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ZABERGAN. Khan of the Cotrigurs, who was repulsed by the aged Belisarios in 559. Zabergan crossed the frozen Danube in the winter of 558–559. Reaching Thrace, he divided his forces into three units. One unit ravaged Thrace, while another drove into Greece as far as Thermopylae. The third unit raced toward Constantinople, only to be repulsed by Belisarios, who was called out of retirement to defend the capital with a hastily assembled force of several hundred troops. Zabergan retreated back to Thrace and finally back across the Danube. Any further thought of renewing the attack was discouraged by Justinian I, who persuaded the Utrigurs to attack the Cotrigurs. See also BALKAN PENINSULA; LONG WALL.

ZACCARIA. Family of Genoese entrepreneurs who amassed a fortune from alum mines at Phokaia. Michael VIII Palaiologos ceded Phokaia to Benedetto Zaccaria in 1275, and the Zaccaria quickly monopolized much of the alum trade with the West. In 1304 (or 1305) Benedetto seized Chios and monopolized the trade in mastic, until a local rebellion dispossessed them of the island in 1329.

What they could not get by seizure, they often got by legal acquisition and marriage, as they did in Achaia, where they became firmly entrenched. In the first half of the 15th century their estates were whittled away by the Ottoman expansion. See also AEGEAN SEA; GENOA.

ZACHARIAS, POPE. See EUTYCHIOS.

ZACHARIAS OF MYTILENE. Church historian, bishop of Mytilene in the early sixth century. His History of the Church, biased in favor of Monophysitism (although he later converted to the Chalcedonian creed) covers the years 450–491. It is preserved in a Syriac epitome. He also wrote a vita of Severos, bishop of Antioch. See also CHRIST, THEOLOGY OF; COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON; DOUKAS; HISTORY.

ZANGI. In 1127 he became Muslim atabeg (an independent governor) of Mosul, located in northern Iraq on the Tigris River across from ancient Ninevah. In 1128 he united Mosul and Aleppo. In 1144, a year after the death of John II Komnenos, he conquered Edessa, which created panic in the Crusader states. The Second Crusade was called as a result of the fall of Edessa. After his death in 1146, the unification of the Muslim Near East continued with Nur al-Din and Saladin.

ZAOUTZES, STYLIANOS. See ARETHAS OF CAESAREA.

ZAPETRA. See MUTASIM.

ZARA. See DALMATIA; FOURTH CRUSADE.

ZEALOTS. Revolutionaries who established an independent regime in Thessalonike from 1342 to 1350. The Zealots ejected the local aristocracy and expropriated the property of all the landed magnates, including the property of monasteries and churches. The context of the revolution was the civil war of 1341–1347, and the chief enemy of the Zealots was John VI Kantakouzenos. Their eventual demise is explained by the victory of Kantakouzenos in 1347, and the conclusion of the civil war.

Isolated politically, the Zealots threatened to hand the city over to Stefan Urosh IV Dushan, a proposal that lost them support within the city. Racked by internal dissension, Zealot rule collapsed. John VI took control of the city in 1350 with the aid of Ottoman troops. Among those now able to enter Thessalonike was the appointed archbishop Gregory Palamas, who the Zealots previously refused entry.

ZENO. Emperor from 474 to 491, except for the brief interval (475–476) when Basiliskos usurped power. Zeno was an Isaurian chieftain named Tarasis who Leo I called on to free Constantinople from the domination of Aspar. Once married to Leo I’s daughter Ariadne in 466, Tarasis took the name Zeno and inaugurated a struggle with Aspar that ended in the latter’s assassination in 471. When Leo I died in 474, Zeno ruled briefly with his son and child-emperor Leo II, but Leo II died that same year. Almost immediately thereafter Zeno was overthrown (475–476) by his mother-in-law Verina and her brother Basiliskos.

Two chief events mark the remainder of his reign. In 482 he attempted to appease the Monophysites with the Henotikon. Not only did the Henotikon fail in this regard, but it led to the Akakian Schism. In 488 he encouraged Theodoric the Great to overthrow Odoacer and take control of Italy, which Theodoric did, postponing direct Byzantine intervention into Italy until the reign of Justinian I. See also CHERSON; ILLOS; MONOPHYSITISM; PETER THE FULLER.

