: Revolt of Leontius, 483.]
He and Leontius seized Antioch, where the latter was proclaimed emperor,
and got possession of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and north Syria. It is said
that they designed to re-establish paganism, a project which seems
absolutely incredible in the very end of the fifth century, when the
heathen were no more than a forlorn remnant scattered among a zealous
Christian population. The empress-dowager Verina, who was living in
exile in Cappadocia, joined herself to them, and adopted Leontius as her
son. But the rebels took more practical measures to support their cause
when they applied for aid to Odoacer the king in Italy, and to the
Persian monarch Balas. Both promised aid, but, before they could send
it, Zeno had put the rebellion down. He induced his late enemy Theodoric
to join his army, and the Goths and Isaurians combined easily got the
better of Leontius. Syria submitted, and the rebel emperor and Illus,
after a long and desperate defence in a castle in Cappadocia, were taken
and slain.[5]
Footnote 5:
This fort—it was called Castellum Papirii—is said to have held out for
the incredibly long period of four years after all the rest of the
rebellious districts had been subdued, and only to have fallen by
treachery.
Zeno enjoyed comparative peace after Leontius’ rebellion had been
crushed, and was still more fortunate when, in 488, he induced Theodoric
the Amal to move his Ostrogoths out of Moesia and go forth to conquer
Italy. How Theodoric fared in Italy we have already related. His
departure was of enormous benefit to the empire, and, for the first time
since his accession, Zeno was now able to exercise a real authority over
his European provinces. They were left to him in a most fearful state of
desolation: ten years of war, ranging over the whole tract south of the
Danube and north of Mount Olympus, had reduced the land to a wilderness.
Whole districts were stripped bare of their inhabitants, and great gaps
of waste territory were inviting new enemies to enter the Balkan
peninsula, and occupy the deserted country-side. North of the Balkans
the whole provincial population seems to have been well-nigh
exterminated. [Sidenote: State of the Balkan peninsula.] When the
Ostrogoths abandoned the country there was nothing left between the
mountains and the Danube but a few military posts and their garrisons,
nor was the country replenished with inhabitants till the Slavs spread
over the land in the succeeding age. Illyria and Macedonia had not fared
so badly, but the net result of the century of Gothic occupation in the
Balkan peninsula had been to thin down to a fearful extent the
Latin-speaking population of the Eastern Empire. All the inland of
Thrace, Moesia, and Illyricum had hitherto employed the Latin tongue:
with the thinning out of its inhabitants the empire became far more
Asiatic and Greek than it had before been.
When the Ostrogoths migrated to Italy, the empire acquired a new set of
neighbours on its northern frontier, the nomad Ugrian horde of the
Bulgarians on the lower Danube, and the Teutonic tribes of the Gepidae,
Heruli, and Lombards on the middle Danube and the Theiss and Save.
Contrary to what might have been expected, none of these races pushed
past the barrier of Roman forts along the river to occupy Moesia. They
vexed the empire with nothing worse than occasional raids, and did not
come to settle within its limits.
Zeno’s ecclesiastical policy demands a word of notice. He was himself
orthodox, but not fanatical: the Church being at the moment grievously
divided by the Monophysite schism, to which the Churches of Egypt and
Palestine had attached themselves, he thought it would be possible and
expedient to lure the heretics back within the fold by slightly
modifying the Catholic statement of doctrine. In 482, though he was in
the midst of his struggle with Theodoric the Amal, he found time to
draft his ‘Henoticon,’ or Edict of Comprehension. The Monophysites held
that there was but one nature in our Lord, as opposed to the orthodox
view, that both the human and the divine element were fully present in
His person. [Sidenote: Zeno’s Henoticon.] Zeno put into his ‘Henoticon’
a distinct statement that Christ was both God and man, but did not
insert the words ‘two natures,’ which formed the orthodox shibboleth.
But his well-meant scheme fell utterly flat. The heretics were not
satisfied, and refused to conform, while the Catholics held that it was
a weak concession to heterodoxy, and condemned Zeno for playing with
schism. The patriarch, Acacius, who had assisted him to draft the
‘Henoticon,’ was excommunicated by the Bishop of Rome, and the churches
of Italy and Constantinople were out of communion for more than thirty
years, owing to an edict that had been intended to unite and not to
divide.
The last years of Zeno’s reign were far more undisturbed by war and
rebellion than its earlier part. He survived till 491, when he died of
epilepsy, leaving no heir to inherit his throne. He had had two sons,
named Leo and Zeno: the first had died, while still a child, in 474; the
second killed himself by evil-living, when on the threshold of manhood,
long ere his father’s death.
