Phocas
Phokas ( Middle Greek Φωκάς Fokas , Latin Focas or Phocas ; * after 547 in Thrace ; † October 5, 610 in Constantinople ) was emperor of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empire from 602 to 610 . The first successful usurper in Byzantine history is traditionally considered a despotic ruler whose government is said to have shaken the Eastern Roman Empire.
Sources
The extremely negative image of Phocas, which is drawn by the sources (see, for example, John of Antioch , Theophylactus Simokates or Theophanes ) and which also dominates research opinion in many cases to this day, should be viewed with a certain caution: All of these reports date from that time after the death of the emperor and arose partly (like Theophylactus) under the rule of Herakleios , who had overthrown Phocas in 610 and of course had an interest in putting him in the worst possible light. Some older views on Phocas are therefore now considered refuted, such as the assumption that Roman rule in the Balkans collapsed suddenly during his reign.
Life
Coming to power
Phocas was a centurion in the imperial army and participant in Maurikios ' Balkan campaigns when Emperor Maurikios gave the order in winter 602 to winter in what is now Wallachia on the banks of the Danube and to undertake a new offensive despite or precisely because of the unfavorable weather. The soldiers of the army of the magister militum per Thracias mutinied and appointed Phokas, who allegedly had tirelessly incited them to rebellion against the emperor, as their leader. The army turned against Constantinople . In the capital, the circus party of the Greens rose up against the apparently unpopular (albeit militarily quite successful) Maurikios. The emperor fled to an island off Chalcedon , while Phokas, according to the Chronicon Paschale , was crowned by his troops at the gates of the capital on November 23, 602 and then, with the support of parts of the Senate and the Greens who opened the gates for him, on November 25 , 602 November 602 entered Constantinople. According to Theophanes , Phocas also had his wife Leontia , with whom he was married before the revolt, crowned Augusta on November 27, 602 . According to Theophylaktos Simokates , new conflicts soon arose between the two circus parties. When the blues finally doubted the legitimacy of the new emperor and pointed out that the overthrown emperor Maurikios was still alive, Phokas had Maurikios and his sons seized and killed in an extremely brutal manner.
Domination
The sources paint a gloomy picture, which is characterized by the tyrant topic: Phocas, an uneducated man who allegedly indulged in drinking parties and shamefulness of all kinds in the sacrum palatium , was therefore one of those Roman emperors who lacked any suitability for the throne. Within a short time he, who apparently had little idea of the duties of an emperor or of constitutional and canonical matters and also did not make an effort to do justice to them, had lost all sense of reality and believed that he had been chosen by God. As he saw himself threatened by conspiracies, Phokas had large parts of the senatorial elite executed and in this way inflicted irreparable damage to the Eastern Roman and Byzantine empires.
He is also said to have acted as a tyrant to the people: when, during a performance in the hippodrome, the emperor did not return to his box quickly enough after the performance break, the spectators began to shout in a disrespectful manner: “Are you like that again drunk a lot that you see twice? You have already gone mad! ” Thereupon Augustus allegedly sent his bodyguard against the people, and heads, noses and ears were cut off.
The anti-Phokas tradition describes the emperor as a kind of "picture book tyrant" and is therefore only partially credible. However, even those researchers who are critical of many sources that portray the emperor in a very negative way admit that the Phocas regime was evidently not free of horror, at least towards the end, and that the emperor did indeed lead a dissolute life, even if the later one Tradition has distorted and exaggerated a lot. The murder of Maurikios and his family shows that Phocas did not shrink from excesses of violence. He broke an old taboo and had numerous senators executed, which completely de-legitimized his rule in the eyes of many aristocrats. Even the Greens , the circus party that helped Phocas to the throne, allegedly fell victim to terrorism when Phokas suspected them of conspiring against him after helping the emperor to decimate the other circus party, the blues . Phocas now apparently tried to increase his room for maneuver by playing off the circus parties against each other; he turned away from the all too powerful Greens and allied himself with the Blue . Praefectus urbi of Constantinople now became the leader (demarchos) of the blues, with which the greens became bitter enemies of the emperor and plunged the empire into a civil war that was waged in numerous cities, over which Phocas soon lost all control. The appointment of the demarch as praefectus urbi also offended the aristocracy even more, because this office was actually reserved for the highest circles in the Senate.
