Athenodorus (Isaurian)

Athenodorus (with Johannes Malalas Ἀθηνόδωρος ὁ νεότερος , Latin Athenodorus iunior ; † 497 with Tarsus ) was an Eastern Roman politician of Isaurian origin and a rebel against Emperor Anastasios I.

Life

Athenodorus belonged to the Senate under Emperor Zenon , who was an Isaur himself . When Zenon died childless in 491, his brother Flavius ​​Longinus was passed over by the imperial widow Ariadne in the succession to the throne. The latter, however, insisted on his claim to the throne and instigated an Isaurian revolt in Constantinople, which was suppressed. Anastasios banished his rival to Upper Egypt in 492 . Athenodorus had the majority of the Isaurian leadership the capital left, but put together with Longinus of Cardala of Asia Minor continued from the resistance.

In Isauria, Athenodorus, Longinus and the provincial governor Lilingis , a half-brother of Illus , gathered an army of about 15,000 men and marched against the capital, but were defeated at the Battle of Cotyaeum in Phrygia in the autumn of 492 by troops loyal to the emperor under the command of the army master John the Humpbacked and John Scytha beaten.

While Lilingis fell in battle, Athenodorus and Longinus managed to retreat to the Isaurian mountains and continue the guerrilla war for another five years. In 497 both were captured and executed by Johannes Scytha, their heads speared on lances were displayed in Tarsus and then sent to Constantinople. Scytha was then awarded the Consulate of the Year 498.

swell

• Marcellinus Comes , Chronicon , ac 497 ( online ).

literature

• Alexander Demandt : The late antiquity. Roman history from Diocletian to Justinian. 284 - 565 AD (= Handbook of Classical Studies . Section 3: Ancient Orient, Greek History, Roman History. Part 6). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-44107-6 , p. 191.
• Karl field: Barbaric citizens: The Isaurians and the Roman Empire. De Gruyter , Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-018899-6 , p. 332ff. (= Millennium Studies, Volume 8).
• Gerard Friell, Stephen Williams: The Rome That Did Not Fall: the survival of the East in the fifth century. Routledge 1999, ISBN 0-415-15403-0 , pp. 199f.
• Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Athenodorus 2. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , pp. 178-179.