The right of choosing Zeno’s successor fell nominally into the hands of
the Senate and people, really into those of the widowed Empress Ariadne
and the Imperial Guard. The daughter of Leo made a wise choice in
recommending to the suffrages of the army and people Anastasius of
Dyrrhachium, an officer of the _silentiarii_,[6] who was universally
esteemed for his piety and virtue.
Footnote 6:
A body-guard, whose duty it was to preserve silence around the
emperor’s private apartments.
Anastasius was a man of fifty-two or fifty-three, who had spent most of
his life in official work in the capital, and was specially well known
as an able and economical financier. He was sincerely religious, and
spent many of his leisure hours as a lay preacher in the church of St.
Sophia, till he was inhibited from giving instruction by the Patriarch
Euphemius, who detected Monophysitism in his sermons. He had once
proposed to take orders, and had been spoken of as a candidate for the
bishopric of Antioch. Yet, in spite of his religious fervour, he was
never accused of being unworldly or unpractical. [Sidenote: Character of
Anastasius.] Anastasius was a man of blameless life, learned and
laborious, slow to anger, a kind and liberal master, and absolutely just
in all his dealings. ‘Reign as you have lived,’ was the cry of the
people when he first presented himself to them clad in the imperial
purple. Only two objections were ever made to him—the first, that he
leaned towards the Monophysite heresy; the second, that his court was
too staid and puritanical for the taste of the multitude, who had loved
the pomp and orgies of the dissolute Zeno. He earned unpopularity by
suppressing gladiatorial combats with wild beasts, and licentious
dances.
Six weeks after his accession the new emperor married the
Empress-Dowager Ariadne, who had been the chief instrument in his
election. She was a princess of blameless life, and had done much in the
previous reign to redeem the ill-repute of her first husband. It was a
great misfortune for the empire that she bore her second spouse no heir
to inherit his throne.
The commencement of the reign of Anastasius was troubled by a rebellion
of the Isaurians. Zeno had not only formed an Imperial Guard of his
countrymen, but had filled the civil service with them, and encouraged
them to settle as merchants and traders in Constantinople. They had been
much vexed when the sceptre passed to the Illyrian Anastasius, and
entered into a conspiracy to seize his person, and proclaim Zeno’s
brother, Longinus, as emperor. A few months after his accession they
rose in the capital and obtained possession of part of the city near the
palace, but the majority of the people and army were against them, and
they were put down after a sharp street fight, in which the great
Hippodrome was burnt. Longinus was captured, and compelled to take
orders. He died long after as a priest in Egypt. Anastasius, after this
riot, dismissed all the Isaurian officers from the public service. They
returned to their homes in Asia Minor, and organised a rebellion in
their native hills. A second Longinus, who had been _magister militum_
in Thrace, put himself at the head of the insurrection, which lingered
on for five years (491-496), but was never a serious danger to the
empire. [Sidenote: Rebellions in Isauria, 492-496.] The rebels were
beaten whenever they ventured into the plains, and only maintained
themselves so long by the aid of the mountain-castles with which their
rugged land was studded. In 496 their last fastnesses were stormed, and
their chief, the _ex-magister_, taken and executed. Anastasius punished
the communities which had been most obstinate in the rebellion by
transferring them to Thrace, and settling them on the wasted lands under
the Balkans, where he trusted that these fearless mountaineers would
prove an efficient guard to keep the passes against the barbarians from
beyond the Danube.
The Asiatic provinces of the empire had no further troubles till 502,
when a war broke out between Anastasius and Kobad king of Persia. The
Mesopotamian frontier had been singularly quiet for the last century;
there had been no serious war with the great Oriental monarchy to the
East since Julian’s unfortunate expedition in 362. The same age which
had seen the Teutonic migrations in Europe had been marked in inner Asia
by a great stirring of the Huns and other Turanian tribes beyond the
Caspian, and while the Roman emperors had been busy on the Danube, the
Sassanian kings had been hard at work defending the frontier of the
Oxus. In a respite from his Eastern troubles Kobad made some demands for
money on Anastasius, which the emperor refused, and war soon followed.
It began with several disasters for the Romans, and Amida, the chief
fortress of Mesopotamia, was stormed in 503. [Sidenote: War with Persia,
503-505.] Nisibis fell later in the same year, and when Anastasius sent
reinforcements to the East he appointed so many generals with
independent authority that the whole Roman army could never be united,
and the commanders allowed themselves to be taken in detail and defeated
in succession. In 504, however, the fortune of war turned, when the
supreme authority in the field was bestowed on Celer, the _magister
officiorum_; he recovered Amida after a long siege, and began to press
forward beyond the Persian frontier. Kobad was at the same time assailed
by the Huns from beyond the Oxus, and gladly made peace, on terms which
restored the frontier of both parties to the line it had occupied in
502. Anastasius provided against future wars by building two new
fortresses of the first class on the Persian frontier, Daras in
Mesopotamia, and Theodosiopolis farther north on the borders of Armenia.
