ABSTRACT
The boy-emperor Leo II has bequeathed us more than his share of chronological puzzles. The chronology of the boy-emperor’s career depends on Otto Seeck’s Regesten which has inevitably shaped the coverage in the standard accounts of J. B. Bury and Ernst Stein. The authority of Seeck also underpins the entry in the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire which sets out the following chronology of Leo’s brief life and imperial career: birth; October, elevated to Caesar by Leo I; before 18 January, elevated to Augustus by Leo I; and death, November. This chapter is designed to show that the multiple phases in the imperial rule of Leo II have never been properly disentangled. To do so not only brings greater precision to the sequence of events, and to Leo’s short career, but also casts light on the wider context of these turbulent few years.
