Information about Heraclius

For the Patriarch of Jerusalem, see .

Heraclius
Byzantine Emperor

Heraclius and his sons Constantine III and Heraklonas
Reign	October 5, 610 – February 11, 641
Coronation	October 5, 610
Full name	Flavius Heraclius Augustus
Born	c. 575
Died	February 11, 641
Predecessor	Phocas
Successor	Constantine III Heraklonas
Consort	Eudokia Martina
Issue	Constantine III Heraklonas
Dynasty	Heraclian Dynasty
Father	Heraclius the Elder

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

Origins

Heraclius' family was of Armenian descent^[1], 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 AD 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 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' 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' 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 married Fabia, who took the name Eudokia. After her death in 612, he married his niece Martina in 613; this second marriage was considered incestuous and was very unpopular.

In the reign of Heraclius' two sons, the divisive Martina was to become the center of power and political intrigue. Despite widespread hatred for Martina in Constantinople, Heraclius took her on campaigns with him and refused attempts by Patriarch Sergius to prevent and later dissolve the marriage.^[2]

Sassanid King Khosrau II submitting to Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, from a plaque on a 12th century French cross

War against Persia

When Heraclius took power the Empire was in a desperate situation. Phocas' initial revolt had stripped the Danube frontier of troops, leaving most of the Balkans at the mercy of the Avars.

Khosrau 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 Romans. Chosroes had at his court a man who claimed to be Maurice's son Theodosius, and Chosroes demanded that the Romans 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 Chosroes refused to treat with him, viewing him as an usurper of Theodosius' throne. Heraclius' initial military moves against the Persians ended disastrously, and the Persians rapidly advanced westward.

In 613, the Persian army took Damascus and with the help of the Jews (who over the course of the previous century had become increasingly marginalized and oppressed) took Jerusalem in 614, damaging the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and capturing the Holy Cross and Egypt in the process.

They made raids deep into Anatolia as far as Chalcedon, a town lying almost opposite of Constantinople across the Bosphorus. 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 Roman 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; he was 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 Roman navy. The Avars, now busy fighting Croats who recently arrived in Dalmatia, withdrew.

Meanwhile, Heraclius acquired the assistance of the Western Turkic Khaganate and its leader, Ziebel, who invaded Persian Transcaucasia. Heraclius also exploited divisions within the Persian Empire, keeping the Persian general Shahrbaraz neutral by convincing him that Chosroes had grown jealous of him and ordered his execution.

Roman forces (without the Khazars, who left Heraclius) defeated the Persians under Rhahzadh at the Battle of Nineveh in 627. Heraclius personally defeated and killed Rhahzadh in the battle.

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 Muslim 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 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 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

Main article: Byzantine-Arab Wars

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 Islam. Heraclius fell ill soon after his triumph over the Persians and never took the field again. When the Muslim Arabs attacked Syria and Palestine 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 the territorial gains he made from his defeat of the Persians produced were lost from the advance of the Muslims, Heraclius still ranks among the great Roman emperors. His reforms of the government reduced the corruption which had taken hold in Phocas' reign, 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 Roman Empire from the Persians once again raised the problem of religious unity centering around the understanding of the true nature of 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'Ãªtre and was eventually abandoned.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Heraclius was changing the official language of the East Roman Empire from Latin to Greek in circa 620 AD^[3], thus strengthening the process of Hellenization in what was to become known in the West later on as the Byzantine Empire, which had a distinctively Greek culture. For this reason, some historians tend to start the "Byzantine" Empire with the reign of Heraclius, defining the period before him as "Late Roman".

The Swahili "Utendi wa Tambuka", an epic poem composed in 1728 at Pate Island (off the shore of present-day Kenya) and depicting the wars between the Muslims and Byzantines from the former's point of view, is also known as Kyuo kya Hereḳali ("The book of Heraclius"). This reflects the considerable impression which this Emperor made on his Muslim foes, being still prominently remembered by Muslims more than a millenium after his death and at a considerable geographical and cultural distance.

