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Zeno, Basiliscus, and Anastasius found patriarchs, who could sanction by their subscription much greater violations of all Christian right than St. Athanasius had denounced in Constantius, and St. Basil in Valens. They found, also, five Popes in succession, living themselves "under hostile domination," who resisted their tyranny, and saved both the doctrine and the discipline of the Church.
The formidable navy of Basiliscus pursued its prosperous navigation from the Thracian Bosphorus to the coast of Africa. He landed his troops at Cape Bona, or the promontory of Mercury, about forty miles from Carthage.
Having gained great renown by his defence of the Council of Chalcedon against the usurper Basiliscus, having denounced at Rome the misdeeds and the heresy of the Eutychean who was elected by that party at Alexandria, and having so been high in the trust of Pope Simplicius, he turned against both Pope and Council.
Avitus of Vienna, characterises him with the words, "Rather a timid lover than a public asserter of the opinion broached by Eutyches: he praised, indeed, what he had taken from him, but did not venture to preach it to a people still devout, and therefore unpolluted by it". Another equally great bishop, Ennodius of Ticinum that is, Pavia says: "He utterly surrendered the glory which he had gained, in combating Basiliscus, of maintaining the truth"; while the next Pope Gelasius charges him with intense pride; the effect of which was to leave to the Church "cause for the peaceful to mourn and the humble to weep".
Zeno, receiving the empire at the death of his young son by Ariadne, Leo II., in 474, had reigned seventeen years, if we comprise therein the twenty months during which the throne was occupied by the insurgent Basiliscus from 475 to 477, precisely at the moment when Odoacer terminated the western empire. Zeno, recovering the throne in 477, had acted as a Catholic during about four years.
But when he disclosed to the magistrates that he was gathering an army against the Vandals and Gelimer, the most of them began immediately to show hostility to the plan, and they lamented it as a misfortune, recalling the expedition of the Emperor Leon and the disaster of Basiliscus, and reciting how many soldiers had perished and how much money the state had lost.
Among the events of that disastrous night, the heroic, or rather desperate, courage of John, one of the principal officers of Basiliscus, has rescued his name from oblivion.
So low was the eastern Church already fallen that not the Eutycheans only, but five hundred Catholic bishops subscribed this Encyclikon, and a Council at Ephesus praised it as divine and apostolical. Basiliscus, termed by Pope Gelasius the tyrant and heretic, was swept away.
The fleet that sailed from Constantinople to Carthage, consisted of eleven hundred and thirteen ships, and the number of soldiers and mariners exceeded one hundred thousand men. Basiliscus, the brother of the empress Vorina, was intrusted with this important command. His sister, the wife of Leo, had exaggerated the merit of his former exploits against the Scythians.
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