ZETA. First prominent Serbian principality. It was called Diokleia until Stefan Voislav gained independence from Byzantium in 1042. After the mid-12th century the political center of Serbia was transferred to Raška, which was dominated by the dynasty of the Nemanjids until 1371. Zeta resisted the Ottomans until the late 15th century, by which time it was referred to as Montenegro. See also CONSTANTINE BODIN.

ZEUXIPPUS, BATHS OF. See AUGUSTAION; CONSTANTINOPLE; NIKA REVOLT.

ZEUXIPPUS WARE. See POTTERY.

ZIGABENOS, EUTHYMIOS. Theologian. At the request of Alexios I Komnenos, he authored a refutation of heresies entitled Panoplia dogmatike (The Dogmatic Panoply). In this work, Zigabenos gives particular attention to the Bogomils and to their leader in Constantinople, Basil the Bogomil, whose execution he describes. See also HERESY; THEOLOGY.

ZOE. Empress from 1028 to her death in 1050; co-ruler in 1042 with her younger sister Theodora. She was intimately connected with the succession of five emperors during the final decades of the Macedonian Dynasty.

Zoe’s father Constantine VIII had no sons, and on his deathbed in 1028 arranged for her to marry the eparch of Constantinople, who became Romanos III Argyros. She plotted with her lover Michael IV Paphlagon the assassination of Romanos III in 1034, but when Michael IV took power he had Zoe put away in a monastery. However, before Michael IV was himself forced to retire in 1041, John the Orphanotrophos was able to persuade Zoe to adopt Michael V Kalaphates. After Michael V’s death she reigned with her sister Theodora in 1042, and then chose Constantine IX Monomachos as her third imperial husband. Zoe did not outlive him, dying in 1050.

The literary portrait of Zoe in the Chronographia of Michael Psellos is unforgettable.

ZOE KARBONOPSINA. Fourth wife and empress of Leo VI, mother of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. She was at the center of the tetragamy controversy, which made her politically vulnerable after Leo VI’s death in 912. The new emperor, Alexander, forced her into a nunnery, but following Alexander’s death in 913, and the ineffectual response to the invasion of Symeon of Bulgaria by regent Nicholas I Mystikos, she was able to take power again. However, she proved no better at resisting Symeon, and in 919 she was forced back into a nunnery by Romanos I Lekapenos and his supporters. See also CHOIROSPHAKTES, LEO; WOMEN.

ZOGRAPHOU MONASTERY. See ATHOS, MOUNT.

ZONARAS, JOHN. Author of one of the great world chronicles of the period of the Palaiologan Dynasty, on par with that of John Skylitzes. Zonaras’s chronicle (entitled Epitome historion), which goes from the Creation of the world to 1118, draws on the works of Skylitzes, Michael Psellos, and Michael Attaleiates. Zonaras was an original thinker whose consideration of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire led him to the conclusion that Byzantium in his own day had strayed far from the greatness of republican institutions.

As a result, his treatment of Alexios I Komnenos, however independent, critical (in places brilliantly original), and a product of his personal experience as chief imperial secretary (protoasekretis) and megas droungarios tis viglas, nevertheless reflects an antiquarian view of what an emperor should be like.

The influence of this chronicle spread beyond Byzantium due to its translation into Old Church Slavonic. See also HISTORY.

ZOROASTRIANISM. Persian religion founded by the legendary Zoroaster (died ca. 551 b.c.); state religion of the Sassanians. Central to Zoroastrianism is a belief in the ongoing strife between the Ohrmazd (Ahuramazda), the god of light, who represents goodness, and Ahriman, the god of darkness and evil. Ohrmazd’s eventual triumph is predicted; when it occurs the dead will be raised for their final reward or punishment. Special veneration was given to fire in religious ceremonies, as seen on the back of Sassanian coins, where a fire-altar is depicted. From the mid-third century Zoroastrianism had a competitor in Manichaeanism. See also PERSIA.

ZOSIMOS. One of the last pagan historians of Rome. His Historia Nova (New History) begins with Augustus and ends in 410. He relied heavily on the works of Eunapios of Sardis and Olympiodoros. His bias is clearly anti-Christian, as can be seen in his treatment of Julian “The Apostate.” Except for Peter the Patrician, whose work survives only in fragments, Zosimos is the only major historian of the fifth and sixth centuries who wrote a history of such chronological breadth. See also ALTAR OF VICTORY; CHRONICLE; HISTORY; PAGANISM.