ITALY AND HER INVADERS

BOOK IV.

THE OSTROGOTHIC INVASION

CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF ZENO.

 

We have now followed the fortunes of the young Ostrogoth down to the time when he settled as a Gothic foederatus in the home provinces of the Eastern Empire. In order to understand his subsequent career, and even in order rightly to appreciate the scanty notices of his future rival, Odovacar, as ruler of Italy, we must grasp the connection of events in that city which was now virtually the capital of the world, the New Rome beside the Thracian Bosporus; we must, at the cost of some little repetition, trace the outline of the reign of the Emperor Zeno.

This Emperor, as the reader may remember, bore at first the barbarous name and style of Tarasicodissa, the son of Rusumbladeotus, a name which he changed to Zeno, in memory of one of his countrymen who a generation previously had climbed up to greatness in the Roman State. He came from Isauria, that wild upland region on the northern skirts of Mount Taurus, between Cilicia and Phrygia, which Paul and Barnabas traversed in their missionary journey to Derbe and Lystra, but which the Roman legionary for three centuries after Christ found it difficult to penetrate and impossible to subdue. The part which this obscure mountainous comer of Asia Minor played in the politics of the Lower Empire is truly extraordinary. We shall find that Zeno and his Isaurian country-men were, for near twenty years, the dreaded and hated lords of Constantinople. They depart and disappear for a time, but, two centuries later, another Isaurian, the hero-emperor Leo III, ascends the throne, commences and all but carries through a mighty religious reformation (the Iconoclastic), and transmits his throne to a son whose reign with his own makes up a period of sixty years, the most glorious and the most successful in the whole later history of the Roman Empire. The peculiar position thus occupied by the Isaurians is no doubt explained by the fact that these tameless mountaineers had in great measure preserved their freedom. They had not passed, like the wealthier inhabitants of the plains, between the mill-stones of the Byzantine despotism. Their country was the Switzerland of the Eastern Empire.

From the ranks of the Isaurian adventurers who made their way to the capital the Emperor Leo, who needed all the support which he could obtain against the party of the domineering Aspar, selected Tarasicodissa, who was perhaps the best-born among them, and bestowed upon him in marriage his elder daughter Ariadne. At the death of Leo, his grandchild, the younger Leo, a child of seven years old, son of Zeno and Ariadne, already associated with his grandfather in the Empire and proclaimed consul for the year, succeeded without opposition to the throne. Naturally his reign would have implied for some years to come the regency of his parents; but, to make sure, Ariadne instructed her child, when his father came to make obeisance before him in the Hippodrome, to place on his head the imperial diadem. The precaution was a wise one, for in nine months the child-emperor died. The charge brought against Zeno by one writer, distant from the scene, of having procured the death of his own child, must be dismissed as unworthy of belief since none of the Greek writers, not even those who canvass his actions the most bitterly, have dared to insinuate it.

It cannot be said that the new Emperor did anything to justify his predecessor's selection of him as a son-in-law. He was quite incapable in the field, ‘not only a coward but a wretch, an emperor who could not bear even the picture of a battle', says one of our authorities. This author proceeds to say that Zeno's only notion of conquest was by buying off his foes, for which purpose he laid upon his subordinates the duty of raising as much money as possible by exactions and confiscations. Another historian gives a somewhat different account of the cause of Zeno’s financial misgovernment. He says that this Emperor was not so cruel, passionate, or avaricious as his predecessor, but that he was ambitious and vain, with no real knowledge of affairs nor formed habits of business. He was thus exposed to endless peculation on the part of the officials of his exchequer, and at the same time squandered with lavish hand the carefully-hoarded treasures of his father-in-law among his greedy Isaurian friends. This incapacity for business, again, made him dependent on his underlings, especially on one Sebastian, who was Praetorian Prefect during a large part of his reign, and who possessed an extraordinary influence over his master. Like the eunuch Eutropius, ninety years before, Sebastian put up offices and governments for sale as in a market, and suffered no business to be transacted in the palace upon which he did not levy his toll. Some part of the gain of this unblushing traffic he graciously shared with the Emperor, but if the latter had bestowed an office on one of his own friends, the favourite would insist on buying it at a small price from the recipient, that he might re-sell it at a high figure to one of the attenders of his auction-mart.

