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Heraclius

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Historical figures

   Heraclius and his sons Constantine III and Heraklonas.
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   Heraclius and his sons Constantine III and Heraklonas.

   Heraclius or Herakleios or ( Latin: Flavius Heraclius Augustus; Greek:
   Ηράκλειος, Hērakleios), (c. 575 - February 11, 641) was Byzantine
   Emperor from October 5, 610 to February 11, 641.

Life

Origins

   Heraclius' family was of Armenian, though beyond that there is little
   specific information known about his ancestry. He was the son and
   namesake of Heraclius (generally referred to retrospectively as
   "Heraclius the Elder"), who had been a key general of Emperor Maurice's
   in the 590 war with Bahram Chobin, usurper of the Sassanid Empire.

   After the war, Maurice appointed Heraclius the Elder to the position of
   Exarch of Africa. Though the younger Heraclius' birthplace is unknown,
   he grew up in Roman Africa; according to one tradition, he engaged in
   gladiatorial combat with lions as a youth.

Revolt against Phocas and the accession of Heraclius

   In 608, the Heraclius the Elder renounced his loyalty to the Emperor
   Phocas, who had overthrown Maurice six years earlier. The rebels issued
   coins showing both Heraclii dressed as consuls, though neither of them
   explicitly claimed the imperial title at this time. The younger
   Heraclius' cousin Niketas launched an overland invasion of Egypt; by
   609, he had defeated Phocas's general Bonosus and secured the province.

   Meanwhile, the younger Heraclius sailed eastward with another force via
   Sicily and Cyprus. As he approached Constantinople, he made contact
   with leading aristocrats in the city, and soon arranged a ceremony
   where he was crowned and acclaimed as emperor. When he reached the
   capital, the Excubitors, an elite imperial guard unit led by Phocas's
   own son-in-law Priscus, deserted to Heraclius, and he entered the city
   without serious resistance. Heraclius personally executed Phocas.

   On October 5, 610, Heraclius was crowned for a second time, this time
   in the Chapel of St. Stephen within the Great Palace, and at the same
   time wed his betrothed, Fabia, who took the name Eudokia. She was
   beloved in Constantinople, and after she died in 612 he married his
   niece Martina in 623; this second marriage was considered incestuous
   and was very unpopular. In the reign of Heraclius' two sons, the
   divisive Martina was to become the centre of power and political
   intrigue.

War against Persia

   When Heraclius took power, the Empire was in a desperate situation.
   Phocas's initial revolt had stripped the Danube frontier of troops,
   leaving the most of the Balkans at the mercy of the Avars. Chosroes II
   of the Sassanid Empire had been restored to his throne by Maurice and
   they had remained allies. He had used the death of his ally Maurice as
   an excuse to launch a war against the Byzantines. Chosroes had at his
   court a man who claimed to be Maurice's son Theodosius, and Chosroes
   demanded that the Byzantines accept him as Emperor. The Persians had
   slowly gained the upper hand in Mesopotamia over the course of Phocas'
   reign; when Heraclius' revolt resulted in civil war, the Persians took
   advantage of the internal conflict to advance deep into Syria.

   Heraclius offered peace terms to the Persians upon his accession, but
   Khosrau refused to treat with him, viewing him as just another usurper
   of the throne of Theodosius I. Heraclius' initial military moves
   against the Persians ended disastrously, and the Persians rapidly
   advanced westward. They took Damascus in 613, and with the help of the
   Jews they took Jerusalem in 614 (damaging the Church of the Holy
   Sepulchre and capturing the Holy Cross in the process), and Egypt in
   616. They made raids deep into Anatolia as far as Chalcedon, a town
   lying almost opposite of Constantinople across the Bosphorus. At night,
   it was said, the people of Constantinople would see Persian watch-fires
   and their reflection on the water. The Persians were also in
   communication with the Avars.

   The situation was so grave that Heraclius reportedly considered moving
   the capital from Constantinople to Carthage, but was dissuaded by
   Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople. He remained in the East and
   worked on reorganizing the Byzantine military. He developed the idea of
   granting land to individuals in return for hereditary military service.
   The land so granted was organised into themata, a Greek word to
   describe a division of troops within a large district under military
   administration, each theme being placed under the command of a
   strategos or military governor.

   This arrangement ensured the continuance of the Empire for hundreds of
   years and enabled Heraclius to reconquer lands taken by the Persians,
   ravaging Persia along the way. According to the trend in more recent
   scholarship, the theme system was actually developed by Heraclius'
   successors, most notably his grandson Constans II. However, the
   blueprint for it was provided by the exarchates set up by Maurice at
   Carthage and Ravenna.

   Once he had rebuilt the army, Heraclius took the field himself in 621,
   the first emperor to campaign against a foreign enemy in person since
   Theodosius I. Confident that Constantinople was well defended, and
   unwilling to engage in a war of attrition over the lost eastern
   provinces, he marched across Asia Minor and invaded Persia itself. He
   would stay on campaign for several years.

