Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
In 476, barbarians laid waste to the city of Rome and the West fell into a thousand
years of darkness where all knowledge was forgotten and life became nasty, brutish and
short.
Well to that I say: (strained, frustrated screaming) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!
This video was brought to you by Useful Charts.
Yes that Useful Charts!
I’ve been working with the owner Matt Baker on his youtube channel for about a year and
a half, and on top of making some really cool videos on family histories his charts were
like my only piece of decor in my college apartment, I love getting ready in the morning
and being like “Ooh, I wonder who that person is” I’ll be using one of his charts in
this video, and if you want to pick up a copy you can go to usefulcharts.com or follow the
link in the description.
So the year is 450-ish and there’s two Romes that are technically the same country, one
in the West with its capital in Ravenna for some reason and one in the East with its capital
in Constantinople.
Ravenna’s on the fast-track to desolation but Constantinople’s taking the scenic route.
The Eastern emperor dies and this guy Aspar wants to be in charge, but he’s the wrong
kind of Christian so he’s not allowed to be emperor, so he puts a couple old dudes
with no sons in charge so he can swap ‘em out every couple years while he stays as the
real head honcho.
One of those emperors is named Leo, and in addition to looking like a Ryan George thumbnail
he’s not cool with Aspar and his German friends calling the shots, so he hires a bunch
of bodyguards from Asian Sparta and one of them tattles on Aspar and his son, the two
of them get the axe and Leo says “Congratulations my boy, what is your name!” and he says
“My name is Tarasis Kodisa Rousombladadiotes” and Leo says “Holy shit no, how about Zeno?”
“That’s cool!” and Zeno marries the emperor’s daughter.
So Zeno’s son takes over after Leo dies, but then he dies and hey presto Asian Spartan
bodyguard man is now in charge of the Roman Empire.
And he’s, like, decent, but everyone kind of hates him because Asian Sparta was actually
this place here called Isauria, and everyone thought the Isaurians were foreigners even
though they were part of the empire for 500 years, basically everybody thought he was
a hick.
So then a whole bunch of people lead a revolt against him and this is usually the part where
everyone wants names and dates and has no idea what’s going on, and that is where
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So at the head of this revolt is Zeno’s mother-in-law Verina.
She and her brother Basiliscus are working together to take down Zeno and replace him
with - okay, here we go - and replace him with Verina’s lover Patricius.
They also get two generals to help out - an Isaurian named Illus and a guy named Theodoric
Strabo who was a Byzantine general but also part of the Ostrogothic royal family - just
picture Aragorn and you’re good.
There was also another general but he doesn’t really matter because this is getting complicated
enough as it is.
The plot ends up being successful because Zeno has no friends, and then Basiliscus decides
to ruin literally everything and make so many enemies I had to make a list.
Verina - kills her lover and takes the throne for himself.
Then he lets a mob run through the city and kill all the Isaurians, so there’s Ilus
pissed off, and then for Theodoric Basiliscus decides that the best co-general for him would
be his nephew who had previously sent Theodoric the severed hands of his comrades when he
rebelled a few years ago but whose most memorable military accomplishment was parading around
town cosplaying as achilles.
So with everyone fighting each other and half of Basiliscus’ friends switching sides,
by the time Zeno showed up at Constantinople with an army in 476, the Senate just opens
the gates and invites him in.
Basiliscus runs to a church for shelter and makes Zeno swear before Jesus that he won’t
spill his blood, and Zeno, being a compassionate man, upholds his promise, by locking Basiliscus
in a cistern until he died of exposure.
Speaking of 476, within like two weeks of becoming emperor again guess what the Western
Empire fell except guess what, hot take, not exactly!
What actually happened is that one of the generals got tired of a different general
taking over Italy every year and decided to take over Italy.
Odoacer, the guy who took over?
He may have been a Goth, but he was living in Italy and part of the Roman army!
In fact the Roman Senate, you know that thing allegedly created by Romulus in 753 BC and
perhaps the only institution to survive in some meaningful form throughout the entirety
of Rome’s existence?
They supported Odacer and in fact he made them stronger!
The guy he replaced wasn’t even recognized outside of Italy!
It’s not like everybody just stopped being Roman as soon as a German took over, they’d
already had emperors born in Gaul and Africa, the only thing that changed was that he technically
unified the empire by making Zeno the sole emperor of Rome while Odoacer operated mostly
independently as a vassal.
Eventually he started using the word king, which was a big no-no ever since the Republic,
but you know what else was a big no-no for hundreds of years?
Christianity!
Anyway Zeno’s not super happy about it, but there’s not a whole lot he can do because
right on his doorstep is a very powerful Ostrogothic Kingdom that isn’t super friendly, ruled
by a man… also named Theodoric.
Well, since getting his enemies to fight each other worked so well last time, Zeno sends
his own Theodoric out to fight him, except when they run into each other they team up
and demand more land.
Zeno then falls back on the oldest strategy known to Rome - pay your problems away!
He can’t bribe Theo 1 and Theo 2 to fight each other, so he invites the Bulgars to do
it for him, but then Theodoric the general wins and is about to open up a can of whoop-ass
on Zeno when he accidentally impales himself with a spear.
So then Theo the King shows up and Zeno cries “Do it to the West, not me!
Do it to Julia!” and it… kind of worked?
I mean Theodoric Red-Wedding’d Odoacer and became twice as powerful but he actually left
the Eastern Empire alone!
Meanwhile Christianity is tearing itself apart because no one understands the Trinity and
Zeno somehow manages to make things worse by simultaneously picking a side while also
refusing to make any kind of meaningful theological statement.
And then he died, and he had a brother who was kinda sorta supposed to be next, but Zeno’s
wife hated him (and his brother) and so she put this guy Anastasius in charge, but the
point is Zeno’s dead and that’s as far as I can go before this episode gets way too
expensive.
But!
I already made a video on the Useful Charts channel where I go through the entire history
of the Byzantine Empire!
Once again you can pick up a copy of this beautiful Roman Emperors chart or this timeline
of world history or any other European or Asian family tree, heck anything else from
the alphabet to the tree of life at usefulcharts.com.
Thanks for watching