Anastasius I

430 – 518 · Generation IX · Emperor (r. 491–518) · Leonid

Anastasius (AD 430 – 518). Emperor (r. 491–518). Married Ariadne around AD 491. Married Ariadne, widow of Zeno. A career palace official – a silentiary – he was chosen for the throne in his sixties by the empress Ariadne, and the patriarch, wary of his Monophysite sympathies, made him pledge not to repudiate the Council of Chalcedon. His mismatched eyes, one dark and one blue, earned him the nickname Dicorus. A superb administrator, he abolished the hated tax on receipts that fell heaviest on the poor and rebuilt the empire’s finances so thoroughly that the treasury was said to hold 320,000 pounds of gold by his reign’s end. He crushed the Isaurian revolt, fought Persia, and raised the fortress of Daras and the Anastasian Wall shielding Constantinople; his reforms endured for centuries, though he died the last non-Chalcedonian ever to rule the empire.

One of 8 people of Leonid (401–518) in this archive. Leo I’s house — the first emperors crowned by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Partners

Married Ariadne (450 – 515) in 491

Life

430 — Born
491 — Married Ariadne
518 — Died