An Emperor thus governing, of discreditable private character and strengthened by no deep roots of ancestral claim to the loyalty of his subjects, was sure to find his right to rule challenged by usurpers; and in fact the history of the reign of Zeno is chiefly a history of the rebellions against him. The course of these rebellions is drearily similar. With a certain tenacity of purpose, which perhaps explains Leo's selection of him, Zeno generally succeeds in holding on to power. Some popular officer delivers him from the rival of the moment, and becomes for the time ‘the man whom the king delighteth to honour.’ Then he too falls under suspicion, the Emperor or Empress intrigues against his life; he is forced to make himself the mouthpiece of the popular discontent. Another rebellion and another deliverance by a champion who is doomed to experience the imperial ingratitude, and so the dismal round recommences. Add to the already enumerated causes of discontent the fires, never long smouldering in this reign, of religious bigotry, the incessant battle-cries, ‘Nestorian,’ ‘Eutychian,’ ‘The Council of Chalcedon,’ ‘The Council of Nicaea’; add also the intrigues of Verina, the Emperor’s mother­in-law, one of the most odious women who ever stepped inside the purple chamber at Constantinople, and the reader will have some idea of the events which formed the staple of the reign of Zeno.

The rebellion of Basiliscus was the first of the series. It was on the ninth day after his accession to the office of Consul, when Zeno was sitting in the Hippodrome presiding over the games, that he received a message from his mother-in-law desiring him to come to her with all speed. He obeyed, and when he reached her chamber, Verina informed him that the generals, the senate, the people, all were united in the resolution to depose him, and that his only safety was in flight. Without a struggle he appears to have given up the prize of empire, took with him his wife Ariadne and his mother Lallis, and such of the imperial treasures as he could pile upon his horses and mules, and stole away by night accompanied by many of his Isaurian fellow-countrymen. Still wearing the rich imperial robes in which he had presided in the Hippodrome, he crossed the Bosporus to Chalcedon, and was soon in the heart of Asia Minor. Thus did Basiliscus, Verina's brother, find himself at length in possession of the diadem which he had coveted with an insane desire. He associated his son Marcus with him in the empire, and in their joint names issued edicts for the regulation of Church affairs. These edicts were to the utmost extent of his power in the interests of the Monophysite party, of which he, and still more his wife Zenonis, were fanatical adherents. Peter the Fuller was reinstated at Antioch, Timothy the Weasel at Alexandria. Everywhere the opponents of the decrees of Chalcedon began to take heart, and its adherents, except the dauntless Acacius of Constantinople, began to despond.

But Basiliscus, raised to the throne by female influence and intrigue, was threatened by dangers from the same source. Verina had a lover, Patricius, upon whom, rather than upon Basiliscus, she had hoped that the choice of the insurgents would have fallen, but who was put to death by the new emperor. Zenonis, who was a woman of great beauty, had also a lover, the nephew of her husband, the handsome and effeminate Harmatius. This man, who knew more about the palaestra and the hair-dresser's shop than about the art of war, was, by the influence of his paramour, promoted to the high office of Magister Militum in Thrace. He also shared the honours of the consulship with Basiliscus. Puffed up with wealth and official importance, he began to imagine himself a great soldier, and rode about the streets of the capital, aping in arms and accoutrements the great Achilles. The populace followed him with their acclamations, and called him the new Pyrrhus, in allusion to his fresh pink-coloured complexion. But many doubtless thought, what the historian could safely write, that the new hero was more like Paris than Pyrrhus.

Meanwhile the dethroned Emperor Zeno had betaken himself to his native Isauria, and there maintained a feeble resistance to his rival. In the course of his wanderings he came to a castle situated upon a hill, and enquired the name of this place of refuge. When told that it was called (by a curious chance) Constantinople, he gave a deep sigh and said, “Verily man is God's plaything. The prophets foretold that the month of July should see me lodged in Constantinople, and so indeed I am, in this little hill-side fort of a Constantinople, instead of in my royal city”. Brighter days, however, were at hand for the fugitive as the second July of his exile drew near. Ulus and Trocundus, the generals of Basiliscus who had been for some time besieging him, perhaps in the mountain fortress just referred to, changed sides and openly espoused his cause. The money and the promises of Zeno had no doubt some share in producing this result; but they had some excuse for their defection in the fact that letters had been received from the Senate at Constantinople informing the generals that the profligacy and folly of Basiliscus had become absolutely unbearable, and inviting them to aid in his deposition. In fact, what with political discontent and what with theological strife, the capital was almost in a state of revolution. Acacius had draped the altar and the clergy in black. Daniel, the greatest of the Stylitae, had descended from his column to harangue and muster the people. A vast multitude of men, women, and children had assembled at the gates of the cathedral to protest against the heretical doings of the Emperor. There was a talk of burning down the city, from which Basiliscus withdrew in terror, but Daniel and the monk Olympius followed him to his retreat, and forced him to listen to their passionate invectives.

Liberated from his long blockade and strengthened by his new allies, Zeno now set forth for the capital. Basiliscus sent Harmatius to meet the foe, having first exacted from him, possibly on account of some rumours of his doubtful loyalty, an oath ‘by his holy baptism’ that he would not betray him. Harmatius took with him not only the troops which ordinarily followed the standard of the Magister Militum in Thrace, but also a levy, probably a hasty levy, from the citizens of Constantinople. This fact, together with the statement that a terrible massacre of Isaurians took place at the time of the expulsion of Zeno, seems to indicate that the animosity against the Asiatic highlanders was especially bitter among the mob of the capital.

