Lars Brownworth - Lost to the West - The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

Slightly less dangerous an enemy than Verina was her worthless brother Basiliscus, who never let incompetence stand in the way of his dreams, and who was busy scheming to seize the throne himself. He had largely destroyed his own credibility with his shameful conduct against the Vandal kingdom of Africa, but this had done nothing to damage his unshakable belief that he should be sitting on the throne. Time, he was sure, had glossed over the mistakes of the past, and though he had never been particularly close to his sister, he was quite willing to make common cause with her against their mutual enemy. The vengeful siblings somehow attracted the support of a disgruntled Isaurian general named Illus, and the three of them hatched a plan to overthrow their despised relative.

Waiting until Zeno was busy presiding over the games at the Hippodrome, Verina sent a frantic messenger to tell him that the people, backed by the Senate, had risen against him. Zeno had grown up far from the busy life of the capital, and for all his success he never really felt at home in the cosmopolitan city. He was painfully aware of how unpopular he had become, and the roar of the crowd around him was quite indistinguishable from the cacophony of revolt. Not bothering to check if his citizens were actually rising against him, the terrified emperor fled with a handful of followers and what was left of the imperial gold reserve to his native Isauria.

Constantinople now belonged to Verina, the mastermind of the rebellion, and she planned to have her lover crowned immediately, but it turned out that toppling an emperor was a good deal easier than making a new one. The army may have not raised a finger to help Zeno, but they balked at handing the throne over to an unknown whose only qualification was that he was sleeping with Verina. Only a member of the imperial family could become emperor, and the army turned to the one candidate readily available—Basiliscus. Incredibly, the man who had almost single-handedly destroyed the military capability of the East and doomed the West with his disastrous African campaign now found himself hailed by the army as the supreme leader of the Roman Empire.

The new emperor soon proved that his stewardship was on par with his generalship. His first action was to allow a general massacre of every Isaurian in the city—despite the fact that Isaurian support had been vital in his bid for the throne. He then turned to his sister, rewarding her part in the revolt by having her lover executed and forcing her into retirement. Having thus mortally offended his coconspirators, Basiliscus sent an army to crush Zeno and secure his position on the throne. To lead this all-important expedition, the emperor made the baffling choice of the Isaurian general Illus, apparently without considering that his recent slaughter of Isaurians in the capital might make Illus a less than perfect candidate to go fight his countrymen. Indeed, Illus marched straight to Zeno and switched sides, encouraging the emperor to return to Constantinople at once and reclaim his throne.

Meanwhile, Basiliscus was busy eroding any support he had left in the capital. Appointing the dubiously named Timothy the Weasel as his personal religious adviser, he let the man talk him into trying to force the church to adopt the heretical belief that Christ lacked a human nature. When in response the patriarch draped the icons of the Hagia Sophia in black, the annoyed emperor announced that he was abolishing the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This action proved so offensive that it touched off massive riots and caused a local holy man named Daniel the Stylite to descend from his pillar for the first time in three decades. *The sight of the saint wagging his finger frightened Basiliscus into publicly withdrawing the threat, but that did little to restore his popularity.

By the time word came that Zeno was approaching with a large army, tensions in the capital were explosive. Basiliscus defiantly promised a valiant defense, but there was no one willing to waste any more time fighting for him. The Senate threw open the gates, and the population poured out into the streets, cheering Zeno as he triumphantly entered. Basiliscus fled with his family to the Hagia Sophia, but was led out by the patriarch after exacting a promise that none of his blood would be spilled. True to his word, Zeno had the fallen emperor sent off to Cappadocia, where he was enclosed in a dry cistern and left to starve.

Only two years had passed since that terrible night when Zeno had been forced to flee the city, but the world had irrevocably changed in his absence. In the moment of Constantinople’s weakness, the dying embers of the Western Empire had finally been snuffed out. A barbarian general named Odoacer, growing tired of the charade of puppet emperors, decided to rule Italy in his own right. Smashing his way into Ravenna, where the teenage Romulus Augustulus was cowering, Odoacer decided at the last moment to spare his life, choosing instead to send the young emperor into exile. *On September 4, 476, Romulus Augustulus obediently laid down the crown and scepter and went to live with his family in Campania. Though no one thought him important enough to bother recording when or where he died, his abdication marked the end of the Western Roman Empire.

It’s unlikely that anyone at the time noticed such a watershed moment in history. Barbarian generals overthrowing emperors had become distressingly routine for Roman citizens, and for most inhabitants of the former empire, life on the morning of September 5 was no different than the day before. The civil service and the law courts functioned as they always had, merchants and artisans continued to travel down the wide Roman roads, and nothing seemed to suggest a sharp break with the past. Nor, in fact (despite later claims to the contrary), had the Roman Empire actually fallen. A perfectly legitimate Latin-speaking Roman emperor sat on his throne in the East, and what fragments remained of western power withdrew to southern France to keep the flickering imperial power alive as best they could.† The only real change was that Odoacer didn’t feel like appointing a new emperor. He very sensibly decided that there was no use in going through the bother of ruling through a puppet when he could simply pay lip service to Constantinople and rule in his own right.

Sending the western imperial regalia to the East along with a letter congratulating Zeno on recovering his throne, Odoacer asked only for permission to rule the West in his name. The eastern emperor, of course, had no intention of legitimizing a barbarian strongman, but he could hardly go charging out to rescue the western throne when his own was so shaky. Prudently dodging the issue, he let Odoacer continue with the charade of ruling as a surrogate and concentrated on putting his own house in order.

Not surprisingly, Basiliscus had left the East in a mess. In addition to making himself hopelessly unpopular, in his two short years on the throne the wretched emperor had managed to mortally offend the Ostrogoths, who were now running amuck in the Balkans. Zeno solved the problem temporarily by bribing their powerful king, Theodoric, to enter imperial service, but after putting down a few revolts, Theodoric got bored and reverted to his favorite activity of plundering. Zeno desperately needed to find some sort of solution quickly, and, fortunately for the empire, he came up with a truly inspired plan.

The tacit approval from the East had convinced Odoacer that he could do what he pleased without fear of retribution, and the insufferable barbarian soon dropped the pretense of being the loyal vassal and began calling himself “King of Italy.” The imperial armies were too weak to avenge this obvious insult, but the clever emperor saw a way to solve two imperial headaches at the same time. Sending for the rampaging Gothic king, Zeno gave him his blessing to lead his entire people—men, women, and children—into Italy to rule it in the emperor’s name. Thus Theodoric got official sanction to rule a land more promising than the impoverished Balkans—and with it the gravitas of legitimacy—and the East would see Odoacer punished without the loss of a single eastern soldier. Most important of all, Constantinople would be rid of the Goths forever.