BOOK III

VI

ANASTASIUS   I

 

After the death of Zeno, Flavius Anastasius of Dyrrhachium was proclaimed Emperor (11th April 491) through the influence of the widowed Empress Ariadne, who married him about six weeks later. Anastasius, who held the not very distinguished post of a silentiarius or guardsman, was nevertheless a remarkable and well-known figure in Constantinople. He held unorthodox opinions, partly due, perhaps, to an Arian mother and a Manichaean uncle, and he was possessed by a sort of religious craze, which led him to attempt to con­vert others to his own opinions. He did this in a curiously public manner. Having placed a chair in the church of St. Sophia, he used to attend the services with unfailing regularity and give private heterodox instruction to a select audience from his cathedra. By this conduct he offended the Patri­arch Euphemius, who by Zeno’s permission expelled him from the church and pulled down his chair of instruction; but he gained golden opinions from the general public by his piety and liberality. It even appears that he may have at one time dreamt of an ecclesiastical career, for he was proposed for the vacant chair of Antioch. Euphemius, un­pleasantly surprised at the choice of the Empress, who was supported by the eunuch Urbicius, refused to crown Anastasius until he had signed a written   declaration  of  orthodoxy, which, in spite of his heretical tendencies, he did not hesitate to do.

The accession of Anastasius must have seemed to Byzan­tium a great and a welcome change. Instead of a man like Zeno, who in spite of considerable ability was very unpopular on account of the unfair favor shown to the Isaurians, and who scandalized propriety by his loose life, while he could not attract men by an imposing or agreeable exterior, a man of the highest respectability occupied the throne, a man with a strong religious turn, of slender stature and remarkable for his fine eyes, which differed in hue, a man to whom the people called out when he was proclaimed Emperor, "Beign as you have lived", and to whom a bishop of Rome wrote, "I know that in private life you always strove after piety". He is characterized in general as a man of intelligence and good education, gentle and yet energetic, able to command his temper and generous in bestowing gifts, but with one weak point, a tendency to be unduly parsimonious.

But the accession of the new Emperor was not undisputed. Zeno’s brother Longinus, who was president of the senate, conceived that he had a claim to the crown, and he had actually a strong support in his countrymen the Isaurians, who saw that their privileges were endangered. Zeno, who knew his brother well, had with real patriotism refused to designate him as his successor, feeling that his elevation would be a disaster to the Empire; somewhat as Antipater the Macedonian refused to transmit his protectorate to his son Cassander. Longinus, supported by a magister militum of the same name, played much the same part against Anastasius that Basiliscus, the brother-in-law of Leo, had played against Zeno. He organized the numerous Isaurians who resided in the capital, and the year of Anastasius' elevation was marked for Constantinople by bloodshed and fatal street battles, in the course of which a large part of the town, including the hippodrome, was destroyed by a conflagration. Anastasius, however, succeeded in removing his rival to Alexandria, where he became a priest by compulsion, early in  492. Longinus, the master of soldiers, was deposed from his office and returned with many other Isaurians to his mountainous home in Asia Minor.

The tedious Isaurian war, of which this was the first scene, lasted for five years, 491-496. The events of the first years are often obscured by failing to understand clearly that hostilities were carried on in Constantinople and Isauria simultaneously; the war had begun in Isauria before the Isaurians were expelled from Constantinople. Longinus and his friends, who arrived, filled with indignation, in the regions of Mount Taurus, roused their excitable countrymen to revolt; and an understanding evidently existed between the rebels in Asia Minor and the rebels in Byzantium. Among the generals who led the Isaurians in conjunction with Longinus was Conon, the archbishop of Apamea. Their forces marched in a north­westerly direction towards the Propontis, but at Cotyaeum in Phrygia they were met by a small army which Anastasius had sent against them under the command of many experienced officers. The masses of the rebels were utterly routed and fled back to their mountains, while the imperial soldiers followed leisurely and took up winter quarters at the foot of the Taurus range.

In what relations the various generals in command of Ana­stasius’ small army stood to one another we do not know; but it would be unfair to suppose that Anastasius was adopting the policy of dividing the command from motives of jealousy or suspicion. The number of commanders is quite accounted for by the nature of the warfare to be expected in the defiles of Taurus, where it was necessary for small divisions to act in many places, and a large regiment under a single leader would have been of little use.

The news of Cotyaeum was followed by an edict (issued in the capital in 493) unfavorable to the Isaurians, who thereupon filled the streets with all the horrors of fire and sword, and hauled along with ropes the bronze statues  of the Emperor.