However, neither his baptismal oath nor the rancour of his civic followers availed to keep Harmatius from entering into a transaction with the dethroned emperor, his willingness for which was doubtless increased by the consciousness of danger from the discovery of his intrigue with Zenonis. He advanced to Nicaea, where Zeno and the two generals were quartered. Great terror was at first caused in the Isaurian army by his approach. Zeno was on the point of retreating, but Illus undertook and accomplished the delicate task of detaching Harmatius from his fidelity to his uncle. The terms were high: the rank of Magister Militum Praesentalis (commander of the household troops, ranking above the other Magister Militum) for life, and the dignity of Caesar for his son Basiliscus, which assured to that son the succession to the empire on Zeno's death. The bargain being concluded, the two armies, now united, marched against Constantinople.

Basiliscus, when he heard that his rival accepted as lawful emperor by the senate, the people, and even by the arch-intriguer Verina, saw that the game was hopeless, and took refuge in the church of St. Sophia, to which he had betaken himself nine years before on the failure of the Carthaginian expedition. Leaving his crown on the holy table, as a sign that he renounced the sovereignty, he passed on with his wife and children into the baptistery, and there sought for shelter. Not even in the hour of her downfall can the ecclesiastical chroniclers forbear to triumph over the heretical Empress, thus compelled to seek the shelter of the Church whose power she had dared to cope with. The patriarch Acacius came and upbraided the fallen Emperor with the impious innovations which he, the Eutychian, had sought to introduce into the Christian Church. According to Procopius he actually delivered the suppliant into the hands of his rival; but this is so contrary to the character of the man and to the religious instincts of the age, that we may safely reject such a story. Doubtless Acacius was a powerful agent, probably the most powerful in the counter-revolution which hurled Basiliscus from his throne. Probably also he was the medium of the negotiations which resulted in the fugitive's surrender of himself to his rival; but this is a different matter from the accusation that with his own hands he delivered him over, a suppliant at the Church's altar, to his enemy.

“The most religious emperor Zeno”, says the Paschal Chronicle, “then gave orders that the curtain should be drawn over the amphitheatre. He mounted to his seat, exhibited the games of the circus to the citizens, and received their acclamations. Then he sent to the Great Church, stripped all the emblems of imperial dignity from the fallen Emperor, his wife and children, and induced them to come forth by a promise that their heads should be safe. Zeno then sent him away and those with him to the camp of Limnae in Cappadocia. And they were thrust into one tower of the camp, and the gate was built up, and the tower and the camp itself were guarded by soldiers and by a great multitude of Isaurians. And thus Basiliscus himself and his wife and children, perishing by Hunger, gave up their lives and were buried in same tower of Limnae”.

Procopius and some other historians say that the banishment was in the depth of winter, that the unhappy exiles were insufficiently supplied with clothing as well as food, and that cold worked together with hunger for their destruction. Thus was Dante's terrible story of Ugolino and his children in the Torre del Fame anticipated by eight hundred years. That deed of horror and of perfidy was perpetrated by an archbishop, this by an emperor, whom, in the very act of describing his wickedness, the chronicler terms ‘most religious,’ because he was not tainted with the heresy either of Nestorius or of Eutyches.

Thus had Harmatius surrendered his uncle and his paramour to a death of horror. He had not. long to wait for his reward, in either sense. He received the post of Magister Praesentalis, his son was proclaimed Caesar, had a royal seat prepared for him by the side of the Emperor, and joined in distributing the prizes to the charioteers. Soon, however, Zeno began to reflect that a man who had displayed so much perfidy to his kinsman and benefactor, and had violated his solemn baptismal oath, was not likely to serve him more faithfully, when his son, the young Caesar, should have grown to manhood. He argued with himself that he had kept all his promises to his deliverer. Magister Praesentalis he was now, and that for life, but he had said nothing as to how long he was to live. His son had been declared Caesar, and, having once worn the imperial purple, should now be dignified with an office in the Church. The Emperor therefore gave orders that ‘Harmatius the perjurer' should be slain. It was evidently no judicial sentence that was passed, but an order for a private assassination that was given. An agent for the bloody deed was soon found. Onoulf, son of Edica and brother of king Odovacar, was still in the imperial service. He had received much kindness from Harmatius when he came a poor barbarian to the capital of the East. His patron had procured for him the dignity of Count, then that of Prefect of Illyricum, and had made him handsome presents of money to enable him to give the banquets which his rank rendered necessary. At Zeno’s order Onoulf laid wait for his patron at a palace ten miles from Constantinople, and stabbed him in the back when he was mounting a spiral staircase to the Hippodrome. The fickle populace, who had forgotten the shouts of admiration with which, they once hailed the rubicund Pyrrhus, as he dashed in brilliant armour along the streets, now applauded his death; and remembering the cruel manner in which he, in conjunction with the Gothic foederati, had punished an insurrection in Thrace during the reign of Leo, cutting off the hands of the peasants who were accomplices therein, they now rejoiced with rapture that one so arrogant and so hard-hearted had at last met with his deserts. The young Basiliscus, son of Harmatius, after his brief dream of Caesarship, was installed as Lector in the church of Blachernae, and appears before his death to have reached the dignity of bishop of the important city of Cyzicus, the metropolis of the Hellespontine diocese.

