ROME. 
The Eastern Empire. 
315 
The Eastern Empire. 
feith, or power, to protect the suppliants, who had embraced 
the fortune of Theodosius. 
After this disgraceful treaty, the eastern government was 
perpetually harrassed by the encroaching and imperious 
demands of the king of the Huns. A base attempt was 
on one occasion made, under the sanction of an embassy, 
to procure the assassination of Attila. The frank and open- 
hearted barbarian, apprized of the treason, received never¬ 
theless the Roman ambassadors with freedom and hospi¬ 
tality, introduced them (with a courtesy which even then 
distinguished the northern nations from the eastern) to his 
wives, and intimated to one of them that he was aware of 
his treachery. The Romans departed, but the traitor was 
rash enough to return, and was pardoned. This attempt ser¬ 
ved only to exasperate Attila, and to render the court of Con¬ 
stantinople despicable in the eyes of its own subjects. 
The emperor Theodosius did not long survive the most 
humiliating circumstance of an inglorious life. As he was 
riding, or hunting, in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, 
he was thrown from his horse into the river Lycus; the spine 
of the back was injured by the fall; and he expired some 
days afterwards, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the forty- 
third of his reign. His sister Pulcheria was unanimously 
proclaimed Empress of the East; and the R.omans, for the 
first time, submitted to a female reign. Amidst the general 
acclamations of the people, the empress did not forget the 
prejudice to which her sex was exposed; and she wisely 
resolved to prevent their murmurs by the choice of a col¬ 
league, who would always respect the superior rank and 
virgin chastity of his wife. She gave her hand to Marcian, 
a senator, about sixty years of age, and the nominal hus¬ 
band of Pulcheria was solemnly invested with the Imperial 
purple. The behaviour of Marcian on the throne, shewed 
that he was qualified to restore and invigorate an 
empire, which had been almost dissolved by the successive 
weakness of two hereditary monarchs. His first conferences 
with Attila convinced the barbarian that he had no despic¬ 
able foe to deal with. While Marcian disdained the vain 
title of the Invincible, he disclaimed the payment of a tribute, 
and signified that though he might voluntarily reward the 
services of his allies, he would never condescend to acknow¬ 
ledge their supremacy. Attila indignantly defied Marcian, 
but affecting contempt for the eastern Romans, he turned 
his arms, as we have already related, against the western 
states. 
Of the reign of Marcian little has been preserved. He 
contrived to keep in amity the ferocious Ostrogoths, and 
preserved peace without attempting any important changes ; 
which, in fact,. were not practicable. At his death, Pulcheria 
and the senate made choice of Leo. The emperor probably 
deserved this honour, although almost the only event of his 
reign which has reached us covers him with disgrace. 
He caused Aspar and his sons, by whose influence he had 
been exalted to the throne, to be executed, because they too 
rigorously exacted the debt of gratitude. He died of a flux 
at an advanced age, after a reign of seventeen years, and 
the inheritance of the East devolved on his grandson, the 
offspring of his daughter Ariadne, by an Isaurian husband, 
who changed his barbarous appellative of Trascalisseus for 
the Greek of Zeno. The father was soon elevated to the 
second rank in the empire ; and the premature death of his 
infant son, as it conduced to gratify his ambition, excited 
the public suspicion of unfair means being used. Verina, 
the widow of Leo, fomented the popular discontents against 
the unnatural parent; and Zeno was obliged to fly with pre¬ 
cipitation to the mountains of Isauria. 
Verina, however, carried her designs further, by investing 
her brother Basiliscus with the purple ; but he too soon lost 
her favour, by presuming to assassinate the lover of his sister, 
and the paramour of his wife. The malcontents, who were 
numerous among the people as well as in the palace, recalled 
Zeno from exile ; and the unhappy usurper, with his whole 
family,was condemned to perish by cold and hunger. Har- 
matius, who had materially contributed to the restoration of 
Zeno, received from the latter the reward that had been pro¬ 
mised him, of being appointed master of the household, 
but no sooner was he installed in his office than Zeno caused 
him to be massacred in his palace by Onoulus, whom Har- 
matius himself had brought up. Indeed, if every private 
circumstance in each reign were to be recorded, instead of 
developing the great events which led to the catastrophe of 
the empire of the East, in every subsequent period would be 
found the same treachery between fathers, wives, and chil¬ 
dren, relations and friends, the protectors and the protected. 
