The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

164
EVAGRIUS
28 John the rhetor narrates that in the time of Zeno a former artisan
Mamianus became distinguished and participated in the senatorial
council, and that in the suburb of Daphne he constructed the so-called
Antiforum, which occupied a site that was previously given over to
vines and was suitable for cultivation, opposite the public bath; there
stands the bronze statue of Mamianus, the lover of the city. In the city
he executed two colonnades, which were extremely beautiful in their
construction and adorned with a conspicuous resplendence of stonework;
as a sort of interposition between the two colonnades, he set up a
Tetrapylon which was most ornately provided with columns and bronze
work. 89 We have found that the colonnades still preserve, along with
their appellation, remnants of their former glory in the Proconnesian
marbles that comprise the £oor, [125] although the construction does
not actually contain anything notable: for they recently underwent
reconstruction because of the calamities that have occurred, and
nothing was added to them as decoration. But of the Tetrapylon that
was made by Mamianus, we have not found even the slightest trace. 90
29 Now, when Zeno died childless from the disease of epilepsy after the
seventeenth year of his reign, his brother Longinus, who had advanced
to a position of great power, hoped to confer the empire on himself; but
he did not obtain what he expected, for Ariadne conferred the crown on
Anastasius, although he had not yet reached the senate but was enrolled
in the so-called schola of the silentiaries. 91 Now Eustathius narrates that
tiating with Theoderic. See further Heather, Goths and Romans 304^8; Moorhead, ‘Theoderic’.
89 Presumably statues, as Festugie're 335 n. 83.
90 Malalas’ account does not survive, with the exception of one sentence in the Slavonic
translation (p. 103) referring to Mamianus’ buildings at Daphne. Mamianus is otherwise
unknown. An Antiforum at Antioch is attested in 507, when rioters suspended the corpse of
thepraefectusvigilum from a statue there (Malalas 397:23), and there was also one at Edessa;
they were perhaps enclosed structures like a later bazaar, a substitute for the traditional
forum. The location of the colonnades and Tetrapylon is unknown, though they might have
replaced those on the island destroyed in the earthquake of 458: see Downey, Antioch 500^1.
91 Zeno died on 9 April 491; cf. Theophanes 135:31^136:5, probably derived ultimately
from Eustathius (Jeep, ‘Quellenuntersuchungen’ 161). Malalas, 391:1^4, gives dysentery as
the cause of death. A less pleasant version is recorded in Cedrenus (I. p. 622:7^23) and
Zonaras (xiv.2.31^5): Zeno was buried alive, after either becoming insensible through
drink or su¡ering unspeci¢ed pains, and, though he shouted from inside the imperial sarcophagus,
Ariadne would not allow anyone to open it.