Leonid dynasty

The Leonid dynasty or Thracian dynasty produced six Byzantine emperors during Late Antiquity, reigning over the Byzantine Empire from 457 to 518. The dynasty's patriarch was Leo I, who was made Byzantine emperor in 457. Leo's daughter Ariadne became empress and mother to an emperor, and her two husbands were themselves each made emperor in turn. Another relative whose name does not survive of Leo I or his wife Verina married the future augustus Julius Nepos (r. 474–480), the last emperor in the Western Roman Empire. The dynasty of Leo succeeded the preceding Valentinianic dynasty (r. 364–455) and Theodosian dynasty (r. 379–457) whose family trees were conjoined and ruled concurrently. Besides Julius Nepos, who administered no more than a rump state encompassing the Roman province of Dalmatia in the western empire during the fall of the West, the dynasty's emperors governed the Byzantine Empire (east).

Leo's eldest daughter Ariadne married Zeno, and their son, Leo II was proclaimed augustus and succeeded his grandfather Leo as an infant, appointing Zeno co-augustus. Leo's younger daughter, Leontia, married first the caesar Patricius, son of the magister militum Aspar, and then Marcianus, son of the augustus Anthemius (r. 467–472). When Leo II died in the year of his grandfather's death, Zeno remained augustus in the Byzantine Empire.

Verina's brother Basiliscus, aided by her relative Armatus the magister militum, usurped the unpopular rule of Zeno in 475, though Zeno recovered the imperial capital Constantinople the following year with the connivance of Armatus.