An earthquake destroys the Illyrian (Macedonian) city…

Empress Dowager Hu's power is unchallenged during these few years of Yuan Xu's childhood, and while she tolerates—and, in certain circumstances, encourages—criticism, including rewarding such officials as Yuan Kuang the Prince of Dongping and Zhang Puhui for their blunt words, she is slow to implement suggestions that will curb corruption.

Empress Dowager Hu is a fervent Buddhist, and during this part of the regency, she builds magnificent temples in Luoyang.

One, dedicated to her father Hu Guozhen the Duke of Qin, after his death in 518, is particularly beautiful.

Because of her influence, Emperor Xiaoming also becames a dedicated Buddhist.

In his youth, however, he also favors spending time in imperial gardens rather than studies or learning about important affairs of state.

Anastasius dies in his late eighties on July 19, 518, leaving the imperial treasury richer by twenty-three million solidi or three hundred and twenty thousand pounds of gold.

He having died childless, without designating an heir, and without a reigning Augusta to supervise the election of a successor, the throne is up for grabs.

According to John Malalas, a Greek chronicler from Antioch, the powerful praepositus sacri cubiculi Amantius intends to elect to the throne a comes domesticorum, commander of an elite guard unit of the late Roman Empire, by the name of Theocritus.

Theocritus is an obscure individual, primarily mentioned by two authors: John Malalas and Marcellinus Comes.

Amantius hopes to secure the election for Theocritus by bribing Justin, the influential comes excubitorum (head of the imperial guards).

Justin is supposed to share the money with his troops.

Justin, born of Thraco-Roman peasant stock n a hamlet near Bederiana in Naissus (modern Niš, South Serbia), had been a swineherd in his youth.

Like his companions and members of his family (Zimarchus, Dityvistus, Boraides, Bigleniza, Sabatius, etc.), he bears a Thracian name.

As a teenager, he and two companions had fled from a barbaric invasion, taking refuge in Constantinople possessing nothing more than the ragged clothes on their backs and a sack of bread between them.

Justin soon joined the army, entered the palace guard and, because of his ability, had risen through the ranks to become a general and a patrician under Anastasius I, becoming the emperor's close confidant and acting possibly as regent.

He remains illiterate and has never learned to speak more than rudimentary Greek.

The events of the election are described in detail by Peter the Patrician, extracts of whose work survive in the tenth-century De Ceremoniis.

On the morning of the election, the Excubitors at first put forward the tribune John as a candidate.

He is raised on the shield in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.

But the Blues, an influential chariot racing faction, riot against this candidate.

The guardsmen of the Scholae Palatinae then attempt to proclaim their own candidate, but the Excubitors almost kill that unnamed man.

The Excubitors then allegedly put forward Flavius Petrus Sabbatius (later Justinian I), nephew of Justin, as their second candidate for the day, but he refuses the crown.

The Senate supposedly settled the matter by electing Justin himself.

Both Amantius and Theocritus are soon executed on a pretext, obviously eliminated by Justin for their role in the conspiracy.

Procopius briefly mentions: "Indeed, his power [Justin's] was not ten days old, before he slew Amantius, chief of the palace eunuchs, and several others, on no graver charge than that Amantius had made some rash remark about John, Archbishop of the city.

After this, he was the most feared of men."

Based on the account of Marcellinus, Amantius and his supporters were accused of being adherents of Manichaeism.

A combination of sources imply that Amantius and Theocritus had attempted to overthrow Justin, following his election.

If so, they were met with swift executions.

Justin, unlike his predecessor, is a champion of Christian orthodoxy.

Instrumental in ending the Acacian schism with Rome in 518-519, he persecutes the dissident Monophysites.

Justin’s nephew Petrus Sabbatius becomes his administrator and a power behind the throne.

Severus, patriarch of Antioch, is deposed by a synod on September 29, 518, for his monophysitism.

Paul the Jew, a Chalcedonian, is appointed to replace him.

A serious riot occurs in Luoyang in 519, after the official Zhang Zhongyu proposes that the civil service regulations be changed to disallow soldiers to become civilian officials.

The soldiers become angry and storm both the ministry of civil service and the mansion of Zhang Zhongyu's father, Zhang Yi, killing Zhang Yi and serious injuring Zhang Zhongyu and his brother Zhang Shijun.

