A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Ariadne
ARIADNE,
Was the elder daughter of Leo the First, emperor of the East, who ascended the throne in 457. In 468, she was given in marriage to Trascalisseus, or, as some call him, Arlcmesius, a noble Isaurian, who, on this occasion, assumed the name of Zeno, and was created a Roman patrician; he was appointed to situations of great trust and power by his father-in-law, on whose death, in 474, he became regent of the empire, his son by Ariadne being yet an Infant, whose death In the following year threw the imperial power Into his hands; there docs not appear sufficient grounds for the opinion entertained by some, that Ariadne poisoned her son, although It appears that she encouraged her husband to assume the purple after his death. Neither is there good authority for the statement put forth, that she afterwards shut Zeno up in a sepulchre, when intoxicated, and left him there to perish. The more reliable authority states that he died in a fit of apoplexy, in 491. Ariadne's marriage with Anastasius, a man of obscure origin soon after this event, it is true, gave a colour of plausibility to such injurious reports, but a careful examination of the whole of the somewhat conflicting historical evidence leads us to the conclusion that she was at all events innocent of this crime, as well as of that of having lived in adulterous intercourse with Anastasius during the life of Zeno.
When the former became emperor through her influence, she exercised the power she possessed over him for good; her first husband she accompanied during a brief period of exile, and defended hit cause against his enemies with great activity and address. On the whole, we may well agree with the writer in the Biographical Dictionary of the Useful Knowledge Society, and say "The general impression we receive from these facts in the life of Ariadne, which may be considered as true, is, that she was an affectionate, active, and highly-gifted woman, who, on many occasions, showed more character than the emperors." Ariadne died in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Anastasius, that is, in 515, he having been crowned in the month of April, 491.