Leontia
457 – ? · Generation IX
Leontia was the younger daughter of the Eastern emperor Leo I and Verina. Unlike her elder sister Ariadne, she was born in 457, the first year of her father’s reign, which made her porphyrogenita, born in the purple, a distinction that later mattered a great deal.
Leo, a soldier with no ties to the old aristocracy, used his daughters’ marriages to bind the army to him. Ariadne married the Isaurian general Zeno, and Leontia was promised to Julius Patricius, son of the powerful Alan general Aspar. The engagement in 470 set off riots, because the clergy and people of Constantinople would not accept an Arian as a possible emperor, and they calmed only when Patricius was promised conversion before the wedding. In 471 Leo had Aspar and his son Ardabur murdered, and Patricius vanishes from the record.
Leontia was then married to Marcian, son of the Western emperor Anthemius, linking the courts of East and West. But Anthemius was killed in 472, and on Leo’s death in 474 Zeno took the Eastern throne. In 479 Leontia and Marcian rebelled against Zeno, claiming the throne through her precedence over her sister as one born in the purple. The revolt was crushed and the couple were exiled to Isauria.
Parents
Siblings
- Ariadne (450 – 515)
Partners
- Married Marcianus (455 – ?)
Sources
- Leontia Porphyrogenita · Wikipedia
- Marcia Euphemia · Wikipedia