The next revolt against Zeno was of a different kind, and one which illustrates the peculiar ideas about hereditary succession which were introducing themselves into the originally elective sovereignty of the Empire. These ideas had assumed a somewhat different shape since Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II, had, by the bestowal of her hand, raised Marcian to the throne and thus familiarised the Romans with the idea of a hereditary right to the purple conveyed through females. The Marcian who now, by assuming the diadem, gave a rallying-point for all the unsubdued discontent with Zeno and his Isaurians, was, on his mother’s side, grandson of that Emperor Marcian. He was also son of an Emperor—of that Anthemius sovereign of the West whom Sidonius saw riding through the streets of Rome side by side with Ricimer. Yet upon neither of these relationships did he found his pretensions to the throne. He had married Leontia, the youngest daughter of the Emperor Leo, and set up the claim so often heard of in Eastern, and sometimes in Western, monarchies, that his wife, as being Porphyrogenita, born after her father had attained to supreme power, was of higher dignity than her elder sister Ariadne, born while Leo was still a private person serving in the household of Aspar. Marcian raised troops and attacked the palace of his brother-in-law. A bloody battle took place; the two brothers of Marcian, Procopius and Romulus, brought up supports at a seasonable moment; the palace and the diadem were almost won. But, inheriting the slack and indolent disposition of his father, Marcian betook himself to the banquet and the couch, let slip the golden opportunity, and adjourned till the morrow the victory which never came. For during the night Illus, the general of Zeno, who was now holding the high rank of Magister Officiorum, brought a large number of Isaurians across the straits from Chalcedon in market boats, the regular transports having been seized by the rebels. He also practised with his bribes so successfully on the fidelity of the insurgent troops, that, when morning dawned, Marcian found himself forsaken by most of his followers, and far from capturing the palace was forced himself to flee to the Church of the Apostles. Hence he was dragged away, and sent, like all the enemies of Zeno, into captivity in the recesses of Asia Minor. He became a monk; he escaped; he attempted another abortive insurrection. Hereupon, if not after his first downfall, he was ordained a presbyter; and henceforth Marcian, with his wife Leontia, who had escaped to the convent of ‘The Sleepless Ones' disappears from history. It is clear that Zeno recognised, in the feeble character of his brother-in-law, less danger to his throne than from other claimants of less noble birth. Procopius and Romulus, the brothers of Marcian, were caught in Constantinople while bathing in the baths of Zeuxippus. They escaped, however, from their captivity, fled to the camp of the Gothic general, who, as we shall find in the next chapter, steadfastly refused to surrender them to their enemies, and finally made their way to Rome, where these sons and grandsons of emperors disappear into the undistinguishable crowd.

The last of the insurgents against the authority of Zeno was also the best and the noblest of his foes, countryman Illus the Isaurian. Sent with his brother Trocundus by Basiliscus to conduct the campaign in the Asiatic highlands against the fugitive Emperor, he had, as we have already seen, not only gone over himself to Zeno’s side, but had been the broker through whose mediation the similar defection of Harmatius and the consequent ruin of the cause of Basiliscus had been secured. Such important services should have earned the life-long gratitude of the restored Emperor; but for some reason the ladies of the imperial family pursued him with unrelenting hatred. Three times was his life in danger through their machinations. Before a year had elapsed from Zeno’s return, Paulus, a slave in the imperial household, was detected, sword in hand, watching for a favourable moment to slay the general. The Emperor abandoned the slave to the just resentment of Illus, upon whom next year was bestowed the dignity of Consul. While he was busied with the restoration of the Royal Porch, a magnificent work probably, which was to have commemorated his year of office, another assassin, this time a barbarian of Alan race, was found in his apartments, again with a naked sword in his hand. The murderer, being put to the torture, confessed that Epinicus the Phrygian, who, by the favour of the Empress-mother, had risen from an obscure position to the successive dignities of Comes Privatarum Rerum, Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, and Praefectus Praetorio, had hired him for the bloody deed. Again was a victim sacrificed to propitiate the anger of Illus. The Praetorian Prefect, stripped of all his honours and wealth, was handed over to the man whose death he had compassed, but who generously spared his life, and was satisfied with banishing him to his own native Isauria. Visiting him there not long after, Illus learned from the ex­prefect’s lips that he in turn had been stimulated to the deed of blood by the arch-intriguer, the Empress-mother, Verina.

