On his death bed, Tiberius who had no sons proclaimed Maurice Augustus. When Tiberius died in August or October 582, Maurice succeeded as the sole emperor. He was the first emperor to speak Greek at native level since Anastasius. He married Tiberius' daughter Constantina. He hired the Frankish king Childebert II to attack the Lombards, and with Frankish assistance the Romans halted the Lombard expansion in Italy. The Avars and Slavs made devastating raids as far as Marcianopolis and Thessaloniki, but both towns resisted their attack. In 590 a rebellious Persian general Bahram Chobin murdered Hormizd IV and forced his heir Khosrow II to seek asylum with the Romans. Khosrow approached Maurice for assistance and Maurice appointed the general Narses to invade the Sassanian Empire. The Romans and Khosrow's supporters routed Bahram in the Battle of the Blarathon. After regaining his throne, Khosrow ceded Armenia and eastern Mesopotamia, including Dara, to the Romans. The peace allowed Maurice to relocate his troops to the Balkans and they launched a series of invasions against Slavic and Avar territory after 593. When a famine caused a riot in Constantinople in 602, Maurice ordered a Roman army to winter in Slavic territory living off the land over the Danube, but the troops mutinied and proclaimed the centurion Phocas emperor. Phocas led his partisans to Constantinople and a riot forced Maurice to flee the city. After Phocas secured the support of the Greens and the Senate, Patriarch Cyriacus II of Constantinople crowned him emperor on 23 November. Four days later, Maurice and his sons were captured and executed.