n life, the choice of
Pulcheria and of the senate might be justified in some measure by the
characters of Martin and Leo, but the latter of these princes confirmed
and dishonored his reign by the perfidious murder of Aspar and his sons,
who too rigorously exacted the debt of gratitude and obedience. The
inheritance of Leo and of the East was peaceably devolved on his infant
grandson, the son of his daughter Ariadne; and her Isaurian husband, the
fortunate Trascalisseus, exchanged that barbarous sound for the Grecian
appellation of Zeno. After the decease of the elder Leo, he approached
with unnatural respect the throne of his son, humbly received, as
a gift, the second rank in the empire, and soon excited the public
suspicion on the sudden and premature death of his young colleague,
whose life could no longer promote the success of his ambition. But the
palace of Constantinople was ruled by female influence, and agitated by
female passions: and Verina, the widow of Leo, claiming his empire as
her own, pronounced a sentence of deposition against the worthless and
ungrateful servant on whom she alone had bestowed the sceptre of the
East. As soon as she sounded a revolt in the ears of Zeno, he fled with
precipitation into the mountains of Isauria, and her brother Basiliscus,
already infamous by his African expedition, was unanimously proclaimed
by the servile senate. But the reign of the usurper was short and
turbulent. Basiliscus presumed to assassinate the lover of his sister;
he dared to offend the lover of his wife, the vain and insolent
Harmatius, who, in the midst of Asiatic luxury, affected the dress,
the demeanor, and the surname of Achilles. By the conspiracy of the
malecontents, Zeno was recalled from exile; the armies, the capital, the
person, of Basiliscus, were betrayed; and his whole family was condemned
to the long agony of cold and hunger by the inhuman conqueror, who
wanted courage to encounter or to forgive his enemies. The haughty
spirit of Verina was still incapable of submission or repose. She
provoked the enmity of a favorite general, embraced his cause as soon as
he was disgraced, created a new emperor in Syria and Egypt, raised an
army of seventy thousand men, and persisted to the last moment of her
life in a fruitless rebellion, which, according to the fashion of the
age, had been predicted by Christian hermits and Pagan magicians. While
the East was afflicted by the passions of Verina, her daughter