Ariadne Aelia
450 – 515 · Generation XXI
Ariadne (AD 450 – AD 515). Married Zeno around AD 467. One of their children is recorded in this archive. Married Anastasius I around AD 491. Twice she handed the eastern throne on: to her husband Zeno, then, choosing Anastasius, by her own hand. The eldest daughter of the emperor Leo I and Verina, she was married to the Isaurian officer Tarasicodissa, who had exposed the treason of Aspar’s son Ardabur and who then took the name Zeno. Their son, Leo II, succeeded his grandfather as a child in 474, and she and her mother persuaded him to crown Zeno co-emperor; the boy died that November. In 475 her mother and uncle Basiliscus drove Zeno from the capital, and he won it back only in 476. In 479 she quarrelled with her husband over her imprisoned mother and hired an assassin against the general Illus, who escaped with the loss of an ear. Her second marriage, to the palace official Anastasius, then in his sixties, was childless. She died in Constantinople in 515, was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church.
Parents
- Leo I the Thracian (401 – 474)
- Aelia Verina (410 – 484)
Partners
- Married Zeno the Isaurian (425 – 491) in 467 — one child together
- Married Anastasius I Dicorus (431 – 518) in 491
Children
- Leo II the Younger (467 – 474)
Life
- 450 — Born
- 467 — Married Zeno
- 491 — Married Anastasius I
- 515 — Died