Leo I the Thracian

Leo I, also known as the Thracian and sometimes given the epithet the Great to distinguish him from his young grandson Leo II, who lived from around 401 to 18 January 474, was the eastern Roman emperor from 457 to 474, born to a Thraco-Roman family in Thracia or Dacia Aureliana. During his seventeen year rule he pursued ambitious political and military plans aimed mostly at aiding the faltering western Roman Empire, and he was the first eastern emperor to legislate in Koine Greek rather than Latin. He married Verina and had three children, Ariadne, Leontia and a son born in 463 who died after five months; his daughter Ariadne married Tarasicodissa, the Isaurian leader who later became Emperor Zeno. Leo died of dysentery at the age of seventy three on 18 January 474 and is commemorated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.