is utterly unlike the slavish homage offered by the
adoring courtiers of Byzantium to the pinchbeck divinity of Zeno
Tarasicodissa.

Raised as Zeno had been to the throne by a mere palace intrigue, and
destitute as he was of any of the qualities of a great statesman or
general, it is no wonder that his reign, which lasted for seventeen
years, was continually disturbed by conspiracies and rebellions. In most
of these rebellions his mother-in-law, Verina, widow of Leo, an
ambitious and turbulent woman, played an important part.

It was only a year after Zeno's accession to sole power by the death of
his son (Nov., 475) when he was surprised by the outbreak of a
conspiracy, hatched by his mother-in-law, the object of which was to
place her brother Basiliscus on the throne. Zeno fled by night, still
wearing the Imperial robes which he had worn, sitting in the Hippodrome,
when the tidings reached him, and crossing the Bosphorus was soon in the
heart of Asia Minor, safe sheltered in his native Isauria.

From thence,(July, 477) after nearly two years of exile, he was by a
strange turn of the wheel of Fortune restored to his throne. Religious
bigotry (for Basiliscus did not belong to the party of strict orthodoxy)
and domestic jealousies and perfidies all contributed to this result.
Zeno, who had fled twenty months before from the Hippodrome, returned to
the Amphitheatre, and there, having commanded that the linen curtain
should be drawn over the circus to exclude the too piercing rays of the
July sun, gave the signal for the games to begin, while the populace
shouted in Latin the regular official congratulations on his elevation
and prayers for his continued triumph.[36]

[Footnote 36: "Zeno Imperator Tu Vincas", would be, as we know from
other similar instances, the most frequently uttered acclamation. It is
a curious instance of "survival" that this was always shouted in Latin,
though Greek was the vernacular tongue of the vast majority of the
inhabitants of Constantinople.]

Meanwhile his fallen rival, less fortunate than Zeno himself in planning
an escape, was crouching in the baptistery of the great Church of Saint
Sophia, whither with his wife and children he had fled for refuge. After
all the emblems of Imperial dignity had been rudely stripped from them,
Basiliscus was induced, by a promise from Zeno, "that their heads should
be safe", to come forth with his family from the sacred asylum. The
Emperor "kept the wo