Phocas and Heraclius
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2024
- Late November 602 AD, the revolt of the armies of Illyricum against the emperor Maurice, had led to the violent taking power of Phocas, the first usurpation in more than a century. Already, the new monarch would face enemies abroad and inside the empire.
⏰ Timestamps
0:00 - Phocas in power
4:40 - Heraclian rebellion
7:50 - Heraclius' consolidation
11:07 - Disaster after disaster
15:34 - Conclusion
🤝 Support
You can support me and donate a Follis or more on Patreon :
/ ancientsight
🎵 Music
www.epidemicsound.com/
Deconstructing the Empire - Christian Andersen
Faith Collapsing - Reynard Seidel
Heroes on Horses - Wendel Scherer
Zero Hours - Reynard Seidel
Phantasm - Jo Wandrini
Happily Unknowing - Christian Andersen
Faith Collapsing - Reynard Seidel
Scourge of the Scarab - Deskant
📚 Main sources
- Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius Emperor of Byzantium: Cambridge; 2003
- Hugh Elton, The Roman Empire of Late Antiquity; 2016
- Morisson Cécile, Le Monde Byzantin I - L'empire rome d'Orient (330-641): puf; 2012
- Peter Heather, Rome Resurgent - War and Empire in the age of Justinian : Oxford
🌐 Internet sources
- Wikipedia fr eng, 2022
- The History of Byzantium Podcast thehistoryofbyzantium.com/
- Roman Emperors : www.roman-emperors.org/
- Byzantine Battles : byzantium.gr/battles.html
- Historical Map Animators, CZcams
my man goes raido silence for 2 months then posts a straight banger. respect
The maps are very accurate, congrats. Hope you continue past Heraclius.
Yes of course
@@ancientsight how's the painting from 9:26 called?
@@Michael_the_Drunkard
It is called "The Battle of Vercellae", details here :
fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Tiepolo_Vercellae.jpg
Only Rome could go another 800 years after an ordeal like that
You should say constantinopole instead of rome
@@user-pp2gg5tl2u no
@@user-pp2gg5tl2uRome is in the Empire at this time…so technically yes it’s Rome :)
@@iDeathMaximuMII no, if there were no constantionopole, there would be no roman, byzantine, eastern roman or anything you wanna call empire, many years before 1453, even in 610 and 626 attacks on the city weren't as much terrible as Iranians did on other cities and castles to see if conpole could resist or not, but in two arab campaigns the city showed its importance
"A heracliuan effort" Haha that's good and funny!
Fantastic work yet again! Consistently the best in relating the historic timeline with some (but not too much) flavor. So much of this history can only be found in books. Books are great, but it's nice to find this history related in a story telling way- which I think is how most of us first got interested in history -rather than just constantly analyzing trends, systems, and individual motivations.
Great video once again! Can’t wait for part 2, and I’m really excited for what comes after. Very few good channels have covered the period.
“Who’s that in the bay of Constantinople? It’s Heraclius with a steel chair!”
HERACLIUSSSSSS
What a badass name
in short: "After many (by than) traditional rounds of hitting itself in the groin, the ERE unlaced its trousers to let malign, foreign powers have a go"
honestly, as much as I love roman history it makes my stomach cramp to see them digging their own graves - EVERY TIME
Heraclius is my favorite emperor, and one of the most underrated Imo.
You just don't see him get the hype he deserves I feel, but he literally saved the Roman Empire fighting personally with his men. Basically a latter day Aurelian.
Man you're uber underrated
Please keep making videos. They're great !
Great video, your detailed maps really set you apart from many other History channels!
only a single doom stack can save this
you have great content. I just bingewatched like 5 of your videos, interesting commentary with great animation on all of them. Your production quality is the same as SandRhoman History and other large history channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. If you just get the proper exposure or youtube algorithm i am sure your channel will explode in size eventually.
I'm happy to see you back!
Been waiting a looong time for this! Great vid, keep it up!
Man I promise if Maurice wasent removed from the throne. Things could have been so much better
maybe. he may have fallen to internal issues. he was better at foreign policy than domestic
@@mazeclan5305If he didn't piss off his Army so much, maybe they would've protected him from his domestic issues
been waiting for this
The maps and animations are really good. I have definitely subscribed.
Phocas' rule was the first succesfull usurpation in eastern roman history. From Arcadius to Maurice, all rulers were part of a direct legitimate line stretching all the way back to Theodosius
Well, Basiliscus was able to usurp the throne from Zeno for about a year.
@@iexist3919 yeah Basiliscus could've very successfully usurped power since he was viewed as more legitimate than Zeno
you did a great job . such fascinating time
"it would take a Herculean Effort to restore the Empire"
or should we say ... Heraculian Effort? LOL
Fantastic channel mate
amazing content!!!