If Ostrom did not collapse under this chaos in these years, it was probably only because the empire was still supported by a functioning late Roman administration. Only the exarchates of Ravenna and Carthage were spared from civil war . Presumably this had completely different reasons: In Ravenna the exarch Kallinikos was replaced by the second term of office of the Smaragdus after the usurpation of Phocas . Probably Smaragdus had sided with Phocas, while Kallinikos was in opposition to him. In Carthage, on the other hand, Herakleios the Elder , who was also appointed by Maurikios, was able to hold on, as Phocas probably did not have sufficient power to regulate things in his favor there, as he was fully occupied by the Persian War (see below). In any case, the occupation of Egypt by Herakleios' nephew Niketas in 608 shows that Carthage was in opposition to Phocas from an early stage, and that it was probably even during his reign. From there, the end of Phocas's rule was finally heralded.
Rebellion in the empire, invasion of the Persians
Soon after Maurikios' death, a rebellion broke out in the east. Armenia was also a source of unrest , where the general Narses had taken the lead and taken Edessa . Phocas sent the general Bonosus to Syria , which had also revolted; Bonosus, however, was able to bloodily suppress the rebellion in Antioch and Jerusalem .
When Chosrau II , the great king of Persia , heard of the change of the throne, he declared war on Phocas in order - as he said - to free the Romans from the usurper. Under this pretext he horrified Edessa, which was already besieged by the imperial army, and allied himself with Narses. Chosrau II presented Theodosios , an alleged son of Maurikios, as a candidate for the throne. But soon the supposedly friendly supporter of Chosraus, who had come to the throne in 591 with the energetic help of his adoptive father Maurikios, turned into a war of conquest. Northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and parts of Eastern Asia Minor fell into Chosrau's hands, even if the Roman troops under Domentiolus and Komentiolus were in some cases quite successful in resisting (see also Roman-Persian Wars ).
Under Phocas' rule the campaigns against the Avars and Slavs, who had protected the Roman Balkan provinces, could not be continued for long. Nevertheless, Roman rule in the Balkans did not collapse during his reign. Rather, the calm before the storm may have been the most peaceful time in a long time. However, his inaction was the cause of the Slavs' land grabbing in the Balkans from 612, two years after his fall.
Pope and Emperor
According to the sources, Phocas realized soon after he came to power that, given his precarious position in the midst of the chaos, he had little choice of allies and was not allowed to make the bishop of Rome an enemy. In contrast to the policy of his predecessor, who waged war against the Lombards in Italy and, in this, as in other respects, had shown little consideration for the Pope, he took an almost unconditionally Pope-friendly course. This meant an armistice with the Lombards and thus the ultimate loss of large parts of Italy for the empire, with the exception of the Exarchate of Ravenna , which was able to hold out until 751.
However, this step can also be assessed differently: The emperor probably had no alternative anyway, because compared to the Eastern provinces threatened by the Sassanids , the bled-out Italy was almost worthless and far away. The inhabitants of Italy had suffered cruelly under Maurikios under the eternal battles, now Pope Gregory I congratulated the peacemaker with a Gloria in excelsis Deo on his "victory" over Maurikios, although he must have known how Phocas had won the throne. The Pope, whose situation had become more and more difficult due to the Lombards oppressing him from all sides, weighed this slightly against the sorely needed peace in Italy. However, it turned out that the two-year truce that was signed in 603 did not last longer than the period for which it was concluded. The Longobard Agilulf seized further parts of the Italian peninsula from the year 605. Phocas was glad to hold Ravenna after all, and did not particularly oppose Agilulf's advance. In the year 610, when the emperor fell, it was finally too late to set limits to the Lombard power - but whether there would really have been a realistic chance of this under Phocas is doubtful.