For the time Illus held his peace, and remained in honourable and self-sought exile from the court. Before long, however, he was recalled by his master, who, with all the ranks of the military and civil hierarchy, crossed the Bosporus and came more than six miles along the road from Chalcedon to welcome the returning general. Immediately, perhaps before he would even enter the capital, Illus disclosed to the Emperor the intrigues of Verina against his life, and declared that he could never be in safety so long as that woman remained in Constantinople. Zeno, who knew that he too was never safe from the conspiracies of his mother-in-law, abandoned her without reluctance to his general. She was sent off under the care of the brother-in-law of Illus with a large retinue to Isauria, compelled to take the veil in the cathedral of Tarsus, and then shut up in the fortress of Dalisandus. Epinicus, in return for his information, was, at the request of Illus, received again into the imperial favour, perhaps restored to his old office.

Among the followers of Illus who accompanied him into the capital on that day of his triumph none probably attracted more attention than the Egyptian grammarian, poet, and philosopher, Pamprepius. Rich gifts of intellect were hidden under the unprepossessing countenance of this dark Egyptian, who was possibly a full-blooded negro. His poetical attainments in his native country (perhaps acquired in emulation of his compatriot Claudian) were rewarded by the chair of Grammar in the University of Athens. Here too he studied philosophy under the mighty mystic, Proclus, the last and some say the greatest, of the Neo-Platonists; and, in the judgment of all Athens, Pamprepius ranked pre-eminently the first among the great master's pupils. Having left Athens in consequence of an insult received from one of the local magistracy, who was himself a dilettante philosopher, Pamprepius came to Byzantium and attached himself to the fortunes of Illus, which he powerfully influenced both for good and for evil. There was certainly a strain of nobility in the character of the patron.

“Illus”, says his fellow countryman Candidus, “conferred many benefits on the Roman state, by his brave deeds in war and by his generosity and righteous dealing in the city”. There was also a vein of literary pursuit in him, such as we should by no means have looked for in an Isaurian highlander. When first introduced to the general, Pamprepius recited, with much grace of delivery, a long-meditated discourse, probably in the Platonic or Proclean style, on the nature of the soul. Illus was charmed with what he heard, proclaimed the swarthy Egyptian wisest of all the professors in Constantinople, and arranged that he should be engaged at a large salary, paid by the State, to teach the choicest spirits among the young men who resorted to the Museums, or, as we should call them, the colleges, of the capital. At the time when we behold him about to re-cross the Bosphorus in the train of his triumphant patron, Pamprepius has reached a higher elevation. He is now Quaestor, belongs therefore to the awful innermost circle of the Illustres, endorses the petitions of the subjects, directs them to the proper office which has to take them into consideration, and prepares the stilted sentences in which Tarasicodissa-Zeno may clothe his meagre thoughts when replying to supplications or promulgating laws.

But there was a worm at the root of this amazing heathen, good fortune of the Egyptian, although for the present all went well with him. Like his master Proclus, he was a Greek, or, as we should call it, a heathen in his creed; and made no secret of his Hellenic faith, even in Christian Constantinople itself. The avowed heathenism drew after it the imputation of darker practices, and of a knowledge of the future obtained by unhallowed arts, an imputation to which the windy theosophy of the Neo-Platonist not unnaturally exposed him, and which Pamprepius himself, by mysterious and enigmatical utterances, which could be claimed as prophecies if they turned out true, seems to have intentionally fostered. It would be going too far to attribute either to Illus or his client an attempt at the hopeless task of the restoration of heathenism: but it is probable that the general as well as the philosopher may have shown a deeper interest in the Dialogues of Plato than in the endless theological squabbles of Timothy the Weasel and Timothy Solofaciolus, and that his popularity with the mob of Constantinople may have suffered accordingly.

The insurrection of Marcian, which followed shortly after these events, was partly caused, according to the representations of the rebels, by the harsh treatment of the widow of Leo. Certainly Illus was bound to keep his master harmless from the consequences of a severity which he had himself insisted upon: yet he seems to have wavered for a moment. In his perplexity he turned to the dark Egyptian for counsel. The voice of Pamprepius was in favour of loyalty, and presaged the victory of Zeno. “Providence is on our side”, he said oracularly; and when, notwithstanding the first successes of Marcian, his standard was eventually lowered, men looked with yet heightened reverence on the prophetic powers of the Neo-Platonist professor.

