ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to examine the period from 457 to 471 by suggesting that, despite ‘meagre information’, there is need for a fresh interpretation including an attempt ‘to straighten out the confused chronology of those years’. On the death of the emperor Marcian on 27 January 457 there was a hiatus. Whatever inspired the choice, Leo was emperor because of Aspar and would naturally be expected to comply with Aspar’s preferences and plans. Aspar’s power to make and, if required, unmake emperors in the 450s, which was so manifest during Leo’s coronation ceremony, had developed as part of the consolidation and perpetuation of a new military aristocracy. By late 469 Aspar was now in the ascendancy once more. At Constantinople, sometime in 470, he arranged for Patricius to be finally named Caesar. The aftermath of Leo’s ‘butchery’ was not necessarily smooth for the emperor but there was no concerted resistance from any ‘Gothic faction’.
