Leo II the Younger
467 – 474 · Generation XXII · Eastern emperor (AD 474)
Leo II (AD 467 – AD 474). Eastern emperor (AD 474). Emperor at seven, he crowned his own father co-ruler and was dead within the year. His grandfather Leo I, ailing and unwilling to hand the diadem to his unpopular Isaurian son-in-law, chose the child instead: Leo was made caesar, then crowned augustus at the Hippodrome of Constantinople in a ceremony presided over by the patriarch Acacius, and named sole consul for 474. Once the old emperor died of dysentery, the boy reigned with his father Zeno as the true power behind the throne. Later writers wondered whether so convenient a death had been poison, but no contemporary source made the charge, and given the age’s child mortality historians judge it natural. One chronicler even claimed the boy had not died at all but been hidden in a monastery by his mother — a tale born of confusion with another child renamed Leo.
Line of descent: Leo I the Thracian → Ariadne Aelia → Leo II the Younger.
Parents
- Zeno the Isaurian (425 – 491)
- Ariadne Aelia (450 – 515)