“Wretch! Is this the way you have governed the empire?” ~ The fall of Phocas the Tyrant, AD 610

The captured tyrant, Phocas, is delivered to Heraclius, AD 610.

On this date in late Roman history, the general Heraclius landed with his army a few miles outside the land walls of Constantinople. His mission—to topple the ghastly and corrupt regime of the usurper, Phocas.

For eight years, Phocas had mismanaged the empire’s affairs, having taken the crown in AD 602 after leading a successful soldiers’ rebellion against the Emperor Maurice. Now, with the frontiers collapsing and the people of Constantinople living in fear of the tyrant’s rapine tax collectors and murderous officials, Heraclius and his father, Heraclius the Elder, launched an insurrection from their base in Roman north Africa. It took their expedition two years to reach Constantinople, pacifying Egypt along the way.

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When the armies under Heraclius reached Constantinople on October 3, AD 610, the resistance of the forces loyal to Phocas was quickly suppressed. John of Nikiu, writing about 70 years later, picks up the narrative:

“When Phocas and Leontius the chamberlain became aware that they were sought with evil intent to slay them as they had slain the depraved Bonosus, the two arose and seized all the money that was in the imperial treasury which had been amassed by Maurice, and likewise that which had been amassed by (Phocas) himself from the Roman nobles whom he had put to death, and whose property he had confiscated, and likewise the money of Bonosus, and they cast it into the waves of the sea, and so thoroughly impoverished the Roman empire.” [page 177]

This spiteful act would cause much hardship in the coming years as Heraclius struggled to fight wars on two fronts with an empty treasury. But such an action was in keeping with the base, unscrupulous character of Phocas whose rule was marked by such avarice, lust and brutality that he was completely reviled even by the Green faction who had helped put him on the throne. According to the Chronicle of Theophanes, during the last year of his reign, the Greens mocked Phocas in the Hippodrome, chanting: “You are drunk again, and long ago lost your mind.” In response, Phocas set his soldiers upon them. The soldiers killed some, mutilated others and “hung their members in the sphendone” – the semi-circular end of the Hippodrome.

As a result of such atrocities, the people and nobility of Constantinople all nursed a grudge against Phocas which burst forth with the arrival of Heraclius. John of Nikiu continues:

“And thereupon, the senators and officers and soldiers went and seized Phocas, and took the imperial crown from his head, and (they seized) Leontius the chamberlain likewise, and conducted them in chains to Heraclius to the Church of S. Thomas the Apostle…”

At this point, a tradition exists that is not from any of the contemporary sources but is nonetheless recorded in every modern source. A dramatic scene unfolded aboard ship, as depicted in the image above. Looking with disgust upon the fallen tyrant, Heraclius rebuked him:

“Wretch! Is this the way you have governed the empire?”

Phocas replied: “And will you do better?” 

In a fury at this sarcastic response, Heraclius condemned Phocas and Leontius to immediate death:

“And they put both of them to death in his presence. And they cut off the privy parts of Phocas, and tore off his skin right down to his legs because of the dishonor and shame he had brought on the wife of [Photius] because she was consecrated to the service of God, for he had taken her by force and violated her, although she was of an illustrious family. And next, they took the bodies of Phocas and Leontius and Bonosus and they conveyed them to the city of Constantinople, and they burnt them with fire, and scattered the ashes of their bodies to the winds; for they were detested by all men.”

Thus the triumphant and tragic reign of Heraclius began with the bloody overthrow of a vicious tyrant. The execution of Phocas occurred on October 5, AD 610, and Heraclius himself was crowned emperor on the same day.

John of Nikiu’s Chronicle is an excellent source for this eventful period, particularly considering the paucity of primary sources for this era more generally. More details of this gruesome event may be found in the Chronicon Paschale and in Walter Kaegi’s superb scholarly biography, Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium.

Death of the Emperor Heraclius and the Loss of Roman Egypt ~ February 11

A medieval plaque showing Heraclius defeating Chosroes II.

After a reign of over thirty years, the Roman Emperor Heraclius passed to his eternal reward on February 11, AD 641.

