grievous visitation occurred in the five hundred and sixth year of the free prerogatives of the city,' about the fourth hour of the night, on the fourteenth day of the month Gorpiaeus, which the Romans call September, on the eve of the Lord's day, in the eleventh cycle of the indiction; and was the sixth on record after a lapse of three hundred and forty-seven years, since the earthquake under Trajan; for that occurred when the city was in the hundred and fifty-ninth year of its independence; but this, which happened in the time of Leo, in the five hundred and sixth, according to the most diligent authorities. This earthquake threw down nearly all the houses of the New City, which was very populous, and contained not a single vacant or altogether unoccupied spot, but had been highly embellished by the rival liberality of the emperors. Of the structures composing the palace, the first and second were thrown down; the rest, however, remained standing, together with the adjoining baths, which having been previously useless, were now rendered serviceable to the necessities of the city, arising from the damage of the others. It also levelled the porticoes in front of the palace and the adjacent Tetrapylum, as well as the towers of the Hippodrome, which flanked the

1 Χρηματιζούσης τῆς πόλεως. When provinces submitted themselves to the Roman empire, it was usual for the emperor to cause an edict to be drawn up and proclaimed openly upon the place. The tenor whereof was, first, to entitle the emperor himself to all respects of dominion and supremacy over that people, and then, secondly, to abate from this by a popular insinuation of all possible sacredness and liberty of the provincials. A particular instance of this usage, as it relates to this very city Antioch, is produced by Gregory, (see Works, p. 156, edit. London, 1665,) from Johannes Antiochenus's MS. Geograph. b. 9; in these words: "And when the city Antioch had yielded itself up to the subjection of the Roman empire, an edict of the liberties thereof was sent by Julius Cæsar, and publicly proclaimed at Antioch upon the twentieth of May; the contents whereof were these, AT ANTICCH, THE HOLY, SACRED AND FREE CITY, THE METROPOLITAN QUEEN, AND PRESIDENT OF THE EAST, CAIUS JULIUS

CÆSAR, &c. The provinces usually returned the honour of these privileges back upon the emperor, by this way of acknowledgment. That they might keep the emperor's grace in perpetual memory, they reckoned all their public affairs ever after from that time. Antioch, in honour of the emperor, fixed its era in Caius Julius Cæsar, and made this year of grace the first. On which account, this era of theirs, which precedes that of our Lord's nativity forty-eight years, was peculiarly called xonμarioμòs tõv ἀντιοχέων, because at the fixing hereof the emperor did χρηματίσαι avròv, publicly name himself to all the title of dominion; and also χρηματίσαι αὐτοὺς, publicly entitle them to all privileges and immunities.

entrances, and some of the porticoes adjoining them. In the Old City the porticoes and dwellings entirely escaped the overthrow; but it shattered a small portion of the baths of Trajan, Severus, and Hadrian, and also laid in ruins some parts of the quarter of houses named Ostracine, together with the porticoes, and levelled what was called the Nymphæum.1 All these circumstances have been minutely detailed by John the rhetorician. He says, that a thousand talents of gold were remitted to the city from the tributes 2 by the emperor; and, besides, to individual citizens, the imposts of the houses destroyed: and that he also took measures for the restoration both of them and of the public buildings.

CHAP. XIII.-CONFLAGRATION AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

A SIMILAR, or even more terrible calamity, befell Constantinople, which took its rise from the quarter of the city bordering on the sea, and named Bosporium. The account is, that about dusk-hour, a demon of destruction in the form of a woman, or in reality a poor woman incited by a demon, for the story is told in both ways, carried a light into the market for the purpose of buying pickled victuals, and then, having set down the light, stole away. Catching some tow, it raised a great flame, and in a moment set the apartment on fire. The conflagration, thus begun, soon consumed everything within its reach, and afterwards continuing to spread for four days, not only over the more combustible materials, but buildings of stone, notwithstanding every effort to check it, at last destroyed the whole heart of the city from north to south, a space of five stadia in width, and fourteen in length; throughout

1 So the Greeks termed the temple of the Nymphs.

2 These tributes or tolls may be understood in a twofold sense; either, 1. concerning the annual pension which by hirers was paid to the owners or lords of the houses; or, 2. concerning the money which was paid to the fiscus, exchequer, because those houses had been built upon the public soil. In such manner as amongst us, an annual rent is wont to be paid by possessors of houses, as well in the city as country, to the lords of the soil. And in this latter sense we must take rà réλn [the tributes] here. For this word is more frequently used to signify tributes, tolls, or customs, which are paid to the public. But if this term should be taken here to signify the price of houses which is usually paid by the hirer, there would have been no liberality of the emperor's in that. For he would have given nothing of his own to the citizens, but that which was another's. Vales.

which it left no building standing, either public or private, nor pillars nor arches of stone; but the hardest substances were as completely consumed as if they had been combustible. The ruin, at its northern extremity, which is where the docks are situated, extended from the Bosporium to the old temple of Apollo; at the southern, from the harbour of Julian as far as the houses near the oratory of the church of Unanimity ;1 and in the centre of the city, from the forum of Constantine to the Forum Tauri, as it is called: a pitiable and loathsome spectacle ; for all the most conspicuous ornaments of the city, and whatever had been embellished with unrivalled magnificence, or adapted to public or private utility, had been swept together into huge heaps and impassable mounds, formed of various substances, whose former features were now so blended in one confused mass, that not even those who lived on the spot could recognise the different portions, and the place to which each had belonged.

