ABSTRACT
During the night of 9 or 10 July, 518, the emperor Anastasius died in Constantinople. A violent thunderstorm was raging, and a lightning bolt struck the imperial palace, which may have hastened the death of the aged and heretical emperor.1 Thus ended a remarkable reign which had begun unexpectedly twenty-seven years earlier. The emperor Zeno the Isaurian had died; the people gathered in the Hippodrome and waited restively for word of his successor, and the senate, respecting the hereditary principle, resolved to invite Zeno’s widow, Ariadne, daughter of the emperor Leo I, to make the choice. She passed over Zeno’s brother and the whole coterie of Isaurians who had supported Zeno, and chose Anastasius, a decurion of the court ushers with senatorial rank known as silentiaries. He was 61 years old, and had a reputation for Monophysite leanings, but he was an old friend of Ariadne’s. The next day, 11 April, 491, Anastasius gave the patriarch of Constantinople, Euphemius, a written pledge to make no religious innovations, and the diadem was placed on his head. The following month he married Ariadne.