These places served to break the force of the Persian attack thirty
years later, when the successors of Kobad and Anastasius again fell to
blows. The Persian war, like the Isaurian, had only afflicted a very
limited district,—the province beyond the Euphrates,—and no raids had
penetrated so far as Syria. Indeed, during the whole reign of
Anastasius, the only serious trouble to which the Asiatic half of the
empire was exposed was a Hunnish raid from beyond the Caucasus, which in
515 caused grave damage in Pontus, Cappadocia, and Lycaonia. This
invasion, however, was an isolated misfortune, followed by no further
incursions of the nomads of the Northern Steppes.
The European provinces—now as in the time of Zeno—had a far harder lot.
The Slavs and Bulgarians repeatedly crossed the Danube and pressed over
the desolated plains of Moesia to assail Thrace. More than once the
Bulgarians defeated a Roman army in the field, and their ravages were at
last pushed so far southward that Anastasius built in 512 the celebrated
wall which bears his name, running from the Black Sea to Propontis,
thirty-five miles west of Constantinople. These lines, extending for
more than fifty miles across the eastern projection of Thrace, served to
defend at least the immediate neighbourhood of the capital against the
restless horsemen from beyond the Danube. Macedonia and Illyricum seem
to have suffered much less than Thrace during this period; the Slavs who
bordered on them were as yet not nearly such a dangerous enemy as the
Bulgarians, while the Ostrogoths of Italy, on reconquering Pannonia,
proved more restful neighbours to the north-western provinces of the
empire than they had been in the previous century.
It was in the reign of Anastasius that one of the most characteristic
features in the social life of Constantinople is brought forward into
prominence for the first time. This was the growing turbulence of the
‘Blues and Greens,’ the factions of the Circus. From the very beginning
of the Roman Empire these clubs had existed, but it was only at
Constantinople that they became institutions of high political
importance. There the rivalry of the Blues and Greens was not confined
to the races of the Circus, but was carried into every sphere of life.
Nor was it any longer only the young men of sporting and fashionable
proclivities that joined the ‘factions.’ They served as clubs or
political associations for all classes, from the ministers of state down
to the poorest mechanics, and formed bonds of union between bodies of
churchmen or supporters of dynastic claims. [Sidenote: The Blues and
Greens.] It is hard for an Englishman to realise this extraordinary
development of what had once been a mere rivalry of the Hippodrome. To
make a parallel to it we should have to suppose that all who mount the
light or the dark blue on the day of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race
were bitterly jealous of each other—let us say, for example, that all
Dark Blues were Conservatives and Anglicans, and all Light Blues were
Radicals and Dissenters. If this were so, we can imagine that in times
of political stress every boat race might be followed by a gigantic
free-fight. This, however, was exactly what occurred at Constantinople;
the ‘Blue’ faction had become identified with Orthodoxy, and with a
dislike for the family of Anastasius. The ‘Green’ faction included all
the Monophysites and other heterodox sects, and was devoted to the
person and dynasty of Anastasius. In any time of trouble the celebration
of games in the Hippodrome ended with a fierce riot of the two factions.
No wonder that the just and peaceable emperor strove to suppress shows
of all sorts, and in especial showed a dislike for the disloyal ‘Blue’
faction.
The worst of Anastasius’ domestic troubles were due to the suspicion of
heterodoxy that clung to him. In 511 when he added to the hymn called
the Trisagion the line ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι’ ἡμᾶς in a context which seemed
to refer to the whole Trinity, the orthodox populace of Constantinople
headed by the Blue faction burst out into sedition. It was only quelled
by the old Emperor presenting himself before the people in the
Hippodrome, without crown or robe, and announcing his intention of
abdicating. So great was the confidence which his justice and moderation
had inspired in all ranks and classes, that the proposal filled the
whole multitude with dismay, and they rose unanimously to bid him resume
his diadem.
But the grievance against the Monophysite tendencies of Anastasius was
not destined to be forgotten. [Sidenote: Rebellion of Vitalian, 514.] In
514 an ambitious general named Vitalian, who held a command in Moesia,
rose in arms, alleging as the cause of his rebellion, not only certain
misdeeds committed in that province by the emperor’s nephew Hypatius,
but also the dangerous heterodoxy of Anastasius’ religious opinions.
