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 in white robes. He subscribed the document as required by the Patriarch, and took an oath to administer the Empire with a true conscience. He was then conducted to the Hippodrome, where he appeared in the undress of an emperor, but wearing the red buskins. Amid the acclamations of the populace he was exalted on a buckler, and a military officer crowned him with a golden collar removed from his own person. Anastasius then retired to the antechamber of the Kathisma to be invested, by the Patriarch himself, with the Imperial purple, and to have a jewelled crown placed upon his head. Again he sought the presence of the assembled multitude, whom he addressed in a set speech which was read out to them by a crier. Finally the newly-elected Autocrator departed to the Palace amid repeated cries of "God bless our Christian Emperor! You have lived virtuously, Reign as you have lived!"

But the proceedings in the Hippodrome were not always merely pleasurable or peacefully political. The Circus was also the place where sedition was carried to the culminating point; and the same Anastasius, in his long reign of twenty-seven years, had to experience on more than one occasion the fickle humour of the Byzantine populace. About 498, during the progress of the games, a cry arose that certain