# The New International Encyclopædia/Heraclius

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​HERACLIUS, hĕr-ȧ-klī′ŭs (c.575–641). Byzantine Emperor from 610 to 641. He was a native of Cappadocia and belonged to a distinguished family, his father having been Exarch of Africa. In 610, when the tyranny of the Emperor Phocas had become unbearable, and the mother and bride to be of Heraclius himself were imprisoned, he equipped a fleet in Africa, and appeared before Constantinople. The citizens rose in rebellion, Phocas was beheaded, and Heraclius became Emperor in his stead. The condition of the Byzantine Empire at this time was deplorable. Years elapsed before Heraclius could put forth any vigorous efforts for its reorganization. In 619 the Avars plundered the country to the gates of Constantinople and carried off an immense number of captives. In the East, the conquests of the Persians threatened the very existence of the Empire. Jerusalem was stormed by the generals of Khosru in 615 and Egypt was overrun in the following year. The stopping of the export of corn from Egypt to Constantinople caused a severe famine in the capital. The Emperor, however, was meanwhile disciplining and ​equipping an army for the invasion of Persia, and in 622 be took the field. In the plain of Issus he routed a Persian army and forced his way through the passes of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus, into the ancient Pontus, where his soldiers wintered. In 624 he crossed Armenia, conquered several of the Perso-Caucasian countries, and reached the Caspian Sea. There he formed an alliance with the Khazars, and with their assistance attacked Media, and carried his arms as far south as Ispahan. Before going into winter quarters, he defeated the main body of the Persians, commanded by Khosru himself. In 625 Heraclius descended from the Caucasus into Mesopotamia, and thence proceeded into Cilicia, where he routed the Persians once more with immense slaughter. During the next two years (626–628) Heraclius carried the war into the heart of the Persian Empire, and in December, 627, cut to pieces the forces of Rhazates, the Persian general, near the junction of the Little Zab and the Tigris. An immense booty fell into the hands of the victors. Khosru fled into the interior of Persia, and was soon afterwards put to death by his son Siroes, who concluded a peace with Heraclius, by which the Persians gave up all their former conquests (628). Not the least of the trophies Heraclius brought back to Constantinople was the alleged wood of the true cross, which the Persians had carried off from Jerusalem in 615. The fame of Heraclius was now at its height, but the rise of the Mohammedan power in Arabia brought a new and terrible enemy against the old Empire, where religious dissensions still created bitter factions, whose strife weakened the State. Heraclius seems to have exhausted his splendid energies and ambition in the remarkable Persian campaigns, and now spent his time in his palace at Constantinople, partly in sensual pleasures, and partly in theological disputations. In his efforts to mediate between the orthodox party and the monophysites (q.v.) Heraclius sought to impose the monothelite doctrine on the Empire, arousing thereby great disturbances in the capital. (See Monothelitism.) Before the close of his life, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Egypt were in the hands of the caliphs. He died February 11, 641. Consult: Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene, vol. ii. (London, 1889); Finlay, History of Greece (London, 1877); Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury (London, 1896–1900); Drapeyron, L’empereur Heraclius et l’empire byzantin au VIIème siècle (Paris, 1809), with bibliographical notes. There is also a contemporary account by Sepeos, an Armenian bishop, that was published in Constantinople in 1850. See Byzantine Empire.