Leo I the Thracian

Marcian has saved money by refusing to pay the annual tribute to the Huns and by carefully avoiding costly military ventures abroad.

There have been minor troubles with nomadic peoples in Syria and along the frontier of southern Egypt, but he has refused to become entangled in war with the Vandals in Africa.

The emperor dies at Constantinople January 27, 457, possibly of foot gangrene, an infection contracted during a long religious journey.

He is buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles together with his late wife Pulcheria.

On February 7, Aspar has a Thracian protégé raised to the throne as Leo I, expecting to use him as a puppet ruler.

Leo is first to accept the imperial crown from the hands of the patriarch of Constantinople.

The general, head of a Gothic army devoted to him, is now at the height of his power.

Leo recognizes Majorian as emperor of the West in 458.

Emperor Leo signs a peace treaty with the Ostrogoths; King Theodemir, in compliance with the terms, sends his five-year-old son Theodoric as a child hostage to Constantinople.

Eastern Emperor Leo I founds the Excubitors (Imperial Guard) at Constantinople; this elite tagmatic unit (three hundred men) is recruited from among the warlike Isaurians of southern Anatolia.

Majorian, the Western Roman Emperor, gathers an expeditionary force (Alans and other barbarians) in Liguria and after a long march enters Aquitaine, where he visits king Theodoric II at Toulouse.

Having secured the support of Gaul, where a movement toward independent rule is in progress, Majorian crosses into Spain in May 460.

The Roman fleet is docked at Portus Illicitanus (near Elche) for the African campaign.

Soon after Majorian crosses from Gaul into Spain on May 460, the Vandal navy under their king Genseric makes a sudden strike on the Spanish coast, capturing most of Majorian's fleet of three hundred ships in the Bay of Alicante and subjecting the emperor to a humiliating peace.

Just as the fate of Avitus had been marked by the betrayal of Ricimer and of Majorian and by the dismissal of his German guard, so the fate of Majorian himself is decided by the disbandment of his army and a plot organized by Ricimer.

In fact, while the Emperor was busy away from Italy, the barbarian patricius et magister militum had gathered around himself the aristocratic opposition to his former comrade with whom, just a few years earlier, he had cultivated dreams of power.

Majorian's legislation had shown that he intends to intervene decisively on issues that plagues the empire, even if they counter the interests of influential aristocrats.

After spending some time at Arelate, his base at the end of the operation against the Vandals in Hispania,Majorian disbands his barbarian mercenaries and, accompanied by some guards, sets off to Rome, where he intends to carry out reforms.

Ricimer goes to meet Majorian with a military detachment; the magister militum meets the Emperor near Tortona (not far from Piacenza, where Avitus had been killed), and has him arrested and deposed on August 3.

The Emperor is deprived of his dress and diadem, beaten and tortured.

After five days, Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria on August 7, 461): he was about forty years old and had reigned for four years.

Ricimer's murder of Majorian triggers the final dissolution of western Imperial unity.

Athough recognized as a patrician, Ricimer, as an Arian Christian and a barbarian, cannot aspire to have himself recognized as emperor, and instead seeks to rule through puppet emperors.

Ricimer has waited for three months after the death of Majorian before placing on the imperial throne a person he believes he can manipulate.

He finally chooses Libius Severus, a senator of no political distinction, probably selected to please the Italian senatorial aristocracy.

The new emperor is not recognized by the Eastern Emperor Leo I, nor by any of the generals who had served under Majorian; not by his old comrade-in-arms Aegidius in Gaul, not by Marcellinus in Sicily and Illyria, and not by Nepotianus in Hispania.

Olybrius, the husband of the princess Placidia, who is held in Vandal captivity, becomes the second candidate for the western throne.

Genseric supports Olybrius to assume the vacant Western throne because Gaiseric's son Huneric and Olybrius had married the two daughters of Valentinian III, and with Olybrius on the throne, Genseric could exert great influence on the Western Empire.

Therefore Genseric has freed Licinia Eudoxia and her daughter Placidia (Olybrius' wife), but he has not ceased his raids on Italy's coasts.

His project had failed, however, as Ricimer, who had become the magister militum of the West, had chosen Libius Severus as new Emperor.

Emperor Leo I has paid a large ransom for Licinia Eudoxia and Placidia, who returned after seven years of captivity in Carthage.

Placidia has joined her husband at Constantinople, where she bears him a daughter, Anicia Juliana, in 462.

Olybrius is elected Roman consul by the Eastern court in Constantinople.