Phocas

Phocas rose from middle-rank army service to spokesman for troops angry at Maurice's court. When the army mutinied in 602, he rode the revolt to power and had Maurice executed that November. Constantinople's elite saw him as a provincial usurper, so he packed the regime with relatives and answered dissent with escalating violence that eventually turned his own household against him. The Sasanian Empire tore into the eastern provinces while he pulled border troops inward to crush a rebellion led by Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, which only opened the heartlands to invasion. Heracliu…