   In 626, Constantinople itself was besieged by the Avars; but Persian
   attempts to cross the Bosporus and aid the Avars were repulsed by the
   Byzantine navy, and the Avars withdrew. Meanwhile, Heraclius acquired
   the assistance of the Khazars and other Turkic troops. Heraclius also
   exploited divisions within the Persian Empire, keeping the great
   Persian general Shahrbaraz neutral by convincing him that Chosroes had
   grown jealous of him and ordered his execution.

   At the Battle of Nineveh in 627, the Roman forces (without the Khazars
   who left Heraclius) defeated the Persians under Rhahzadh. When Chosroes
   still refused to make peace, Heraclius continued his campaign; as he
   approached the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, the Persian aristocracy
   deposed Chosroes. His successor Kavadh II made peace with Heraclius by
   restoring all the empire's former territories. The Persian Sassanid
   dynasty never recovered from this war; it took years for a strong king
   to emerge from a series of coups, and soon the Arab Caliphate
   overwhelmed the sinking state.

   Heraclius took for himself the ancient Persian title of " King of
   Kings", virtually dropping the traditional Roman imperial title of
   "Augustus". Later on, starting in 629, he styled himself simply as
   Basileus, the standard Greek word for "monarch", and that title was
   used by the eastern Roman emperors for the next 800 years. Heraclius
   also Hellenised the Empire by largely discontinuing the use of Latin as
   its official language, replacing it with Greek. The empire continued to
   call itself Roman throughout the rest of its history, but in the
   eastern empire the term also increasingly came to be used as a Greek
   self-descriptive.

   In 630, he reached the height of his power, marching barefoot as a
   pious Christian pilgrim into Jerusalem and restoring the True Cross to
   the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

War against the Arabs

   Prophet Muhammad had recently succeeded in unifying all the nomadic
   tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs, who had been too divided in
   the past to pose a military threat, now comprised one of the most
   powerful states in the region, and were animated by their new
   conversion to the religion of Islam.

   Heraclius fell ill soon after his triumph over the Persians and never
   took the field again. When the Arab Muslims attacked Syria and
   Palestine in 634, he was unable to oppose them personally, and his
   generals failed him. The Battle of Yarmuk in 636 resulted in a crushing
   defeat for the larger Roman army and within three years, Syria and
   Palestine were lost again. By the time of Heraclius' death, most of
   Egypt had fallen as well.

Legacy

   Although his defeat of the Persians produced no lasting benefit to the
   empire, Heraclius still ranks among the greatest of the Byzantine
   emperors. His reforms of the government reduced the corruption which
   had taken hold in the disastrous reign of Phocas, and he reorganized
   the military with great success. Ultimately, the reformed imperial army
   halted the Muslims in Asia Minor and held on to Carthage for another 60
   years, saving a core from which the empire's strength could be rebuilt.

   The recovery of the eastern areas of the Byzantine Empire from the
   Persians once again raised the problem of religious unity centering
   around the understanding of the true nature of Jesus Christ. Most of
   the inhabitants of these provinces were Monophysites who rejected the
   Council of Chalcedon. Heraclius tried to promote a compromise doctrine
   called Monothelitism; however, this philosophy was rejected as
   heretical by both sides of the dispute. For this reason, Heraclius was
   viewed as a heretic and bad ruler by some later religious writers.
   After the Monophysite provinces were finally lost to the Muslims,
   Monotheletism rather lost its raison d'être and was eventually
   abandoned.

Family

   Heraclius and Fabia Eudokia had two children:
     * Epiphania, Augusta
     * Heraclius Constantine (Constantine III), Emperor 613– 641

   With his second wife Martina, the Emperor had at least ten children,
   though the names and order of these children are questions for debate:
     * Fabius, had a paralysed neck
     * Theodosios, was a deaf-mute, married Nike, daughter of Persian
       general Shahrbaraz
     * Constantine
     * Constantine Heraclius (Heraklonas), Emperor 638– 641
     * David (Tiberios), proclaimed Caesar in 638
     * Martinos or Marinos
     * Augoustina, Augusta
     * Anastasia and/or Martina, Augusta
     * Febronia

   Of these at least two were handicapped, which was seen as punishment
   for the illegality of the marriage.

   He also had at least one illegitimate son, Atalarichos, who conspired a
   plot against Heraclius with his cousin the magister Theodorus and an
   Armenian noble David Saharuni. He was mutilated and exiled to Prinkipo
   of the Princes' Islands in 637.

   During the last years of Heraclius' life, it became evident that a
   struggle was taking place between Heraclius Constantine and Martina who
   was trying to position her son Heraklonas in line for the throne. When
   Heraclius died, in his will he left the empire to both Heraclius
   Constantine and Heraklonas to rule jointly with Martina as Empress and
   mother of both.

Note

    1. ^ Theophylact Simocatta, 109-110

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