of kings, must have despised the base
Isaurian who was invested with the Roman purple, without any endowment
of mind or body, without any advantages of royal birth, or superior
qualifications. After the failure of the Theodosian 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. [6] 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, [7] 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. [8] 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. [811] 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, [812] raised an army of seventy thousand