These scenes of indecent violence were with difficulty suppressed, and then a summary edict was issued banishing all Isaurians from the city, among the rest the family of Zeno, while the Isaurica or annual grant of 1000 lbs. of gold (which Zeno had instituted) was withdrawn.

The banished members of the obnoxious nationality, burning for revenge, reinforced their countrymen in the castles and hiding-places of the Taurus mountains, and for the next three years (493-496) a somewhat desultory but anxious war was carried on round the strong places of the country. Claudiopolis, a very important position, was taken in 493, and in 494 a considerable victory was won near the same city in a battle which was fatal to archbishop Conon. The following year saw the capture and execution (at Byzantium) of Longinus, one of the chiefs, not to be confounded with the ex-magister; and in 496 the last two surviving leaders, Longinus and Athenodorus, were taken, and the war was at an end.

It is important to note that the Isaurians were then removed from their Asiatic home and transported to Thrace, but it is hard to believe that this measure can have been carried out with any degree of completeness. The whole history of the Isaurian war indicates what an isolated position, from their sentiments, habits, and mode of life, the Isaurians held in the Empire, as we have already described. It was as natural for them to take up arms when an Isaurian did not succeed Zeno as it would have been for the Ostrogoths if by some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances Theodoric had become a Roman Emperor and on his death an Ostrogoth did not replace him.

Besides its disastrous effects on agriculture and industry in the south of Asia Minor, this long war led indirectly to other harmful consequences. It was a very unsuitable and unfortunate preparation for the serious Persian war which broke out  in  502,  and  was  only temporarily terminated  by the peace of 505. An account of this three years’ war will be given in the next chapter, but it may be here observed that the Isaurian warfare, which required operations in small divisions and introduced the practice of numerous independent commands, was a bad drill for the war in Mesopotamia, which demanded the united action of large bodies under one supreme general.

 

In the meantime the Balkan lands were becoming acquainted with new foes, who were destined to play a great part in the subsequent history of the Roman Empire. The departure of Theodoric the Ostrogoth to Italy left Thrace and Illyricum free for the Slaves, who dwelt beyond the Danube in the countries which are now called Siebenbürgen and Moldavia, to invade and plunder. The first invasion of which we have record took place in 493, on which occasion they severely defeated Julianus, the master of soldiers, and devastated Thrace. The next invasion that we hear of was in 517, when they penetrated into Macedonia and Thessaly; but it is highly probable that in the intervening years they were not idle, though we have no record. But other enemies had also laid waste the provinces and defeated the legions. These were the Bulgarians, a people of the Ural-Altaic or Ugro-Finnic race, who must not be confounded with the Slaves. They are first mentioned as having been employed by Zeno against Theodoric, by whom they were defeated. In 499 they crossed the Danube, and returned gorged with plunder, and crowned with the glory of a victory over a Roman army; and in 502 they repeated their successful expedition.

It seems clear to me that there must have been invasions, whether of Slaves or Bulgarians, between the years 502 and 512, which our scanty and brief notices have not recorded. For, in the first place, they had met with no repulse; invasion was  easy and inviting; nothing  except hostilities  among the barbarians themselves could have hindered them. In the second place, Anastasius built the Long Wall for protection against their hostilities in 512, and it is hardly conceivable that he would have built it then if, during the ten preceding years, the provinces had been exempted from the devastations of the heathen. It rather seems probable that in 510 or 511 a really dangerous invasion took place, and that this was the immediate cause of the erection of the wall. This wall, of which traces are still visible, stretched from the Sea of Mar­mora at Selymbria to the Black Sea. Its length was 420 stadia, its distance from the city was 280 stadia, and its effect was to insulate Constantinople.

Thus the arms of Anastasius were so unsuccessful in Europe that at last no serious attempt was made to protect Thrace; he confined himself to saving the capital by a massive fortification. This wall was really efficacious, and it is meaningless rhetoric to call it a "monument of cowardice", an expression which might be applied to all fortifications. On the other hand, in Asia some useful successes were gained in 498 against the Bedouin or Scenite Arabs, who had begun to invade Syria and Palestine. They were thoroughly defeated in two battles. But a success of still greater consequence was the recovery of the island of Jotaba, from which the Romans had been expelled in the reign of Leo. Jotaba was the centre of an important Red Sea trade; all the ships with cargoes from India put in there, and custom-house duties were collected by imperial officers. Its possession was thus extremely important for the Empire.

