ABSTRACT
In 610 Herakleios, exarch of Carthage, sent a fleet under his son, also called Herakleios, against the tyrant Phokas, who had murdered Maurice and been put into power by a mutiny of the army, and whose misgovernment had lost him support in all areas except that of the Blue faction. Herakleios was acclaimed emperor on his arrival and Phokas executed.! Herakleios's fiancee, Fabia or Eudokia, was already in the city, and according to Theophanes they were married on the very day of Herakleios's coronation, 5 October 610, two days later. Herakleios's reign was to be a mixture of triumphal success and catastrophic defeat for the empire. His early years were marked by expeditions attempting to control the great military successes of the Persians. Following Justin II's death in 578, Tiberios and Maurice had prosecuted the Persian war, which Justin's policy of refusing to pay the usual tribute had recommenced, and Maurice had brought the war to at least a temporarily successful outcome. However, Persian power now revived, with a major offensive resulting in the capture of Damascus and Tarsos in 613, and Jerusalem and the True Cross in 614. In 615 the Persian army reached the Bosporos, while Egypt came under attack in 619. From 622 to 628 Herakleios was to be preoccupied in campaigns with the Persians, ultimately with great success, winning back Armenia, Roman Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Unfortunately, in one of the more ironical of history's blows, these territories were to be irretrievably lost to the Arabs from 633 onwards. 2 Furthermore, the empire which remained continued to be rent by ecclesiastical dissension. In an attempt to resolve the schism between orthodox and monophysites which split the empire, Herakleios had proposed the monothelete solution: that Christ had two natures but one will (thelema).3 With the patriarch Sergios's help, this was promulgated through the 'Ekthesis (statement) of the Orthodox faith', published probably in late 638 and posted by Sergios in the narthex of St Sophia. In a vain attempt to head off ecclesiastical debate, the ekthesis forbade discussion both of Christ's will and of the single or dual natures of Christ.4 Monotheletism was to be unsuccessful in uniting the church: the chalcedonians, like the West, reacted strongly against this edict, while it failed to convert a single monophysite.
