Foreign policy and wars
Under Anastasius, the empire engaged in the Isaurian War against Longinus and the Anastasian War against Sassanid Persia.
The Isaurian War (492–497) was instigated by the Isaurian supporters of Longinus, the brother of Zeno, who was passed over for the throne in favour of Anastasius, and local discontents. The banished Isaurian officials, led by the ex-bishop Conon and former governor Lilingis, gathered in Isauria and mounted a revolt. Their defeat by John the Scythian and John the Hunchback in the Battle of Cotyaeum in 492 broke the back of the revolt, but guerrilla warfare continued in the Isaurian Mountains for several years. The resistance hinged upon the Isaurians' retention of the mountain strongholds. Anastasius passed economic legislations in the mid-490s, which suggests that the war did not absorb all of the energy and resources of the government. After five years, the Isaurian resistance was broken. Large numbers of Isaurians were forcibly relocated to Thrace to ensure that they would not revolt again.
During the Anastasian War of 502–505 against the Sassanid Persians, the Sassanids captured the cities of Theodosiopolis and Amida, although the Romans later received Amida in exchange for gold. The Persian provinces also suffered severely, and a peace was concluded in 506. Anastasius afterward built the strong fortress of Daras, which was named Anastasiopolis, to hold the Persians at Nisibis in check. The Balkan provinces were denuded of troops, however, and were devastated by invasions of Bulgars. To protect Constantinople and its vicinity against them, Anastasius built the Anastasian Wall, extending from the Propontis to the Black Sea. He converted his birthplace, Dyrrachium, into one of the most fortified cities on the Adriatic with the construction of Durrës Castle.
Once the relationship between the Romans and the Ostrogoths was restored, Italy was independently governed by the Ostrogothic ruler Theodoric, but under the conditions agreed upon with Anastasius, Theodoric could not make laws, mint his own coins nor appoint Goths to the consulship and civil offices. However, he had the right to promulgate edicts, and appoint Romans to the consulship and civil offices and Goths to the military offices. Theodoric forged a relationship with the Visigothic king Alaric II in Gaul. Anastasius became wary of Theodoric's imperial ambition in the West. In the Frankish rex Clovis, the emperor found an ally. Partly thanks to the former magister militum Gundobad, he teamed up with Clovis to overthrow the Gothic hegemony in the West. In the Franco–Gothic War (507–511), Clovis defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouillé. The threat of an invasion by the Roman army had prevented Theodoric from intervening in the battle on time to support the Visigoths in 507. In early 508, a Roman attack actually took place in the Italian boot. Anastasius had sent an expedition force of 8,000 soldiers for this attack, but the Roman intervention was not aimed at conquest, since it did not seek a confrontation with Theodoric's army and limited itself only to the looting of some cities in the south. The Franks were thus more successful in the war.