His reign had begun as a rebellion against a rebellion, casting out the cruel and capricious regime of the usurper Phocas who had previously murdered the legitimate emperor, Maurice and his entire family. Launching his successful rebellion from Carthage, Heraclius ascended the throne at a time of acute crisis for the empire. The Persians had taken advantage of the internal strife and swept over practically the entire Roman east, including Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

Selling the very plate of the churches to fund his army, Heraclius began a counter-attack to eject the Persians from their ill-gotten gains. Rather than attempting to engage the Persian forces in the occupied territories, Heraclius marched directly into the Persian heartland where he inflicted a crushing defeat on the armies of the Persian King of Kings, Chosroes II, at Nineveh in AD 627. It is said that Heraclius himself defeated the Persian general Rhahzadh in single combat, thus earning the coveted spolia opima.

With his victories, Heraclius left Persia devastated and supine and secured what he thought would be a lasting peace in the east. However, in AD 636, a new force arose from the deserts of Arabia and utterly defeated a large Roman field army at the battle of Yarmuk. Under the command of Kahlid, the armies of Islam rolled over the Roman frontiers and occupied much of the Roman east--this time, for good.

As Heraclius lay ill in Constantinople at the beginning of the year AD 641, his heart must have been heavy having seen all of his hard-fought campaigns to come to nothing, and a Muslim army under 'Amr sweeping away all Roman resistance in Egypt. Here is how the situation in Egypt at the time of Heraclius's death was described by first-hand witness, John of Nikiu, a monophysite bishop who bore hostility toward the aggressive Chalcedonianism of Heraclius and his allies:

The Chronicle of John,
Bishop of Nikiu.

And 'Amr left lower Egypt and proceeded to war against Rīf. He sent a few Moslems against the city of Antinoe. And when the Moslem saw the weakness of the Romans and the hostility of the people to the emperor Heraclius because of the persecution wherewith he had visited all the land of Egypt in regard to the orthodox faith, at the instigation of Cyrus the Chalcedonian patriarch, they became bolder and stronger in the war.

And the inhabitants of the city (Antinoe) sought to concert measures with John their prefect with a view to attacking the Moslem; but he refused, and arose with haste with his troops and, having collected all the imposts of the city, betook himself to Alexandria; for he knew that he could not resist the Moslem, and (he feared) lest he should meet with the same fate as the garrison of Fajūm. Indeed, all the inhabitants of the province submitted to the Moslem, and paid them tribute. And they put to the sword all the Roman soldiers whom they encountered. And the Roman soldiers were in a fortress, and the Moslem besieged them, and captured their catapults, and demolished their towers, and dislodged them from the fortress. And they strengthened the fortress of Babylon, and they captured the city of Nakius and made themselves strong there. (Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu, Chapter CXV:9-12)

On February 11, AD 641, Heraclius died. John of Nikiu provides a notice of this event, along with a rather superstitious explanation:

And Heraclius was grieved by the death of John the chief of the local levies, and of John the general who had been slain by the Moslem, as well as by the defeat of the Romans that were in the province of Egypt. And in accordance with the decree of God who takes away the souls of rulers, and of men of war as well as of kings, Heraclius fell ill with fever, and died in the thirty-first year of his reign in the month Yakātīt of the Egyptians, that is, February of the Roman months, in the fourteenth year of the lunar cycle, the 357th year of Diocletian. And some said: 'The death of Heraclius is due to his stamping the gold coinage with the figures of the three emperors—that is, his own and of his two sons on the right hand and on the left—and so no room was found for inscribing the name of the Roman empire.' And after the death of Heraclius they obliterated those three figures. (Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu, Chapter CXVI:1-3)

An example of the gold solidus minted by Heraclius featuring the emperor
and his two sons as mentioned by John of Nikiu.

As the image above shows, not all of these coins were obliterated, apparently. Nevertheless, at the death of Heraclius, the Roman Empire finally passed from being a world power which dominated the Mediterranean, to a regional power scrambling to hold on to its remaining dominions against a new and vigorous set of enemies.