To Zeno’s triumph on this occasion the valour and the skill of Illus, as we have seen, largely contributed. But if the Emperor prized his services, the Empress could not forget her mother's wrongs. Ariadne on this occasion belied the fair and honourable character which, as far as we can judge, she generally bore in a dark and troublous time. When the Master of the Offices (for this was the dignity now held by Illus) was mounting the stairs to view the races in the Hippodrome, a life-guards-man named Spanicius, hired by Ariadne for the purpose, drew his sword and endeavoured to cut off his head. The armour-bearer of Illus interposed and struck up the assassin's hand, but the escape was so narrow that the right ear of the intended victim was actually severed, and he ever after wore a skull-cap when he appeared in public.

It was vain to ask this time for the surrender of the instigator of the crime, and probably from henceforward it was only a question of time how soon Illus should revolt. But, according to our chief authority, the Emperor began the quarrel by insisting on the liberation of his brother Longinus. This person, whose previous history is almost hopelessly obscure, had been for ten years kept a close prisoner by Illus at a castle in Isauria. So strange a predicament for the brother of a reigning Emperor is perhaps explained by the private character of Longinus, which was detestably immoral. He may have inflicted on the general some wrong which in one less powerfully protected would have called for the punishment of death, a punishment which even in his case could be commuted for nothing less than life-long imprisonment. It would seem, however, that the Emperor's request was granted, and that both Longinus and the mother of Zeno arrived in Constantinople, having been voluntarily released by Illus.

The Emperor next proceeded to strip Illus of his military command, which he bestowed on one of the barbarian foederati, John the Goth. He then made a harangue to the people of Constantinople—there are some indications that Zeno was vain of his oratorical powers— setting forth his grievances against Illus, and ordering that all his relations and dependents should be banished from Constantinople. The possessions of these men the Emperor, ever thinking of his highland home, distributed among the cities of Isauria.

Illus, thus driven to open revolt, withdrew into his native Taurus-country and endeavoured to strengthen himself by alliances. The kings of Armenia and Persia promised help if he would effect a junction of his forces with theirs. Odovacar, ‘the tyrant of Western Rome' was also appealed to, but for the present declined to join the confederacy, though two years later he showed symptoms, or Zeno thought that he showed symptoms, of a willingness to favour the cause of Illus. The insurgent general seems to have at first proclaimed Marcian Emperor, but the attempt to conjure with this name proving fruitless, he next sought out his former persecutor Verina in her exile. Their common hostility to Zeno brought these two old antagonists together. Verina, arrayed in imperial robes, was announced as the lawful disposer of the diadem, and mounting a high platform, in the presence doubtless of the assembled army, proceeded to invest with the insignia of empire a certain citizen of Dalisandus of obscure parentage, named Leontius, whom Illus had selected for the dangerous honour. Leontius nominated the high officers of the household and the state, distributed money to the people, and established his court at Antioch, which had not, apparently, been the residence of an Augustus since the days of Valens.

Zeno, whose position was somewhat insecure, made for himself strange alliances with ecclesiastics and barbarians. He persuaded his fellow-countryman Conon, bishop of Apamea in Syria, to leave his episcopal throne and don the armour of a legionary. At the same time he bestowed the chief command in Isauria on Linges, the bastard brother of Conon, a man of high courage, and probably of great local influence. Of the share which the Goths under Theodoric and the wild Rugians from beyond the Danube took in this war as soldiers of Zeno it will be convenient to speak in the following chapter. After Leontius for little more than two months had possessed the semblance of sovereignty his fortunes began to decline. Illus, who had been worsted in the field, sent his wife, and provisions for a siege, to the fortress of Cherreus. These precautions, and the messages he sent to Leontius and Verina to quit Antioch and come to him with all speed, produced a discouraging effect on his army. The officers dispersed to seek shelter in friendly fortresses, while many of the more obscure abettors of the rebellion took refuge in the caves with which that part of Asia Minor abounds.

The castle of Cherreus also bore the name of its builder Papirius, apparently a kind of robber chieftain who had occupied it as a feudal baron occupied his turrets by the Rhine, in order to levy toll on passers-by and to keep his rustic neighbours in terrified subjection. Papirius was apparently now dead, but his son Indacus, a man of great courage and physical strength, who fought with his left hand and as a runner outstripped the fleetest horsemen, still held the castle and was faithful to the cause of Ulus. Here had Marcian been imprisoned, and here Verina. Hither did the empress-mother now return, a fugitive though no longer a captive.

The fatigues and anxieties of the last few months had been too much for her strength, and on the ninth day after she reached the castle her turbulent and intriguing life came to an end. She was embalmed and placed in a leaden coffin, with the hope doubtless that one day a tomb befitting her dignity might he found for her beside the Bosporus. After thirty days died Marsus, a faithful friend of Illus, and he by whose intervention Pamprepius was first introduced to him. The castle was strong and provisioned for a long siege, and Illus, after entrusting the details of the daily defence to Indacus, shut himself up in his library and devoted his now abundant leisure to the study of his beloved manuscripts. Leontius took the turn in his fortunes less philosophically. He macerated himself with fastings, and passed his days in unmanly lamenta­tions.