Empress Dowager Hu arrests eight leaders of the riot and executes them but pardons the rest, to quell the unrest.

She also rejects the proposal to change the civil service regulations.

This event is often seen as the turning point and the start of the unrest that will eventually tear Northern Wei apart.

Despite these events, Empress Dowager Hu continues to tolerate corruption, and she often gives exuberant awards to officials, draining the treasury; the pressure on the treasury and the burden on the people are further increased by her orders that each province is to build a tower dedicated to the Buddha.

Sometime before 520, Empress Dowager had forced Emperor Xiaoming's uncle Yuan Yi the Prince of Qinghe, who is popular with the people and the officials because of his abilities and humility, to have an affair with her.

Yuan Yi thereafter becomes the effective leader of government, and he tries to reorganize the administration to decrease corruption.

He particularly tries to curb the powers of Empress Dowager Hu's brother-in-law Yuan Cha and the eunuch Liu Teng.

Yuan Cha therefore falsely accuses him of treason, but he is cleared after an investigation.

Fearful of reprisals, Yuan Cha and Liu persuade Emperor Xiaoming that Yuan Yi is trying to poison him and carried out a coup against Empress Dowager Hu and Yuan Yi, killing Yuan Yi and putting Empress Dowager Hu under house arrest.

Yuan Yong becomes titular regent, but Yuan Cha becomes the actual power.

Vitalian, once back in northern Thrace, had gone into hiding, while many of his erstwhile aides were captured and executed.

Nothing is known of him for the next three years, although a short remark by a chronicler seems to indicate that he resurfaced and led another armed rebellion during the last months of Anastasius's life.

Justin I, the new emperor, had quickly moved to strengthen his rule, dismissing a number of potential rivals or enemies.

At the same time, he had called upon Vitalian to come to Constantinople.

Upon his arrival, Vitalian is made magister militum in praesenti, named honorary consul, and soon after raised to the rank of patricius.

As a well-known champion of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, Vitalian is to play a role in the new regime's reaffirmation of the Chalcedonian doctrines and reconciliation with Rome.

He plays an active role in the negotiations with the Pope, and in 519, he is one of the prominent men who escorts a papal delegation into the capital.

On March 28, the Eastern and Western churches reconcile their differences, ending the Acacian Schism.

Jabalah, the son of Ghassanid ruler Al-Harith (Arethas in Greek sources) and grandson of the sheikh Tha'laba, first appeares in the historical sources in 498 during the reign of Eastern Roman emperor Anastasius I, when, according to Theophanes the Confessor, the Diocese of the East suffered from large-scale Arab raids.

The head of one of the Arab groups invading imperial territory was Jabalah, who raided Palestine before being defeated and driven back by the Imperial dux, Romanus.

Romanus then proceeded to evict the Ghassanids from the island of Iotabe (modern Tiran), which controlled trade with the Red Sea and which had been occupied by the Arabs since 473.

After a series of hard-fought engagements, the island returned to Imperial control.

Anastasius had concluded a treaty of alliance in 502 with the Kindaites and Ghassanids, turning them into imperial allies (foederati).

With the outbreak of the Anastasian War against Sassanid Persia, the Ghassanids had fought on Constantinople’s side, although only one operation, an attack against the Lakhmid capital of Hirah in July 513, is explicitly attributed to them.

The Ghassanids have settled deep inside the Roman limes, and in a Syriac source for July 519 they are attested as having their "opulent" headquarters at al-Jabiya (Gabitha) in the Gaulanitis (Golan Heights), where Jabalah had succeeded his father as king over his tribe.

The Romans, after the devastating earthquake of 518, rebuild a Greek colony called Lychnidos, which by the second century had become a post on the Via Aegnatia to Bitola and Greece.

Christians torch synagogues in Ravenna in 519, after which Theodoric compels the city government to pay for rebuilding.

The third Saxon kingdom, that of Wessex, is established by 519.

Cerdic according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle becomes the first king of Wessex.

A line along the old Roman Road later called Fosse Way separates the Britons in the west from the Saxons in the east.

A rebellion against the Yamato court in 527 In Japan's Tsukushi Province (now nearby Ogori city in Fukuoka Prefecture) is named after its leader, Iwai, who is believed by historians to have been a powerful governor of Tsukushi.

Quelled by the Yamato court, the rebellion plays an important part in the consolidation of early Japan.