Leo I the Thracian

401 – 474 · Generation XX · Eastern emperor (r. AD 457–474)

Leo I (AD 401 – AD 474). Eastern emperor (r. AD 457–474). Married Aelia around AD 445. The first emperor crowned by the Patriarch of Constantinople; founder of the house that bridged Rome and Byzantium. Aspar, the Alan commander who placed him on the throne, expected a puppet; Leo instead built a counterweight, calling in the Isaurians and marrying his daughter to their leader, who took the name Zeno. Aspar’s power was broken in 471, his son cut down by palace eunuchs on the emperor’s orders. Leo reached hard into the West as well, installing Anthemius as its emperor in 467 and launching a vast armada against the Vandals the next year — over a thousand ships and a hundred thousand men, wrecked by poor leadership, at a cost that drained the treasury of staggering sums of gold and silver. He was the first Eastern emperor to issue laws in Greek rather than Latin, and he died of dysentery at seventy-three.

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Partners

• Married Aelia Verina (410 – 484) in 445 — one child together

Children

• Ariadne Aelia (450 – 515)

Life

• 401 — Born
• 445 — Married Aelia
• 474 — Died