Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/98

 insurrectionary movement stirred up by Verina, the queen-dowager, and her brother Basiliscus. Some few years afterwards he was kept a prisoner in his own palace by his brother-in-law, the grandson of the emperor Marcian and husband of one of Leo's daughters. Theodoric the Goth took advantage of the confusion, and would have made himself master of Constantinople had he not, so the Greek historians tell us, been bribed on a vast scale to retire. Zeno's reign was one of wars abroad and troubles at home, and he really seems to deserve our pity. One good work, at least, he is said to have done for the empire: he raised a force of native troops to save it from the fate which had fallen on the West. The man who did this, remarks Mr. Finlay, could not have been contemptible; and the fact that he did succeed in baffling the formidable Theodoric may suggest to us that history has not done him justice. A barbarian by birth, a heretic, it was insinuated, in his theology, Zeno could hardly have hoped to escape some slander and misrepresentation.

Anastasius, his successor, was elected to the empire in 491 because he married the last emperor's widow, Ariadne. Probably the lady chose him for a husband, just as Pulcheria had chosen Marcian. Anastasius was sixty years of age, and he had been an officer in the imperial guard. Gibbon speaks of him as "a prudent emperor;" a title he deserves, as he contrived by skilful administration to relieve the burdens of his subjects, and to bequeath a well-filled treasury to his successor. One particularly oppressive tax, a poll-tax on men and