 

Anastasius' reign was signalized by many riots and disturbances in Constantinople. These often took the form of conflicts between the Blues and Greens, the latter of whom were favored by Anastasius, as they identified themselves with the unorthodox monophysitic party. The religious disputes and the schism with Rome were noticed in a previous chapter; here I shall only call attention to the strained relations, already referred to, between the Emperor and the Patriarch Euphemius.

It happened that in 495 Anastasius informed the Patriarch that he was sick of the Isaurian war, and would willingly make easy conditions with the rebels, if he could thereby conclude it. Euphemius was treacherous enough to repeat these words to Johannes, a son-in-law of Athenodorus, one of the Isaurian leaders. We cannot determine to what extent Euphemius entertained a traitorous design; but Anastasius, when Johannes made him aware of the Patriarch’s communication, looked upon him, or chose to look upon him, as a traitor and accomplice of the rebels. He was banished, or fled, soon afterwards from Byzantium.

There was a strong party of opposition whose hostile machin­ations must have often made the Emperor feel insecure. How this party, which represented the orthodox faith, acted in regard to the Isaurian revolt we do not hear; but the incident of Euphemius, just related, might incline us to suspect their loyalty during those years. The measures adopted by Anastasius for the reform of abuses created much discontent among those who profited by them; he put down informers (delatores) with a firm hand. His conscientious scruples did not permit him to indulge the corrupt populace in the dissolute and barbarous amusements to which they were accustomed. He forbade the practice of contests with wild beasts, a relic of heathen Rome which was an anachronism in the Christian world.

We cannot be surprised at its survival so long when we remember that gladiatorial shows lasted for fifty years after Rome had become Christian; and we must also recollect that the Christian doctrine that animals have no souls hindered any strong sentiment on the subject. He also refused to allow the celebration of nocturnal feasts, which were the occasions of licentious orgies. The May feast of Bruta was on two occasions the scene of scandalous riots, resulting in the sacrifice of life, and the Emperor forbade its celebration for the future, thereby (says a contemporary) "depriving the city of the most beautiful dances". Thus his staid and frugal court, which his enemies might call shabby, his strict censorship of morals, which seemed, as we should  say, puritanical,  and  his   heretical  opinions  in theology, exposed Anastasius to constant odium, which culminated (511 AD) when he sanctioned the adoption of a monophysitic addition to the hymn called Trisagios ("thrice holy"). To quell the sedition Anastasius adopted a theatrical artifice, which was successful. He appeared before the people without a crown, and offered to resign the sovereignty in favor of another. The respect which his uniform conscientiousness had inspired in all predominated for the moment, and the multitude cried to him that he should resume the diadem. But discontent continued to prevail, and the opposition was so strong that it seemed a good opportunity for an ambitious man who had soldiers at his command to attempt to dethrone the Emperor.

In 514 such an attempt was made. The commissariat which had been supplied by the State to the corps of foreign foederati, who were stationed to defend Thrace and Scythia, had been withdrawn, and the discontent which ensued afforded a new pretext against the existing government. Vitalian, the son of a man who had been himself count of the foederati, fostered the ill-feeling. He was a man small in stature, and afflicted with a stammer, but he had associated constantly with Huns and Bulgarians, and could count on their co-operation. The brunt of the unpopularity of the government with the soldiers was borne by Hypatius, the Emperor's nephew, who was the master of soldiers in Thrace, and it was against him in the first instance that Vitalian directed his attack. By stratagem he compassed the death of the chief officers of his staff, he corrupted the governor of Lower Moesia, and then capturing Carinus, Hypatius’ trusted confidant, he granted him his life on the conditions that he should co-operate in the capture of Odessus and recognize himself as general. Hypatius seems to have escaped to Constantinople.

The rebel, or "tyrant", as he was called, then advanced on the capital with 50,000 soldiers, consisting partly of the foederati and partly of rustics, some of whom were perhaps Slaves settled in Moesia and Scythia. It was not merely as spokesman of the grievances of the army, and as protesting against the administration of Hypatius, that Vitalian posed;  he  also professed to be the champion of orthodoxy, indignant at the treatment of certain bishops whom Anastasius had banished. He took care to insist on this pretext; and we may confidently assume that he had established intimate relations with the disaffected party in the city.