After the siege had lasted two years, the hopes of Illus and Leontius growing ever fainter, the besiegers, under the command of John the Goth, obtained possession of a fort on an opposite hill which in some degree commanded the castle, and plied their engines with great effect. The besieged called for a parley, and by the mediation of the Goth sent to the Emperor at Constantinople a letter reminding him of their past services and praying for forgiveness. The appeal, however, was ineffectual, and the siege dragged on for two years longer. At length, at the end of four years, A.D. 488, treachery accomplished what fair fighting could not achieve. The wife of Trocundus, the brother of Illus, privately communicated to the Emperor her willingness to betray her relative. She was sent for this purpose from Constantinople, probably with a delusive offer of pardon, entered the fortress, and succeeded in opening its gates to the imperial troops. Illus and Leontius were slain, and their heads were cut off and sent to the Emperor. Pamprepius was slain with them. All through the four years of siege he had fed his associates with hopes of ultimate triumph; and it is said that when they found that his prophecies were about to turn out false they themselves in their disappointment cut him to pieces. The authorities for this story are not of the highest class. One would gladly disbelieve a history so inconsistent with the character of the brave philosopher-soldier Illus.

No further rebellion disturbed the reign of Zeno. His brother, the shameless profligate Longinus, was now all-powerful. Master of the Offices in 484, Consul in 486 and again in 490, he was the head of the Isaurian faction in the capital, and doubtless intended to wear the diadem after his brother. The health of the Emperor was now visibly declining, and he was filled with a restless desire to know how it would fare with his family and his beloved Isaurians after his death. With this view he consulted Maurianus the Count, “a very learned man, who was acquainted with certain mystic rites and had predicted many future events”, and asked to be informed of the name of his successor on the throne. The answer was ambiguous : “Your successors shall be your wife and one who has served as Silentiarius”—that title being given to the guard of honour, thirty in number, who watched in the purple chamber. On hearing this Zeno at once ordered the arrest of a certain Pelagius, formerly a Silentiarius but now a Patrician, and an eminent statesman, who seemed to him the most likely person to be thus indicated. Moreover, Pelagius, who was a man of high character and some literary fame (he had written in verse a history of the Empire from the time of Augustus), had dared to rebuke the misgovernment of Zeno and to oppose earnestly his project of declaring his fatuous brother Caesar. His property was ordered to be confiscated, and soon after he was strangled by his gaolers. When the Praetorian Prefect Arcadius heard of this act of iniquity he rebuked Zeno for it with a freedom worthy of better times. Upon this the Emperor ordered Arcadius also to be killed the first time that he should set foot within the palace, but the Prefect, receiving a hint of his danger, ‘turned aside as if casually to pray in the Great Church [St. Sophia], claimed the right of asylum there, and so escaped bitter death.’

Next year (April 9, 491) the life of the wretched and suspicious tyrant was ended by an epileptic seizure. Longinus claimed the throne; but now the long-suppressed indignation of the citizens broke forth; civil war raged, and the Isaurians, who had for years contemplated this event and devised their plan of action, set the city on fire with long poles prepared for the purpose, tipped with flax and sulphur. A considerable part of the city and the Circus was burnt, but at length order was restored and the Isaurian faction owned themselves vanquished. Longinus was sent back to his native land, and many of the Isaurians accompanied him at their own request, doubtless because their lives were imperilled by the fury of the mob.

