The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: BOOK III 131
done in obscurity and secrecy he considered as subservient, but if in public
and, as it were, on a vantage-point, as royal and ¢tting for an emperor
alone, since his judgement was wrong and servile. For the emperor gains
recognition not from matters in which he naturally controls others, but
from those in which he ¢rst rules and controls himself, by refusing admission
to himself to anything inappropriate, and being so uncontaminated
by acts of indulgence that while alive he provides an image of the virtues
for imitation, an education for his subjects. But he who makes himself
accessible to the pleasures gradually and insensibly becomes a most
shameful slave, an unransomed captive, constantly exchanging masters
like useless slaves, since indeed innumerable pleasures are established as
mistresses with no limit whatsoever to their succession and mutual replacement:
[100] the current pleasure is always inconstant, and becomes an
incitement and prelude to another, until a person either becomes truly
master and exiles the rabble-dominion of the pleasures, a ruler thereafter
rather than a subject of tyranny, or he reaches the world of Hades, a
slave until the ¢nal turn of fate. 1
2 And so from the beginning Zeno had led his life in such a dissolute
manner, 2 but his subjects, those towards both the rising and the setting
1 The character sketch of an emperor or patriarch frequently provides Evagrius with a
cue for general moralizing; cf. v.1 (Justin II) and vi.1 (Maurice). As an Isaurian, Zeno (474^
91) was unpopular with both the Germanic military establishment and the educated secular
elite which administered the empire, so that his reign was disrupted by revolts and less
public tensions (e.g. Malchus, fr. 22) and his reputation was damned for posterity: see the
discussion of sources in Laniado, ‘Problems’. Isaurian unpopularity: Joshua the Stylite ch.
12, and see Brooks, ‘Zenon’.
Evagrius’ highly rhetorical attack on Zeno presents by far the longest assessment of the
emperor’s character, though Cedrenus (I. p. 615:11^17) and Zonaras (xiv.2.2^5) have brief
hostile portraits. Malchus criticized Zeno’s spendthrift generosity to his friends, which resulted
in higher taxation and extraordinary demands by pro¢teering o⁄cials; however, he
also admitted that he was less consistently cruel and irate than Leo, and that it was lack of
experience and knowledge which placed him at the mercy of his avaricious advisers (frr. 7,
16). The source most favourably disposed towards Zeno is the Life of Daniel the Stylite:
Daniel, who had links with numerous people at Zeno’s court and supported the emperor’s
Christological position, predicted that he could face the divine throne of judgement with
con¢dence because of his faith in God and his good deeds (ch. 91); Pratum Spirituale 175,
refers to his generosity with alms. As a Monophysite Zachariah of Mitylene also presents
Zeno positively.
2 The adjective e ’kdediZ˛tZme¤ noB is also applied to Evagrius’ other imperial be“te noire,
Justin II (v.1, p. 195:20; cf. also v.9, p. 205:11^12; v.19, p. 214:32).