Emperor of [the] Romans. This man was inclined to baseness and all at once he turned the kingdom into an aristocracy. He sold all the magistracies and associated with wrong-doers and was inclined to an insatiable desire for money, so the provinces were emptied of their accounts; and because of this unusual and strange thing men were astounded. For he did not even ward off invading barbarians with weapons, but he achieved peace by buying them off with money. In addition to these things, he also inquired into the property of deceased men, bestowing his own deficit on everyone in common. For he took the property and after a short time distributed it to them in the guise of piety; and in the cities which he stripped of their inhabitants he rebuilt the houses, so as to arrange carefully the [income] accruing and surround it with three garlands.[1] In his reign, terrible afflictions fell upon the cities in Libya because of those called the Mazikoi. For they been put under the power of the grandson (through his daughter) of Marinos. This grandson was a young man possessed of great frivolousness. And after this man again it was his soon Basianos. And he acted outrageously toward them and surpassed the licentiousness of the one who ruled before him, thus making the Libyans prefer the former state of affairs, which for some of them meant the memory of poverty and for others the memory of death. Thus, if it is permissible to speak of [this], those who were lucky enough to win favor from the bloodline of Marinos were supported by the possessions of the Libyans and the Egyptians.
Saint Theodosios, the abbot, lived during the reign of Anastasios. This Anastasios was a heretic.[2]
The emperor Anastasios himself built the long wall 60 miles from the city, extending from the sea on the north to the south for a length of 50 miles and with a width of 20 feet;[3] and he placed moles on the harbour of Julian. The same man also built the great dining hall, the one in Blachernai, which is called "Anastasian" even to this day; [4] and the Mocisian cistern.[5]