Family

Heraclius and Fabia Eudokia had two children:

Eudoxia Epiphania, Augusta
Heraclius Constantine (Constantine III), Emperor in 641

With his second wife, Martina, the Emperor had at least 10 children, though the names and order of these children are questions for debate:

Fabius, who had a paralyzed neck
Theodosios, who 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 the Armenian noble David Saharuni. He was mutilated and exiled to Prinkipo, one 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.

Note

1. ^ Theophylact Simocatta, 109-110
2. ^ Kaegli, Walter. Heraclis: Emperor of Byzantium.
3. ^ Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. ISBN 978-0-19-820171-7

Sources

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Charles, R. H. The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu: Translated from Zotenberg's Ethiopic Text, 1916. Reprinted 2007. Evolution Publishing, ISBN 978-1-889758-87-9. http://www.evolpub.com/CRE/CREseries.html#CRE4
W. Kaegi, Heraclius Emperor of Byzantium, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
(primary source) C. Mango & R. Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, Oxford University Press, 1997.
(primary source) C. Mango (trans.), Nikephoros Patriarch of Constantinople. Short History, Dumbarton Oacks Texts 10, 1990.

External links

Heraclius Heraclian Dynasty Born: c. 575 Died: 11 February 641
Preceded by Phocas	Byzantine Emperor 610–641 with Constantine III from 613	Succeeded by Constantine III and Heraklonas
Preceded by Imp. Caesar Flavius Phocas Augustus, 603, then lapsed	Consul of the Roman Empire 608 with Heraclius the Elder	Succeeded by Lapsed, then Imp. Caesar Constantinus Augustus in 642

• • [ e]

Roman Emperors

Principate
27 BC - 235 AD

Augustus Tiberius Caligula Claudius I Nero Galba Otho Vitellius Vespasian Titus Domitian Nerva Trajan Hadrian Antoninus Pius Marcus Aurelius Lucius Verus Commodus Pertinax Didius Julianus Septimius Severus Caracalla Geta Macrinus Elagabalus Alexander Severus

Crisis
235 AD - 284 AD

Maximinus I Thrax Gordian I and Gordian II Pupienus and Balbinus Gordian III Philip the Arab Decius Herennius Etruscus Trebonianus Gallus Hostilian Volusianus Aemilianus Valerian Gallienus Claudius II Quintillus Aurelian Tacitus Florianus Probus Carus Carinus Numerian

Dominate
284 AD - 1453 AD

284 AD - 395 AD
Diocletian Maximian Constantius I Galerius Severus II Maxentius Maximinus II Daia Licinius Valerius Valens Martinianus Constantine I Constantine II Constans I Constantius II Magnentius Vetranio Julian the Apostate Jovian Valentinian I Valens Gratian Valentinian II Magnus Maximus Eugenius Theodosius I
Western Empire (395 AD - 480 AD)
Honorius Constantius III Joannes Valentinian III Petronius Maximus Avitus Majorian Libius Severus Anthemius Olybrius Glycerius Julius Nepos Romulus Augustus
Eastern Empire (395 AD - 480 AD)
Arcadius Theodosius II Pulcheria Marcian Leo I Leo II Zeno
Byzantine Empire (480 AD - 1453 AD)
Zeno Basiliscus Anastasius I Justin I Justinian I Justin II Tiberius II Constantine Maurice Phocas Heraclius Constantine III Heraklonas Constans II Mezezius Constantine IV and Justinian II Leontios Tiberios III Philippikos Anastasios II Theodosios III Leo III the Isaurian Constantine V Artabasdos Leo IV the Khazar Constantine VI Irene Nikephoros I Staurakios Michael I Rangabe Leo V the Armenian Michael II Theophilos Theodora I Michael III Basil I Leo VI the Wise Alexander Constantine VII Romanos I Romanos II Nikephoros II John I Tzimiskes Basil II Constantine VIII Zoe Romanos III Michael IV Michael V Constantine IX Theodora II Michael VI Isaac I Constantine X Michael VII Romanos IV Nikephoros III Alexios I John II Manuel I Alexios II Andronikos I Isaac II Alexios III Angelos Alexios IV Nikolaos Kanabos Alexios V Constantine Laskaris Theodore I John III Theodore II John IV Michael VIII Andronikos II Andronikos III John V John VI Matthew Andronikos IV John VII Andronikos V Manuel II John VIII Constantine XI

Constantine III
Byzantine Emperor

Roman coin depicting, on its face, Constantine with his father Heraclius and brother Heraklonas
Reign February, 641 – May, 641
Full name Heraclius Novus Constantinus
Died May 641

..... Click the link for more information.