A certified Heraclius classic
its always a good day when you post.
This channel is very underrated and good quality.
Please Keep making videos.
Also, I subscribed. 👍
Thanks a lot
let's go new episode!
wonderfull videos. I hope you keep going well into the byzantine era my firend
Yes
heraclian W
Fascinating time period.
I don't understand why did the armies of Illyricum revolt?They were basically defending their homeland after decades of slavo-avaric raids.They were send by the emperor to defeat those enemies once and for all.
And just before they were dealing the death blow to the weakened avar khaganate and their slavic allies, boom they choose to sabotage the war and revolt against their emperor.
As far as I know, the average soldier did not have a good strategic understanding of the geopolitical situation. Most of them probably never ever saw a map. What they saw at a personnal level was that they had been campaigning for many years, underpaid and in pretty bad conditions. At their level, probably none of them could predict that a revolt would cause as much damage as it did.
I just want to go back in time & shout at them "You're about to destroy the enemies that have killed your friends & families! Why must you revolt??? Once they are gone, you all can go home & rest! You haven't been paid because the financial situation of the state is dire! The Augustus Maurice only wishes to push you so that these Barbarians may be crushed forever & you can be left in peace"
Who knows how they would react but whatever Peter (Maurice's brother) did, made the soldiers ignore him & follow Phocas
@@iDeathMaximuMIIYou got good point
I also wonder if the armies of Balkans/the armies of Phocas didn't even help Phocas after he overthrow Maurice and didn't try to fight back against Heraclius and his Heraclian troops
Is there anything posivitive about Phocas? Great video, as always!
He eventually lost
Not that i know of. but in my opinion, No.
Based
Very good episode. One thing I’m left wondering however is the role of Comentiolus, brother of Phocas. In the video, it mentions he commanded troops in Anatolia on the Persian frontier, but I am confused. Was he some sort of Magister Militum, or just a random tasked with commanding troops? Because, on Wikipedia at least, in 610, it says Phocas’ nephew, Domentziolus was the Magister Militum per Orientum, not mentioning a word about Comentiolus. It would also be nice if you were to provide the source you used to gather info about this man 😅
As always, all sources are in the description of the video.
Here is what I gathered from them :
During this period, there were 2 prominent men named Domentziolus and 2 named Comentiolus.
- The first Domentziolus was a brother of Phocas. He was Magister Officiorum and was in Constantinople during Heraclius' revolt in 610.
- The second Domentziolus was the son of the first Domentziolus and thus, the nephew of Phocas. He fought against the sassanians in the east, probably indeed as Magister Millitum per Orientem. He seemingly died in a battle around 608-609.
- The first Comentiolus was a general of Maurice's administration, he was executed in 602
- The second Comentiolus was also a brother of Phocas and was Magister Millitum. He most probably was the main general in the east after the death of Domentziolus (nephew of Phoca). He was killed in 611 during Heraclius' ascension.
The info you gave of a Domentziolus in 610 may be considering that Domentziolus did not die in Armenia in 608-609 and thus would have remained Magister Millitum.
Wait, so if Domentziolus was in fact still alive in 610, as stated by Wikipedia at least, and remained Magister Militum per Orientum, then where would that put Comentiolus? Would that mean they were both Magister Militum per Orientum at the same time?
I cannot say for sure. Maybe the command was still split between Armenia and Mesopotamia at the time. Meaning that they would be respectively MM per Armeniam and MM per Orientem. I have no more detail.
You mentioned a man claiming to be Theodosius was proclaimed emperor at Edessa. On Wikipedia, it says his coronation took place in Ctesiphon, and I wasn’t able to find any other sources that said otherwise. Could you help me, perhaps providing where you figured that out?
If found this information in one of these two :
- Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius Emperor of Byzantium: Cambridge; 2003
- Hugh Elton, The Roman Empire of Late Antiquity; 2016
Historical sources can be conflicting sometimes. Edessa or Ctesiphon, both are possible but I believe Edessa is more probable. It is because Being crowned at Ctesiphon would have made Theodosius appear as a pupet to the Sassanians. He surely was a pupet but Khosrow would have wanted Theodosius to appear legitimate in the eyes of the romans of the east. Thus, an elevation in the roman city of Edessa with Narses as sponsor sounds better than Ctesiphon to me.
The north Black Sea region late 6th and early 7th century it's not kutriguri and unugonduri there is Old great Bulgaria and this are two clans in that state formation!