The Emperor, inclined to he timorous on account of his recent experiences (that is, the revolt of 511), and vexed by the unexpectedness of these occurrences as well as by the fact that the adversaries who were advancing made a similar pretence of blaming his religion (as the rebels had done on the former occasion), commanded bronze crosses to be set up over the gates of the walls, setting forth in writing the real cause of the rebellion. He also reduced by one-quarter the tax on animals for the inhabitants of Bithynia and Asia, depositing the bill to that effect on the altar of the First Church (St. Sophia). He employed the officers and ministers as a garrison for the city.

But when Vitalian attacked the suburbs and marched round the walls, the Master of Soldiers, Patricius, was sent to him. Such missions devolved upon him in virtue of his office; moreover, he was distinguished by honor and dignities, and had considerably helped Vitalian himself in his successful career. He took Vitalian sharply to task, availing himself of the liberty permitted to a benefactor; and in reply Vitalian, as was to be expected, dwelled on many acts passed by the Emperor, and pointed out that the present object of himself and his party was (1) to rectify the injustices committed by the magister militum per Thracias (Hypatius), and (2) to obtain the recognition and sanction of the orthodox theological creed.

Next day the chief officers of Vitalian’s camp came, on the Emperor's invitation, without Vitalian, for he could not be persuaded to enter the city; and an interview was held in which the Emperor, having charged them and proved to them that they were not disdained or passed over, won them by presents and by promises that they would receive their dues, and undertook that the church of Old Rome would be allowed to arrange the religious questions at stake. When they had declared with oaths their future loyalty to him, he dismissed them. Having returned to Vitalian, they departed with him and the army.

Thus the first essay of Vitalian was frustrated by the desertion of his officers, whose confidence Anastasius won. Anastasius followed up his promises by appointing Cyrillus to the post of magister militum instead of his nephew, who was so unpopular with the army. Cyrillus proceeded to Lower Moesia, where he knew that he would find Vitalian actively engaged in new schemes. Vitalian was even more on the alert than he thought, and as the general was enjoying the society of his concubines a Hunnish assassin slew him. This act made it clear that the rebel was irreconcilable, and a decree of the senate was passed in old Roman style—the use of this formality is noteworthy — that Vitalian was an enemy of the republic.

A large army of 80,000 was collected, and while Alathar, a Hun, was appointed to succeed Cyrillus, the supreme command of the army was assigned to the unpopular Hypatius, who was accompanied by Theodorus, "steward of the sacred treasures". Vitalian's new army consisted of Huns, Bulgarians, and perhaps Slaves, recruited probably as before from rustics of the Haemus provinces. We have no hint that his former adherents, the officers whom Anastasius’ adroitness had won over, or their soldiers, fell back again from their allegiance, and we may assume that they joined the imperial army. The Emperor’s forces gained an inconsiderable victory, which was soon followed by serious reverses. Julian, a magister memoriae, was taken alive by the rebels, and carried about in a cage, as Bajazet was carried about by Timour, but was afterwards ransomed. Hypatius then fortified himself behind a rampart of wagons at Acris, on the Black Sea, near Odessa. In this entrenchment the barbarians attacked him, and, assisted by a sudden darkness, which a superstitious historian attributed to magic arts, gained a signal victory. The Romans, driven over precipices and into ravines, lost about 60,000 men. Hypatius himself ran into the sea, if perchance he might conceal himself in the waves, but his head betrayed him, for he was unable to practice the cunning trick of the Slaves, who were accus­tomed thus to elude the pursuit of their enemies, breathing under water through a long hollow reed, one end of which was held in their mouth while the other was just above the surface. Vitalian preserved him alive as a valuable hostage. This victory enabled him to pay his barbarian allies richly, and placed him in possession of all the cities and fortresses in Moesia  and  Scythia,  which  he ruled as  an  emperor.  The ambassadors whom Anastasius sent with 10,000 lbs. of gold to ransom his nephew were captured in an ambush at Sozopolis.

In the meantime a tumult, attended with loss of life, took place in Constantinople because the Emperor forbade the celebration of a festival on account of disorders in the circus which had occurred on the same day; among others the prefect of the watch was slain. This disturbance, along with the captivity of his nephew and the threatened siege, may have perhaps contributed to induce Anastasius to make a compromise with Vitalian. The conditions were that Vitalian should be made magister militum per Thracias, that he should receive 15,000 lbs. of gold, that the proclamation of the orthodox faith should be renewed, and that Hypatius should be liberated.

