Flavius ​​Longinus

Flavius ​​Longinus ( ancient Greek Λογγῖνος ; † after 492) was an Eastern Roman general , pretender to the throne and rebel against Emperor Anastasios I.

Life

Longinus was the younger brother of Anastasios' predecessor Zenon . The late antique sources describe him as incompetent and unsuitable in character for state affairs, but in the late phase of his rule Zenon gave him more and more responsibility. In 483 Longinus was a general in Syria , where he was taken hostage by his rival Illus after a dispute . Zenon then declared Illus an enemy of the state, which he responded with open rebellion and the proclamation of Leontius as counter-emperor (484). After his escape (or liberation) and return to Constantinople , Longinus was appointed magister militum praesentalis in 485 , and in 486 and 490 he held the consulate .

When Zenon died childless in 491, Longinus had justified hopes for his successor. Not least because of Longinus' Isaurian origin, the imperial widow Ariadne decided in favor of the high court official Anastasios, whom she married and thus dynastically legitimized as the new Augustus . Longinus, meanwhile, 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 , where he was probably put in a monastery. The majority of the Isaurian ruling class also had to leave the capital, but continued the resistance from Asia Minor , which Anastasios was only able to break after seven years of civil war.

The further fate of the Longinus is unclear. Two other rebel leaders of this name, the former magister officiorum Longinus of Cardala and Longinus of Selinus , were captured in Isauria in 497 and 498 and executed at Tarsus and in Constantinople, respectively.

literature

• Alexander Demandt : The late antiquity. Roman history from Diocletian to Justinian. 284–565 AD (= Handbook of Classical Studies . Dept. 3, Part 6). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-44107-6 , p. 191.
• Gerard Friell, Stephen Williams: The Rome That Did Not Fall. The survival of the East in the fifth century. Routledge, London et al. 1999, ISBN 0-415-15403-0 .
• Clemens Heucke: The rule of the Eastern Roman emperor Zenon. An example of integration? In: Mathias Beer , Martin Kintzinger , Marita Krauss (eds.): Migration and Integration. Acceptance and integration in times of historical change (= Stuttgart contributions to historical migration research. Vol. 3). Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07190-3 , pp. 45-54.
• John Robert Martindale: Longinus 6. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , pp. 689-690.

Remarks

1. ↑ The assertion, which goes back to Marcellinus Comes , that Longinus had been held in custody by Illus for ten years for ten years as a bargaining chip is doubtful; see. on this already John B. Bury , A history of the later Roman Empire , vol. 1, p. 256 FN 2.