Half of Odoacer's troops diverge to engage…

Theodoric had captured almost the entire peninsula, including Pavia and Milan, by August 489, forcing Odoacer to take refuge in his heavily fortified capital, Ravenna.

Reinforced from the south, Odacer routs the besieging Ostrogoths near Faenza; …

…the invaders, pursued by Odoacer's forces, fall back to Pavia, where he constructs a fortified camp, which is blockaded.

The Burgundians under king Gundobad, having crossed the Alps, plunder Liguria, taking many Romans into captivity.

King Alaric II supports Theodoric in his conquest of Italy by dispatching an Visigoth army to raise Odoacer's siege of Pavia.

Theodoric and his Ostrogoths lay siege to Ravenna.

The cities Cesena and Rimini retain their allegiance to Odoacer.

Grain rises to a terrible famine price and before the end of the siege of Ravenna, the inhabitants will be feeding on the hides of animals, with many residents perishing of hunger.

Isaurian occupation of the imperial office ends with Zeno's death from dysentery on April 9, 491.

After seventeen years on the throne, he has no sons to succeed him.

Longinus of Cardala is one of several Isaurians who occupy offices in the imperial civil and military administration, especially under emperor Zeno, who was an Isaurian himself.

It is said that Longinus was rich and bald.

Born in Cardala, he had been appointed magister officiorum in late 484.

After the death of the Isaurian emperor, there is a struggle for the succession that involves Zeno's brother, also named Longinus, and Anastasius , the candidate supported by empress dowager Ariadne.

The Illyrian-born Anastasius, a sixty-one-year-old palace official (silentiarius) and favored friend of the empress, is elevated to the throne by his predecessor's widow, who marries him shortly hereafter.

Anastasius has one eye brown and one eye blue (heterochromia) and for that reason he is nicknamed Dicorus (Greek: "two-pupiled").

His reign, though afterwards disturbed by foreign and internecine wars and religious distractions, commenced auspiciously.

He gains the popular favor by a judicious remission of taxation, and displays great vigor and energy in administering the affairs of the Empire.

His reign is initially disturbed by religious distractions and a civil war started by Longinus, brother of the late emperor Zeno.

After anti-Isaurian riots break out in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, Longinus and several other Isaurians, including general Longinus of Cardala, who had been removed from his office when Anastasius I was proclaimed emperor, are exiled to the Thebaid, in Egypt.

Many Isaurians are removed from the imperial administration.

Odoacer makes a night assault with his Heruli guardsmen, engaging Theodoric the Great in Ad Pinetam.

Both sides suffer heavy losses, but in the end Theodoric repulses the attack, forcing Odoacer back into Ravenna.

Aelle of Sussex besieges and conquers the fortified town Anderitum in southern Britain.

He massacres the population, apparently sub-Roman Brythons (this according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).

Anastasius’ removal of Zeno’s Isaurian clansmen from their powerful positions as imperial officials, coupled with the expulsion of Isaurian troops from Constantinople, spurs the bellicose Isaurians of the south central Anatolian highlands to revolt and invade western Anatolia in 492.

Anastasius declare war on the Isaurian supporters of Longinus, the brother of Zeno who was passed over in his succession in favor of Anastasius, and sends a mostly Gothic army against them.

The rebels are defeated by the Eastern Roman army under John the Scythian and John the Hunchback in the Battle of Cotyaeum (subordinate commanders including the future Justin I).

Pope Felix III dies on January 3, 492; Gelasius succeeds him.

Gelasius' election on March 1, 492, is a gesture for continuity: the new pope, having inherited Felix's struggles with Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I and the patriarch of Constantinople, exacerbates them by insisting on the removal of the name of the late Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, from the diptychs, in spite of every ecumenical gesture by the current, otherwise quite orthodox patriarch Euphemius.