Phocas gave the Pantheon in Rome to Pope Boniface IV in 608 , who consecrated it as a church in 609. Phocas is generally credited by posterity for the fact that the building was preserved thanks to this donation.
After Phocas had passed a law in 607 by which he took the dignity of the Ecumenical Patriarch from the Patriarch of Constantinople, transferred it to the Pope and thus recognized the rights of Rome to the primacy of the entire Church, the Phocas Column in 608 became the last ancient one Building erected on the Roman Forum , "in memory of the countless benefits of the emperor because he restored peace to Italy and defended freedom". It originally carried a golden statue of the emperor and can still be seen today. Due to the imperial law, the antagonisms between the Patriarch of Constantinople and Rome became increasingly apparent on the canonical level, and the relationship between the two church princes slowly moved through the centuries towards the schism of 1054. In any case, however, the emperor's church policy, which was friendly to Rome, contributed to the fact that his image was portrayed very negatively in the tradition of the Eastern Church.
Subversion and death of Phocas
The opposition in Constantinople managed to come to an agreement on a conspiracy with Herakleios the Elder , the exarch of Carthage and father of the later emperor of the same name, despite the veritable “police state” that Phocas is said to have set up for his protection . Apparently some powerful provincial governors also played a role, as did his son-in-law Priskos . In 608 the revolt began in Carthage.
Herakleios' nephew the Elder, Niketas, conquered Alexandria in fierce battles in 609 . When the rebels had militarily secured the rich eastern Roman provinces of Africa and Egypt, the exarch's son, the younger Herakleios , finally left Carthage in 610 with the fleet against Constantinople. He did not claim the title Augustus , but called himself consul . As soon as the masts of the fleet became visible on the Sea of Marmara, a revolt is said to have broken out in Constantinople; However, there are some indications that Herakleios actually stayed in the Sea of Marmara for a long time while his followers in the city organized the overthrow. Fighting began in early October 610. The comes Orientis Bonosus, loyal to Phocas , was slain by Excubitores (who defected to Herakleios). Two days later, the Patricius Probus and the Curopalatus Photius changed sides and arrested Phocas in the palace. According to some reports, Phocas was now being dragged onto the admiral's ship in front of Herakleios. When he saw Phocas trembling for his life, he allegedly asked him: “You ruled the empire?” Phocas is said to have answered him with a counter-question: “Will you do better?” According to reports, Phocas was beheaded and then mutilated and been put on display. According to other sources, however, Phocas had already been murdered when Herakleios arrived in Constantinople, so the exchange between the two is probably just fabricated. The sources agree, however, that Phokas' head was paraded through the city on a lance, as was the custom for overthrown emperors.
Even the tradition friendly to Herakleios can hardly hide the fact that the crisis of the empire only broke out fully under Herakleius, from whom the Sassanids wrested Syria and Egypt, before he could then slowly and with difficulty improve the situation: East was at the latest since the death of Maurikios in a crisis, it only broke out with full severity in 611. And whether Herakleios was really a selfless liberator of the people, regardless of his later achievements, may be doubted, especially since it took him two full years to overthrow Phocas in an outright civil war; this obviously had numerous supporters who resisted for a long time.
To what extent such a new reconstruction applies (as provided by Ralph-Johannes Lilie , for example ), however, still needs further discussion, especially since Armenia was already lost under Phocas and Herakleios was initially bound with fights against troops loyal to Phocas, but afterwards (from 613) on went on the offensive. But it is certain, as described, that the late antique and middle Byzantine reports about Phocas are strongly influenced by tyrannical topics , which makes it very difficult to appreciate the emperor's rule. However, a really positive assessment of Phocas would probably lead too far - the empire fell too clearly into crisis during its reign, with the Persian War having the worst consequences. Politically, financially and militarily, the rule of Phocas was a time of crisis in Eastern Europe.
