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48 2. the eastern empire: theodosius to anastasius
following Attila’s death, the most important of whom were the Goths
(though they were certainly not a unified people at this stage). During the
late 450s and 460s, various groups of Goths are found in Pannonia
(effectively no longer imperial territory since the 440s), while a second
cluster was located within the empire in Thrace. 93 Some of the latter had,
by the 460s, acquired formal status as federate troops within the eastern
empire with particular ties of loyalty to Aspar. Predictably, his assassination
by Leo in 471 provoked a revolt, which Leo was only able to end (473) by
making various concessions to their leader Theoderic Strabo – an annual
payment of 2,000 pounds of gold, an imperial generalship for Strabo and
recognition of him as the only Gothic leader with whom Constantinople
would deal – but not before a substantial portion of the Pannonian Goths
had seized the chance presented by Leo’s preoccupation with the revolt to
invade the eastern empire, advance as far as Macedonia and extract concessions
of their own in the form of land. 94 At Leo’s death, therefore, the situation
in the Balkans was one fraught with difficulties.
As for relations with the Vandals, during the decades following the abortive
expedition against Carthage in 441, Vandal raiding had concentrated
on the western Mediterranean, but had also increasingly impinged on the
east, 95 to the extent that by the mid 460s there were fears of a Vandal attack
on Alexandria 96 – an ominous prospect in the context of the grain supply.
The Vandal abduction of the western empress Eudoxia and her daughters
following the sack of Rome (455) had clearly provoked alarm and outrage
in Constantinople, and was a continuing vexation so long as the imperial
womenfolk remained prisoners in Carthage, 97 while the persecution of
orthodox African Christians by the Arian Vandals must have been a further
cause for concern in the east. 98
These varied circumstances help to explain why Leo eventually abandoned
diplomacy and took the fateful step of organizing another expedition
against Carthage. In preparation, he arranged in 467 for Marcian’s
son-in-law Anthemius to occupy the then vacant imperial throne in the
west, so that the following year a formidable eastern armada was able to
93 Marcian is often given responsibility for their entry to the empire (on the basis of Jordanes), but
there is good reason to think that at least some of the Pannonian Goths were placed there by Attila,
and that at least some of the Thracian Goths had been settled there by the imperial authorities during
the 420s (Heather, Goths and Romans 242–4, 259–63). 94 Heather, Goths and Romans ch. 7.
95 Raiding in the east in the late 440s and early 450s: Priscus fr. 10.12–13 (with Croke (1983a) for the
date), Jord. Rom. 333; attacks on Illyricum and Greece in the late 450s and 460s: Vict. Vit. Hist. Pers. i.51,
Procop. Wars iii.5.22–6.1, 22.16–18. 96 V. Dan. Styl. 56.
97 All but Eudocia were finally released c. 462; the soures are contradictory concerning the eventual
fate of Eudocia, who was forced to marry Geiseric’s son, but it is likely she was still in Carthage in 468:
see PLRE ii, s.v. Eudocia 1.
98 Courtois ((1955) 292–3) is sceptical about Geiseric as a persecutor on the basis of a lack of
martyrs during his reign, but persecution can entail other forms of discrimination, which are certainly
in evidence in this period: Moorhead (1992b) xi–xii.
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