The following year (515) was troubled not only by the ravages of a horde of Sabir Huns, who entered Asia Minor through Armenia, and laid waste Cappadocia and the provinces of Pontus, penetrating as far as Lycaonia, whence they returned gorged with booty and laden with captives, but also by a fresh demonstration of hostility on the part of Vitalian. He marched on Constantinople, and took up his quarters at Sycae. He then embarked in a fleet which he had prepared, and was completely defeated off Scutari by Marinus the Lycian, some say with the help of chemicals prepared by a man of science named Proclus, an Archimedes of that day. This naval victory decided the war. Vitalian withdrew, probably to the neighborhood of the Danube, and we hear that a Hunnish leader named Tarrach was captured and burned at Chalcedon, and that many other prominent rebels were punished.

 

Although Anastasius did not accomplish anything that can be called brilliant, his reign was prosperous. His mild character and his beneficial reforms partially blotted out, in the eyes of contemporaries and of historians, the deadly taint of heterodoxy, and he appeared in a still more favorable light as he was directly contrasted with his unpopular Isaurian predecessor. Mildness is a trait on which his panegyrist Priscian more than once insists, comparing him to Nerva—and another eulogist represents him as a deus ex machina setting right the wrongs and lightening the burdens of the Empire. A member of the civil service, who began his career in this reign, asserts that Anastasius’ careful financial policy, and his strictness in supervising personally the details of the budget, really saved the State, which had first become financially involved by the money that was expended on Leo’s unsuccessful armament against the Vandals, and had been kept in a depressed condition by the shortsighted and "miserable" policy of Zeno.

The act which earned for him most glory and popularity was the abolition of the Chrysargyron, a tax on all receipts, to which the humblest laborer and the poorest prostitute were liable. It had been instituted by Constantine, and Anastasius abolished it in 498. The chief fault that the Church had to find with this tax was that it recognized vices forbidden by nature and the laws. Another abuse which the Emperor remedied was the unfairness of officers in paying rations to their soldiers, in order to make a private profit; this is not mentioned by any writer, but the facts are preserved in an inscription at Ptolemais in the Pentapolis. His donations to soldiers are perhaps another indication of his interest in the army. He was indefatigable in restoring "prostrate cities", and, besides the Great Wall, he executed an important public work which deserves mention, the construction of a canal connecting Lake Sophon with the Gulf of Astacus.

But the men of Dyrrhachium had the reputation of being avaricious, and even favorable writers say that Anastasius was no exception. Elegiac verses were posted up in the hippodrome by his foes, addressing him as "bane of the world".  His love of money, it was said, induced him to listen to the counsels of Marinus, a Syrian scriniarius, who wormed himself into his confidence by promising to raise large sums. It is very probable, however, that our authority, Johannes Lydus, had strong prejudices against the successful Syrian, and misrepresents his policy. There seem to have been a Marinus faction and an anti-Marinus faction in official circles.

The great innovation of Marinus was the abolition of the old curial system, by which the curiae or municipal corporation collected the moneys due to the State. A new farming system was introduced. Officers, named vindices, were ap­pointed to collect the revenue, which on the old system was often cheated through the collusion of the provincial magnates with the governors of the provinces and the tax-collectors (canonicarii). The enemies of Marinus said that the vindices treated the cities like foes, because the appointments were given by auction to those who promised most. The nature of the new system evidently involved this evil, but it is only fair to assume that Anastasius, whose mildness was so remarkable, took care to arrange a mode of checking this by increasing the influence of the defensores, and his panegyrist Priscian represents the measure as healing a flagrant abuse. It must be noted that this change involved an increase of centralization, which seems to have been an object of Anastasius’ policy. Henceforward even minute matters were referred to the Emperor, so that few steps could be taken in the provinces "without a divine command".

Anastasius is said to have never sent petitioners empty away, whether they represented a city, a fort, or a harbor. He was above giving offices by favor, and when his wife Ariadne requested him to appoint Anthemius to the prae­torian prefecture, he refused to make an exception to his principle that only men of forensic training were entitled to it. His saving policy necessarily involved a great reduction of the court expenditure, and he was probably on that account unpopular with the frivolous nobles and the court ladies, accustomed to the pageants and pleasures of Byzantine festivals. But the staid Anastasius did not care for pomp, and the result of his fiscal economy was that he not only righted the financial depression of the Empire, but that at his death 320,000 lbs. of gold were found in the treasury.

Anastasius died in July 518, more than eighty years old.