Heraklonas
Byzantine Emperor

Heraklonas with his father, Heraclius and brother, Constantine III
Reign February, 641 – September, 641
Full name Constantine Herakleios
Died 641
Predecessor Constantine III

..... Click the link for more information.

October 5 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

..... Click the link for more information.

year 610.

6th century · 7th century · 8th century
580s 590s 600s 610s 620s 630s 640s
607 608 609 610 611 612 613
..... Click the link for more information.

February 11 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

660 BC - Traditional founding date of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

..... Click the link for more information.

7th century · 8th century
610s 620s 630s 640s 650s 660s 670s
638 639 640 641 642 643 644
..... Click the link for more information.

October 5 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

..... Click the link for more information.

year 610.

6th century · 7th century · 8th century
580s 590s 600s 610s 620s 630s 640s
607 608 609 610 611 612 613
..... Click the link for more information.

Phocas
Byzantine Emperor

Phocas wearing consular robes
Reign 602 – 610
Full name Flavius Phocas Augustus
Died 610
Constantinople
Predecessor Maurice
Successor Heraclius
Consort Leontia
..... Click the link for more information.

Fabia Eudokia (sometimes written Eudocia) was a Byzantine Empress (610-612). Born as Fabia, she married Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor, on 5 October, 610, the same day he was crowned Emperor. She took the name Eudokia at this point.
..... Click the link for more information.

For the name, see .

Martina was a Byzantine Empress, wife and niece of Heraclius. She was a daughter of his sister Maria and a certain Martinus.
..... Click the link for more information.

Heraclius the Elder (Latin: Heraclius, Greek: Ηράκλειος) - Exarch of Africa, the father of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius.
..... Click the link for more information.

Latin}}}
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
..... Click the link for more information.

Augustus (plural augusti), Latin for "majestic," "the increaser," or "venerable", was an Ancient Roman title, which was first held by Caesar Augustus and subsequently came to be considered one of the titles of what we now call the Roman Emperors.
..... Click the link for more information.

Greek}}}
Writing system: Greek alphabet
Official status
Official language of: Greece
Cyprus
European Union
recognised as minority language in parts of:
European Union
Italy
Turkey
Regulated by:
..... Click the link for more information.

February 11 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

660 BC - Traditional founding date of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

..... Click the link for more information.

7th century · 8th century
610s 620s 630s 640s 650s 660s 670s
638 639 640 641 642 643 644
..... Click the link for more information.

Roman Emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period (from about 27 BC onwards). The Romans had no single term for the office: Latin titles such as imperator (from which English Emperor derives), augustus, caesar and
..... Click the link for more information.

October 5 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

..... Click the link for more information.

year 610.

6th century · 7th century · 8th century
580s 590s 600s 610s 620s 630s 640s
607 608 609 610 611 612 613
..... Click the link for more information.

February 11 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

660 BC - Traditional founding date of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

..... Click the link for more information.

7th century · 8th century
610s 620s 630s 640s 650s 660s 670s
638 639 640 641 642 643 644
..... Click the link for more information.

8 to 10 million^[1]
Regions with significant populations
Armenia
Russia
United States
..... Click the link for more information.

Heraclius the Elder (Latin: Heraclius, Greek: Ηράκλειος) - Exarch of Africa, the father of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius.
..... Click the link for more information.

Maurice
Byzantine Emperor

solidus of Maurice's reign
Reign August 13, 582 – November 27, 602
Full name Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus
Born 539
Arabissus, Cappadocia
Died November 27, 602
..... Click the link for more information.

6th century · 7th century
560s 570s 580s 590s 600s 610s 620s
587 588 589 590 591 592 593
..... Click the link for more information.

Heraclius

Origins

Revolt against Phocas and the accession of Heraclius

War against Persia

War against the Arabs

Legacy

Family

Note

Sources

See also

External links

Events

Events

Events

Events

Events

Events