Empress Verina's Riot: Zeno Flees, Basiliscus Seizes Throne

Dowager Empress Verina orchestrated a riot in Constantinople that forced her son-in-law Emperor Zeno to flee the capital, aiming to install her lover Patricius on the throne. The Byzantine Senate defied her by instead proclaiming the general Basiliscus as emperor. This palace coup demonstrated the volatile interplay between imperial women, military commanders, and senatorial power that defined Byzantine succession politics. Verina was the widow of Emperor Leo I and mother-in-law of Zeno, an Isaurian military commander from southeastern Anatolia whose ethnic background made him deeply unpopular with the Constantinople aristocracy. The Isaurians were considered semi-barbaric by the Greek-speaking elite, and Zeno's appointment as emperor after Leo's death had always been contested. Verina exploited this resentment, organizing a coordinated uprising that combined street mobs with sympathetic palace guards in January 475. Zeno, realizing he could not hold the capital, fled across the Bosphorus with the imperial treasury and retreated to his homeland in the Isaurian mountains. Verina expected the Senate to proclaim Patricius, her lover and an otherwise obscure court official. Instead, the senators chose Basiliscus, Verina's own brother and a former military commander who had led the disastrous 468 expedition against the Vandals in North Africa. Basiliscus proved an incompetent ruler. His religious policies alienated the Orthodox establishment, his financial mismanagement drained the treasury, and his arrogance turned former allies into enemies. Within twenty months, Zeno had rebuilt his forces, marched back to Constantinople, and reclaimed the throne. Basiliscus was captured and exiled with his family to Cappadocia, where they allegedly died of starvation. Verina survived the counter-coup but spent her remaining years in political irrelevance.