Propontis to the Black Sea, at a distance of about 40 miles west of Constantinople. The southern extremity was just to the west of Selymbria, and the northern between Podima and Lake Derkos. The fortification consisted of a stone wall about 11 feet thick, without earthworks or ditch, and traces of round towers projecting about 31 feet in front have been found. The length of the wall was 41 miles, and it corresponds roughly to the modern Turkish fortifications known as the Chatalja Lines, though the extreme points were further west.34 We do not hear of another invasion till A.D. 517, when a host of barbarian cavalry laid waste Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessaly, penetrating as far as Thermopylae.35 The consequences of the devastations of Germans and Huns for more than a hundred years was the depopulation of the Balkan provinces, the decline of its agricultural produce, and a considerable diminution of the Imperial revenue.36
§ 2. Church Policy
If the elevation of Anastasius had been popular, his popularity did not continue. His reign was frequently troubled by seditions in Constantinople, which were in many cases provoked by his ecclesiastical policy. His purpose was to maintain the Henotikon of Zeno; his personal predilections were Monophysitic. We are ignorant of the cause of the sedition which broke out in A.D. 493, but it was evidently serious, as the statues of the Emperor and Empress were dragged through the city.37 The relations between Anastasius and the Patriarch Euphemius, who had been opposed to his elevation, were strained. Euphemius was devoted to the doctrine of Chalcedon, and had been planning a campaign against the Patriarch of Alexandria, first Peter, and then his successor Athanasius, both of whom anathematised the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo. Without the Emperor’s knowledge he wrote a letter to Felix, the bishop of Rome, invoking his aid. The Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem informed the Emperor that Euphemius was a heretic;38 and a council was held at Constantinople which confirmed the Henotikon and deposed Euphemius (A.D. 496).39 This led to a disturbance, and the people, rushing to the Hippodrome, supplicated the Emperor in vain to restore the Patriarch. Macedonius was appointed to the Patriarchal throne. He seems to have held much the same opinions as Euphemius, but he did not scruple to sign the Henotikon.40
A serious riot in the Hippodrome occurred in A.D. 498. The Prefect of the City had thrown into prison some members of the Green faction for the not uncommon offence of stone-throwing. The Greens demanded their release, and when the Emperor summoned the Excubitors to suppress them, there was a great uproar. Stones were thrown at the Kathisma, and one of these nearly hit Anastasius. The man who had thrown it was hewn in pieces by the Excubitors, and then the Greens set fire to the Bronze Gate of the Hippodrome. The fire spread not only to the Kathisma but also, in the other direction, to the Forum of Constantinople. Many offenders were punished, but a new Prefect, Plato, was appointed.41
The pagan festival of the Brytae, which was celebrated with dancing,42 repeatedly caused sanguinary riots among the demes, and in one of these disturbances (A.D. 501) a bastard son of the Emperor was killed, and the Emperor forbade its celebration for the future throughout the Empire, thereby “depriving the cities of the most beautiful dancing.” He had already abolished the practice of contests with wild beasts (A.D. 499).43
In A.D. 511 the Patriarch Macedonius, who no longer concealed his adhesion to the Council of Chalcedon, met the same fate as his predecessors. The Monophysites represented him as plotting against the Emperor, while the orthodox asserted that he was deposed because he declined to give up the profession of orthodoxy signed by the Emperor at his coronation. In any case, Anastasius had begun to move in the Monophysitic direction so far as to abandon the neutral spirit of the Henotikon. The position of Macedonius was not strong, because by signing the Henotikon he had alienated the orthodox monks of the capital. Seeking to win back their confidence he did not scruple to denounce Anastasius as a Manichaean. He was deposed by a local council in August, A.D. 511, was forced to surrender the document with the Emperor’s signature, and was banished to Euchaita. Timothy, an undisguised Monophysite, was elected in his stead.