CHAP. XIV.-OTHER PUBLIC CALAMITIES.

ABOUT the same time, when the Scythian war was gathering against the Eastern Romans, an earthquake visited Thrace, the Hellespont, Ionia, and the islands called Cyclades; so severe as to cause a universal overthrow in Cnidus and Cos. Priscus also records the occurrence of excessive rains about Constantinople and Bithynia, which descended like torrents for three or four days; when hills were swept down to the plains, and villages_carried away by the deluge: islands also were formed in the lake Boane, not far from Nicomedia, by the masses of rubbish brought down by the waters. This evil, however, was subsequent to the former.

CHAP. XV. MARRIAGE OF ZENO AND ARIADNE.

LEO bestows his daughter Ariadné on Zeno, who from his infancy had been called Aricmesius, but on his marriage as

1 The church of Homonca, [or concord,] was in the ninth region of the city Constantinople, as the old description of that city informs us. This church was called ouóvoia, [concord,] because the hundred and fifty fathers of the Constantinopolitan synod in the reign of Theodosius the Great, [see Socrates' Eccles. Hist. b. v. ch. 8,] meeting therein, agreed in one opinion concerning the consubstantial Trinity.

sumed the former name, derived from an individual1 who had attained great distinction among the Isaurians. The origin of the advancement of this Zeno, and the reason why he was preferred by Leo before all others, have been set forth by Eustathius the Syrian.

CHAP. XVI.-REIGN OF ANTHEMIUS-OF OLYBRIUS-AND

OTHER WESTERN PRINCES.

In compliance with an embassy from the Western Romans, Anthemius is sent out as emperor of Rome; to whom the late emperor Marcian had betrothed his own daughter. Basiliscus, brother to the emperor's wife Verina, is also sent out against Genseric, in command of a body of chosen troops: which transactions have been treated of with great exactness by Priscus the rhetorician; and how Leo, in repayment, as it were, for his own advancement, treacherously procures the death of Aspar, who had been the means of investing him with the sovereignty, and also of his sons, Ardaburius and Patricius; on the latter of whom he had previously bestowed the title of Cæsar, in order to conciliate Aspar. After the slaughter of Anthemius, in the fifth year of his reign, Olybrius is declared emperor by Ricimer; and after him appointment is made of Glycerius. Nepos possesses himself of the supreme power for five years, by the expulsion of Glycerius, whom he appoints to the bishopric of Salona, a city of Dalmatia. He is himself driven from power by Orestes, as was subsequently Romulus, surnamed Augustulus, the son of the latter, who was the last emperor of Rome, at an interval of thirteen hundred and three years from the reign of Romulus. Odoacer next sways the affairs of the Romans, declining the imperial title, but assuming that of king.

CHAP. XVII.-DEATH OF THE EMPEROR LEO.

ABOUT the same time the emperor Leo, at Byzantium, departs his sovereignty, after having swayed it for seventeen years, and appointed to the empire Leo, the infant son of his daughter Ariadne and Zeno. Zeno then assumes the purple,

Evagrius means Flavius Zeno, who was consul in the reign of Theodosius Augustus, A. D. 448, and Magister Militum throughout the East.

being aided by the favour of Verina, the wife of Leo, towards her son-in-law. On the death of the child, which shortly followed, Zeno continued in sole possession of the sovereignty. The transactions which originated with him, or were directed against him, and whatever else befell him, the sequel shall detail, with the aid of the Superior Power.1

The proceedings of the synod at Chalcedon are here given in a compendious form.

CHAP. XVIII.-EPITOME OF THE ACTS OF THE COUNCIL OF

CHALCEDON.

PASCHASINUS and Lucentius, bishops, and Boniface, a presbyter, filled the place of Leo, archpriest of the elder Rome; there being present Anatolius, president of the church of Constantinople, Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, Maximus, of Antioch, and Juvenalis, of Jerusalem, and with them their associate bishops; on whom attended also those who held the highest rank in the most excellent senate. To the latter the representatives of Leo alleged, that Dioscorus ought not to be seated with themselves, for such were their instructions from Leo; and that if this should be allowed, they would retire from the church. In reply to the question of the senators, what were the charges against Dioscorus, they stated, that he ought himself to render an account of his own decision,2 since he had unduly assumed the character of a judge, without being authorized by the bishop of Rome. After this statement had been made, and Dioscorus stood in the midst, according to a decision of the senate, Eusebius, bishop of Dorylæum, demanded, in the following words, that the petition should be read which he had presented to the sovereign power; "I have been wronged by Dioscorus; the faith has been wronged; Flavian the bishop was murdered, and together with myself unjustly deposed by him. Give directions that my petition be read." On its being so ruled, the petition was read, couched in the following terms: "The petition of Eusebius, the very humble bishop of Dorylæum, in behalf of himself and the

In the Florentine MS. the second book ends with this chapter, the 18th chapter being added as a sort of appendix.

2 The same words occur above in the fourth chapter of this book.