The haughty spirit of Verina was still incapable of repose; 
she provoked new rebellions in Syria and Egypt; and to the 
last hour of her life persisted in civil commotion. The indo¬ 
lent tranquillity of Zeno’s debauchery was thus interrupted 
by two revolts; the one under his brother-in-law, Marcian, 
who set up for himself in right of his wife Leontia, the 
eldest daughter of Leo ; the other under Leontius, the com¬ 
mander of the Syrian troops. They both ended by the death 
of their authors; nor did Zeno long delay following them 
to the tomb, which, if historians are to be believed, he 
entered alive. Ariadne, who loved him not, profiting by 
an attack of the epilepsy, to which the emperor was subject, 
caused him to be precipitately interred. A noise was heard 
in the coffin, which she would not suffer to be opened ; and 
some days after it was discovered that Zeno had devoured the 
flesh off his own arms; but this is impossible. He was 
sixty-five years old, and had reigned seventeen, A. D. 491. 
Ariadne, on the death of her husband, bestowed her 
hand and the imperial title on Anastasius, who had grown 
old in the palace, where he exercised the office of 
silentiarius, or the preserve;: of silence; a dignity which 
still exists in the palaces of the East. The virtues of Anas¬ 
tasius had been long tried and respected ; and when he was 
proclaimed emperor in the circus, the universal acclamation 
was, “Reign, Anastasius, as thou hast lived!” 
The hopes of the good this prince might do, and the ex¬ 
perience of what he really did in suppressing the most odious 
taxes, supported his throne for six years, though assailed 
by a powerful cabal, which proceeded to the last extremi¬ 
ties, and ended in the destruction of the leaders in the se¬ 
dition and their accomplices. Anastasius, indeed, endured 
perpetual vexation from the conflicts between the orthodox 
and the Eutyehians, to the latter of which he is accused 
of having been partial. In consequence of this, a com¬ 
motion was excited in favour of the orthodox, which at one 
time was the destruction of more than ten thousand men. 
On another occasion, Vitalianus, the governor of Thrace, 
advanced to the very walls of Constantinople, and threat¬ 
ened to depose the emperor, unless he recalled the Catholic 
bishop, whom he had exiled ; with which peremptory de¬ 
mand he was obliged to comply. External enemies also 
gained ground, and swarms of Persians and barbarians 
infested the empire. In order to secure his capital from their 
incursions, he inclosed it with an entrenchment, called 
afterwards the walls of Anastasius. He is said to have dege¬ 
nerated so far during the latter part of his reign as to sell 
offices, and divide the spoils of the people with the gover¬ 
nors of the provinces, to whose rapacity he abandoned them. 
In the eightieth year of his age he was found dead in his 
chamber, after having reigned twenty-seven years. 
Justin, a native of Dacia, where he had followed the 
business of a shepherd, possessing a strength and stature 
which he thought were likely to recommend him, left the 
peaceful occupations of pastoral life, and obtained a place 
among the guards of the emperor Leo. By long service 
in the Persian and Isaurian wars, he had obtained the' suc¬ 
cessive ranks of tribune, of count, and of general, with 
the dignity of senator, and the command of the guards, at 
the important crisis when Anastasius expired. The kinsmen 
of that prince were excluded from the throne by the artifices 
of the eunuch Amantius, who resolved to bestow the purple 
on the most obsequious of his creatures. A liberal donative 
to conciliate the guards was entrusted in the hands of Justin, 
who, with corresponding insidiousness, employed it in his 
own favour ; and as no competitor presumed to appear 
against a man so protected, the Dacian peasant ascended 