Good video
I can not wait for you to cover the Macedonian dynasty and specifically Basil II
Maurice was the father in law of Khosrew II. He married Maurice's daughter Princes Mariam (AKA Queen Shirin). It's mentioned in Ibn Miskavieh's book, and Michael The Syrian "Annals of the World"
Might have your hands full with the next vid if it’s going up to 641😂
Initially, I was aiming to cover the entire 602-628 war in one video but there is just so much stuff to say
Heraclius will have 3 videos for himself. Then i may release a big video combining the 3 episodes
I will try not to take too much time
@@ancientsight I’m sure they will be great when there’re finished, can’t wait!
why are on map antes above sclaveni? i thought they were same people.
Is the man named Germanus that was killed in 603 or 604 by Kosrow II the same Germanus that mutinied against Priscus in 588? On Wikipedia that’s exactly what it suggests, but you used different symbols above their names so I’m just not sure.
You may be right. If he is the same Germanus, then I did not take it into account.
How can we find the name of the soudntrack?
I will add the full soundtrack list to the video description by tommorrow
I will notify you
Here they are in chronological order
🎵 Music
www.epidemicsound.com/
Deconstructing the Empire - Christian Andersen
Faith Collapsing - Reynard Seidel
Heroes on Horses - Wendel Scherer
Zero Hours - Reynard Seidel
Phantasm - Jo Wandrini
Happily Unknowing - Christian Andersen
Faith Collapsing - Reynard Seidel
Scourge of the Scarab - Deskant
@@ancientsight Thank you bro.
That’s weird. Most sources say the general Leontius was recallled and imprisoned by Phocas, while the video seemingly shows him killed by Kosrow II. Do you know what actually happened to general Leontius?
If he is shown dying, then this is what I concluded from my sources. Such details are often debated but also not explained a lot in books. I cannot tell you for sure, your sources might be right.
plz , made the next video.
The next video should be out in about two weeks
@@ancientsight thanks, a lot, eagerly waiting for the next video :) , can you give us some spoiler what will be the title? :)
It will be named : "The Great Persian War"
Excellente vidéo, comme toujours 👍
Oh no.
HERACLIUS DONT MARRY YOUR NIECE WTF
Wait until this guy learns about Egyptian marriages
@@iexist3919 Especially the one who was married to his mother and sister at the same time…
@@iexist3919 ptolemies especially
Roman history is literally great men theory
Nahhh there’s tons of forces outside the control of men influencing events here, the most obvious of which being the plague that devastated urban society. Urban society in general was on the decline as well in the roman world, we start to see much less of the local civil administration building things after the 5th century and everything is much more centrally controlled, evidence of the weakening of settled societies is clear with the Arabs playing an increased role in this period, as before they were very peripheral but in this time period we see the ghassinids and lakhmids playing a large role
For the eastern provinces of Byzantium the Persian invasions marked the final break with the secure world of classical antiquity. In the Balkan provinces the break had already taken place. Even during the reign of Justinian the Balkans had been threatened by various Turkic peoples, nomadic Bulgars from the steppes, and much of Justinian's defensive building programme had been directed against their raids. In the second half of the sixth century a new danger arose, that of an alliance between nomadic and more settled peoples. The more settled people were the Slavs, historically well attested but archaeologically difficult to identify, who seem to have moved south in large numbers from the river valleys of central and northern Europe. In south Russia they can perhaps be identified with the culture group who owned the Martynovka Hoard, a collection of silver jewellery whose decoration bears out the agricultural interests of this essentially pastoral people.
The nomadic group under whose influence the Slavs fell were the Avars, one of the fiercest of the Turkic peoples to emerge from the Asian steppes, who had left a trail of destruction from as far afield as China. Their horse burials and characteristic jewellery make them easily identifiable, and though relatively few in number, they seem to have exerted a military hegemony over the more numerous Slavs.
The two groups crossed the Danube in the 580s and seized a succession of Balkan towns and cities, reaching far south into the Peloponnese, until only a few coastal territories were left in Byzantine hands. There was considerable resistance at first, espe cially under the emperor Maurice in the 590s, but when Phocas seized power in 602 he no longer attempted to hold the Danube frontier, and the pace and density of Avar-Slav settlement greatly increased.
Huns - Avars - Hungarians. Continuity since the 400s ... and before. Romans never really conquered Pannonia.
waiting for thr next video , how islam was entered there,
WAIT NO BULGARIAN EMPIRE
If I was a Roman in Constantinople in 580 and heard a man speaking Greek like I hear you speaking English now, I would be absolutely horrified. You would certainly be placed in the 'barbaric' category. Sorry, but the way you sound to a native English speaker in 2023 needs to be brought into perspective to how your foreign (likely Arab or Armenian) Greek would sound in the late sixth century.
I wanted a full episode on Heraclius 🥲
Based