A distinguished Monophysite monk, Severus of Sozopolis, had, a few years before, arrived at Constantinople with a company of two hundred fellow-heretics and had been received with honour by Anastasius.44 He caused scandal and disturbances by holding services in which the Trisagion (“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts”) was chanted with the Monophysitic addition “Who wast crucified for us,” which had been introduced at Antioch fifty years before. The new Patriarch Timothy interpolated this heretical phrase into the liturgy in St. Sophia. Anastasius, supported by the counsels of Marinus, Praetorian Prefect of the East,45 determined to defy the religious sentiment of the people of Byzantium. On Sunday, Nov. 4 (A.D. 512),46 the orthodox multitude in the Church drowned with their shouts the chanting of the heretical priests, and there was such a disturbance that Marinus and Plato, the Prefect of the City, interfered with armed force. Some were slain and others imprisoned. On the following day there was a more sanguinary conflict in the court of a church, and on Tuesday (Nov. 6) the orthodox congregated and formed a camp in the Forum of Constantine. The rioting now assumed the dimensions of a revolt. The general Areobindus was the husband of Juliana Anicia, who was the granddaughter of Valentinian III,47 and thus a member of the Theodosian house. The people proclaimed him Emperor and pulled down the statues of Anastasius. Celer, the Master of Offices, and Patricius, Master of Soldiers in praesenti, who were sent to pacify them, were driven off with showers of stones; the house of Marinus was burnt. On the next day the Emperor sent heralds to the people proclaiming that he was ready to abdicate, and appeared in the Kathisma of the Hippodrome without his crown. He was greeted with demands that Marinus and Plato should be thrown to the beasts. But in some extraordinary way he succeeded in calming the tumult. The crowd begged him to put on his crown and promised good behaviour.
It was unfortunate for the peace of the East that Anastasius was not indifferent in questions of religious doctrine. His reason prompted him to enforce the Henotikon and to lean to neither party in his ecclesiastical measures. He honestly endeavoured to carry out this policy up to the year A.D. 511-512, but he was growing old, and, despairing of maintaining peace between the extreme parties, he threw himself into the arms of his Monophysite friends. It is to be observed that neither all the orthodox nor all the Monophysites demanded at this time a repudiation of the Henotikon; for the Monophysites could argue that it condemned the doctrines of Chalcedon, the orthodox that it did not.48 The middle party, of whom Flavian of Antioch was the most prominent, sought to act more or less in the true spirit of the act of Zeno and leave the doctrine of Chalcedon severely alone. In the capital the difficulty of preserving peace was aggravated by the agitation of the Sleepless Monks of the monastery of Studion, who were uncompromising opponents of the Henotikon, and remained in communion with the Church of Rome. Some vain attempts had been made to end the schism. Pope Anastasius II, in his brief pontificate,49 desired to conclude it by a concession which was almost equivalent to a partial acceptance of the Henotikon. He sent to Constantinople two bishops proposing to withdraw the demand of his predecessors that the name of Acacius should be expunged from the roll of Patriarchs. On account of this policy he is one of the Popes for whom the Catholic Church has little good to say, and Dante found for him a suitable place in hell.50 His successors obstinately refused to heal the breach.51
Far more significant than the deposition of Macedonius, who had never approved of the Imperial policy, was the deposition of the Patriarch of Antioch, the moderate Flavian,52 and the election of the Pisidian Severus, whom we have already met as the leading theologian of the Monophysites and bitter foe of Chalcedon (A.D. 512).53 On the occasion of his enthronement at Antioch, Severus anathematised the doctrinal decisions of that Council, and he determined to make his own Patriarchate as Monophysitic as that of Egypt. A synod at Tyre (A.D. 513)54 condemned Chalcedon and confirmed the Henotikon, which was interpreted in the Monophysite sense. The triumphant party were ready for extreme measures, and the Emperor had to warn the Duke of Phoenicia Libanensis that he would countenance no bloodshed in dealing with recalcitrant bishops. But the general proceedings