Historical effects of Phocas
In any case, Phocas' rule represents a very clear turning point in the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. During his rule, which fell in a time of upheaval, Byzantium apparently temporarily ceased to be a regulatory power. During this time, the willingness of the Germanic empires to recognize Eastern Rome as a supreme power and overlord seems to have waned. So Phocas worked less through deeds than through omission and drifting on the one hand, and through annihilation and destruction on the other, whereby the objective observer has to admit in many points that the difficult economic and military situation of the empire would have overwhelmed most of the other rulers. If you will, Phocas is - to put it in a nutshell - the last emperor of late antiquity , while his successor Herakleios ushered in the Byzantine early Middle Ages with his reforms, which also ensured the continued existence of the empire.
Traditionally (and not completely wrongly) the government's balance sheet is considered catastrophic: Phocas left Italy to the Lombards , gave the Slavs and Avars the decisive respite in the Balkans, and immediately before the start of Islamic expansion weakened the empire through the Persian attack he was attacking hardly stopped and which became the heaviest mortgage for his overcomer and successor. It is said that he sowed further discord between the Patriarch of Constantinople and that of Rome . However, here too the question arises whether all these allegations are really justified. One of the reasons for the problems was certainly the rejection of the emperor by the ruling elites, who never accepted him as their equal and avenged themselves through obstruction and sabotage.
In Constantinople itself, Phocas allegedly had almost the entire senatorial upper class on the conscience - despite the obvious exaggerations and distortions in the sources, there are many indications that the old functional elite did indeed find itself in a crisis during this period. The late ancient society of Eastern Era was weakened, Phokas' successors put the state on a new basis with the thematic constitution (even if these measures were not carried out by Herakleios, as often represented in older research). Phocas was also the last emperor to bear the Latin title of Imperator Augustus during his entire reign . His successor changed the title in the course of the reorganization of the empire to Basileus in order to do justice to the Greek character of the empire, although this was not linked to the legal successor of the ancient Roman emperors. It therefore seems only logical that the last building on the ancient Roman Forum was dedicated to Phocas : He was the last emperor who - even if only with little success - could still actively intervene in the fortunes of the West.
For today's archaeologists , too , it represents a turning point in a certain way. Since he apparently brought the beard back into fashion, since his time the images, not least of Christ, have been made with beards, which makes dating easier. While almost all emperors since Constantine I had been clean-shaven in the Roman style - with a few exceptions like Julian , who had a philosopher's beard , or Theodosius II , who was bearded on some coins - they carried them to Phocas (who supposedly made it grow to hide a scar) almost all have a beard.
literature
- Süha Konuk: A Tyrant on the Throne: Phocas the Usurper, and the Collapse of the Eastern Frontier. In: Trames 24, 2020, pp. 201–213.
- Wolfgang Kuhoff: Phocas. Un: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon 32, 2012, pp. 1011-1035.
- Ralph-Johannes Lilie : Byzantium. The second Rome. Siedler, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88680-693-6 , pp. 75–81 (Lily tries to reassess the emperor, although his theses require further discussion).
- Mischa Meier : Emperor Phokas (602–610) as a memory problem . In: Byzantinische Zeitschrift 107, 2014, pp. 139–174.
- John Robert Martindale: Phocas. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 3B, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-20160-8 , pp. 1030-1032 (brief overview with references to sources).
- Arnout de Vleeschouwer: The Foreign Policy of Phocas (602-610): A Neorealist Reassessment. In: Byzantion 89, 2019, pp. 415–462.
Web links
- Kevin H. Crow: Short biography (English) at De Imperatoribus Romanis (with references).
Remarks
- ^ David R. Sear, Byzantine Coins and Their Values, 1987, ISBN 978-0900652714 , number 671.
- ^ Theophanes Confessor AM 6101.
- ^ Henning Börm: Rulers and elites in late antiquity . In: Josef Wiesehöfer et al. (Ed.): Commutatio et contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and early Islamic Near East . Düsseldorf 2010, pp. 159–198.
- ↑ John of Antioch , frg. 218f. [ed. Müller].
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Maurikios |
Eastern Roman Emperor 602–610 |
Herakleios |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Phocas |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Phocas, Focas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Emperor of the Byzantine Empire (602–610) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | after 547 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Thrace |
| DATE OF DEATH | 610 |
| Place of death | Constantinople |