Basiliscus

440 – 476 · Generation VIII · Emperor (r. 475–476) · Leonid

Basiliscus (AD null – 476). Emperor (r. 475–476). Married Aelia Zenonis. Brother of Verina; usurped the throne from Zeno. A general before he was a usurper, he commanded the vast armada sent against the Vandal kingdom in 468 and lost it at Cape Bon, having granted King Gaiseric a truce the Vandals used to ready fireships. The disaster cost 130,000 pounds of gold and left the treasury hovering near bankruptcy for thirty years; only his sister’s pleading won him a pardon. Seizing the throne after Zeno fled, he leaned toward the miaphysites and issued an encyclical condemning the Council of Chalcedon, which set the patriarch Acacius and Daniel the Stylite against him, while heavy taxes cost him the people. Betrayed by his own commanders as Zeno marched back, he took sanctuary in a church and was exiled to Limnae in Cappadocia, where the family was starved to death – or, by some accounts, beheaded.

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 Aelia Zenonis (440 – ?) — one child together

Children

Marcus (440 – ?)