When Hypatius was removed from his office the greater part of Vitalian’s
army returned to its allegiance, and the rebel then showed how much
importance was to be attached to his religious scruples, by calling in
the heathen Bulgarians and Huns to his aid. At the head of an army
composed of these barbarians he maintained himself in Moesia for some
time. The emperor, somewhat unwisely, replaced his nephew Hypatius in
command, and sent him with a large army to put down the rebel; but,
while the Romans lay encamped on the sea-shore near Varna, they were
surprised by a night attack of the enemy and completely scattered. Many
thousand men were driven over the cliffs into the sea and crushed or
drowned, while Hypatius himself was taken prisoner (514). The old
emperor was driven, by concern for his nephew’s life, to make peace. He
ransomed Hypatius for 15,000 lbs. of gold, and granted Vitalian the post
of _magister militum_ in Thrace. The pardoned rebel for the remainder of
Anastasius’ reign occupied himself in strengthening his position on the
Danube, being determined to make a bold stroke for the imperial throne
when old age should remove the octogenarian ruler of Constantinople.
In spite of all his troubles with the two Longini, king Kobad and
Vitalian, Anastasius may be called a successful and prosperous ruler.
All these rebellions had been of mere local import, and for the whole
twenty-seven years of his reign the greater part of the empire had
enjoyed peace and plenty. The best testimony to his good administration
is the fact that at his accession he found the treasury emptied by the
wasteful Zeno, and that at his death he left it filled with 320,000 lbs.
weight of gold, or £15,000,000 in hard cash. This was in spite of the
fact that he was a merciful and lenient administrator, and had actually
abolished several imposts including the odious Chrysargyron or
income-tax. Nor was the money collected at the cost of neglecting proper
expenditure. Anastasius had erected many military works,—in especial his
great wall in Thrace, and the strong fortress of Daras—and restored many
ruined cities. ‘He never sent away petitioners empty, whether they
represented a city, a fortress, or a seaport.’ He left an army of
150,000 men in a good state of discipline and composed for its larger
half of native troops, with a frontier intact alike on east and west and
north.
The good old man died in 518; his wife Ariadne had preceded him to the
grave three years before. He had refrained from appointing as his
colleague his nephew Hypatius, whom many had expected him to adopt, and
the empire was left absolutely masterless. The great State officials,
the Imperial Guard, and the Senate had the election of a new Caesar
thrown upon their hands. The most obvious candidates for the throne were
Hypatius, whom the Green faction should have supported, and the
_magister militum_ Vitalian, who at once took arms to march on the
capital. But neither of them was destined to succeed. The sinews of war
lay in the hands of the treasurer Amantius; he himself could not hope to
reign, for he was a eunuch, but he had a friend whom he wished to crown.
[Sidenote: Accession of Justin I., 518.] Accordingly he sent for
Justinus, the commander of the Imperial Guard, and made over to him a
great sum to buy the aid of the soldiery. Justinus, an elderly and
respectable personage whom no one suspected of ambition, quietly took
the gold, distributed it in his own name, and was saluted as Augustus by
his delighted guardsmen. The Senate acquiesced in the nomination, and he
mounted the throne without a blow being struck.
Justinus was an Illyrian by birth, and had spent fifty years in the
imperial army; he had won his promotion by good service in the Isaurian
and Persian wars. He was very illiterate—we are told that he could
barely sign his own name—and knew nothing outside his tactics and his
drill-book. He had the reputation of being quiet, well-behaved, and
upright; no one had anything to say against him, and he was rigidly
orthodox in matters of faith. He was sixty-eight years of age, fifteen
years older than even the elderly Anastasius had been at the moment of
his accession.
Justinus seated himself firmly on the throne; he executed the treasurer
Amantius, but made terms with the two men who might have been his
rivals. Hypatius remained a simple senator; Vitalian was confirmed in
his command in Moesia and given a consulship. While holding this office
and dwelling in the capital he was assassinated; rumour ascribed the
crime to the emperor’s nephew Justinian, who thought the turbulent
_magister_ too near the throne.
There is very little to record of the nine years of Justinus’ reign,
save that he healed the forty-years’ schism which had separated the
churches of Rome and Constantinople since the publication of Zeno’s
‘Henoticon.’ Being undisputedly orthodox, he withdrew that document, and
the schism disappeared with its cause. The only real importance of
Justinus is that he prepared the way for his famous nephew and
successor, Justinian, whom he adopted as colleague, and intrusted with
those matters of civil administration with which he was himself
incompetent to deal. He died and left the throne to Justinian in A.D.
528.
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