The prophecy of Count Maurianus came true. The Empress Ariadne was requested to bestow the diadem where she would, and she bestowed it, and her hand, on Anastasius, a native of Dyrrhachium, past the prime of life, not yet even a senator, but one of the schola of Silentiarii. With the events of his reign of twenty-seven years, which on the whole fully justified the choice of Ariadne, we have no present concern, but it will be well briefly to follow the fortunes of the Isaurian emigres before we return to the history of Theodoric. When the exiles trooped back to their rough Asiatic homes, it may be imagined that they returned in no good-humour with the new ruler of the East. Soon they were in open insurrection, Conon the militant bishop again taking up arms on behalf of his countrymen ; and it is probable, though not distinctly stated, that they proclaimed Longinus Emperor. Not he, however, but a certain Athenodorus, seems to have taken the command in the war with Constantinople which broke out next year, and which lasted till the end of 497. It remained but a local affair, for the insurgents apparently never pushed their incursions further than into Phrygia; but the Emperor, who had confided the conduct of the war to two generals of the same name, John the Goth and John the Hunchback, was accused by his critics of feebleness and faint-heartedness in its prosecution. After five years of it he grew weary, and secretly confided to Euphemius, Patriarch of Constantinople, that he would gladly see it at an end. As the Isaurians, with all their savageness, were orthodox Chalcedonian Christians, and Anastasius was not, Euphemius leaned somewhat towards the side of the rebels, and most improperly repeated what had been said to him to yet another John, the Patrician, father-in-law of the insurgent general Athenodorus. The Patrician hastened to Anastasius, expecting to be made the instrument of a negotiation, but found the Emperor, instead thereof, highly indignant at this betrayal of his confidence. Next year (498), prosecuting the war in a bolder and more imperial way, he obtained a complete victory over his enemies. Athenodorus and Longinus were taken prisoners and beheaded. Their heads, sent by John the Goth to Constantinople, were fixed high on poles and exhibited at Sycae opposite the city, “a sweet sight to the Byzantines”, says a historian, “in return for the evils which they had endured from Zeno and the Isaurians”. When the overthrow of the rebel cause was certain, Anastasius sent his Master of the Offices to the Patriarch with the insulting message, “Your prayers, O great man! have covered your friends with soot.”

The remembrance of this Isaurian rebellion was maintained by a tribute called ‘Isaurica’, which was thenceforward collected (probably from the malcontent province) for the imperial treasury; and we are told that from this tax, amounting to £200,000 annually, were paid the subsidies to the barbarian foederati.

In the sketch which has been given of the reign of Zeno, its political aspect only has been dwelt upon. Its place in the development of religious doctrine must be alluded to, however briefly, for, as Gibbon truly remarks, “it is in ecclesiastical story that Zeno appears least contemptible”. Throughout his reign the Emperor was a steady supporter of orthodoxy, and the patriarchs of Constantinople, who were thorns in the side of a Basiliscus and an Anastasius, served him as faithfully and as steadily as his own Isaurians. There was a great deal, however, of sheer misunderstanding of the Council of Chalcedon and much personal rancour against it in some of the Eastern dioceses, especially in Egypt and Syria. Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, a man of great gifts and much force of character, induced the Emperor to attempt to remove these misunderstandings and to soften this rancour, by the issue of his celebrated Henoticon, or Letter of Union, a document which was of course drawn up by Acacius himself In this instrument the Via Media of Catholic orthodoxy, as distinct, on the one hand from the Nestorian doctrine that Christ's human nature was a mere robe worn by the Eternal Son, and on the other, from the Monophysite doctrine that the Godhead was weary, suffered, and died, was reaffirmed in terms which appear to the lay mind undistinguishable from the decrees of Chalcedon. A formal adhesion to the utterances of that Council was, however, not insisted upon, and, with some lack of candour, the one allusion to Chalcedon which was introduced was couched in purposely disrespectful terms.

Such was the tenour of the Henoticon of Zeno, a document which has met with but scant favour from ecclesiastical historians. Yet the object which it proposed to itself, the closing of a barren and profitless controversy, was one earnestly to be desired in the interests of a living faith. The mere statesman could not be blind to the fact that this Monophysite logomachy (which in fact paved the way for the conquests of Mohammed) was rending the Eastern Empire in pieces. And from the point of view of a Byzantine official, there was nothing monstrous in the idea of the Augustus preparing a symbol of religious belief for all his subjects, though no doubt, as a matter of ecclesiastical order, that symbol should have been submitted for discussion to a council of bishops. However, issued as it was on the sole authority of the Emperor, it all but succeeded in its object. Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch accepted it; and thus the four great patriarchates of the East, after the discords of forty years, were again united in apparent harmony. There was but one exception, but that was world-important. The Pope of Rome, now but a precarious subject of the Eastern Caesar, unwilling to acquiesce in any further exaltation of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and determined above all things that the decrees of Chalcedon, those trophies of the victory of the mighty Leo, should not merely mould but should be recognised as moulding the faith of the whole Christian world, refused to accept the Henoticon of Zeno, and soon began to clamour for its withdrawal. It will be necessary hereafter to sketch the outlines of the controversy thence ensuing, a controversy in which it is impossible to believe that either party saw any principle at stake other than the sublime principle of self-assertion, the sacred duty of choosing the chief seats in the synagogues and the uppermost places at feasts.

But whatever its motives, this controversy led to a schism between the two great sees of Eastern and Western Christendom, a schism which lasted thirty-five years, which had important results on the earlier fortunes of the Ostrogothic monarchy in Italy, and which undoubtedly prepared the way for the more enduring schisms of later years. The Henoticon of Zeno, which was meant to reconcile the Churches by the Bosporus and the Nile, laid the first courses of the wall of separation which now parts St. Petersburg from the Vatican.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE TWO THEODORICS IN THRACE.