Maurice (emperor)
Maurice was Eastern Roman emperor from 582 to 602 and the last member of the Justinian dynasty. A successful general, Maurice was chosen as heir and son-in-law by his predecessor Tiberius II.
Maurice's reign was troubled by almost constant warfare. After he became emperor, he brought the war with Sasanian Persia to a victorious conclusion. The empire's eastern border in the South Caucasus was vastly expanded and, for the first time in nearly two centuries, the Romans were no longer obliged to pay the Persians thousands of pounds of gold annually for peace.
Afterward, Maurice campaigned extensively in the Balkans against the Avars—pushing them back across the Danube by 599. He also conducted campaigns across the Danube, the first Roman emperor to do so in over two centuries. In the west, he established two large semi-autonomous provinces called exarchates, ruled by exarchs, or viceroys of the emperor. In Italy Maurice established the Exarchate of Italy in 584, the first real effort by the empire to halt the advance of the Lombards. With the creation of the Exarchate of Africa in 591 he further solidified the power of Constantinople in the western Mediterranean.
Maurice's successes on battlefields and in foreign policy were counterbalanced by mounting financial difficulties of the empire. Maurice responded with several unpopular measures which alienated both the army and the general populace. In 602, dissatisfied soldiers elected an officer named Phocas, who usurped the throne and ordered the execution of Maurice and his six sons. This event would prove a disaster for the empire, sparking a twenty-six-year war with a resurgent Sassanid Persia which would leave both empires devastated prior to the Arab conquests.
Maurice's reign is a relatively well-documented era of late antiquity, in particular by the historian Theophylact Simocatta. The Strategikon, a manual of war which influenced European and Middle Eastern military traditions for well over a millennium, is traditionally attributed to Maurice.
Life
Origins and early life
Maurice was born in Arabissus in Cappadocia in 539. His father was Paul. He had one brother, Peter, and two sisters, Theoctista and Gordia, the latter of whom was later the wife of the general Philippicus. He is recorded to have been a native Greek speaker, unlike the previous emperors since Anastasius I Dicorus. Contemporary Eastern Roman sources call him a local Cappadocian. Paul the Deacon, a late 8th-century Lombard writer, calls him the first emperor "from the race of the Greeks". Evagrius, writing under Maurice's reign, declared he traced his lines to Old Rome, which could be either truth or a flattery. Legends from much later times call him Armenian, but the historicity of this claim is opposed by the historian Anthony Kaldellis.Maurice first came to Constantinople as a notarius to serve as secretary to Tiberius, the comes excubitorum. When Tiberius was named Caesar in 574, Maurice was appointed to succeed him as comes excubitorum.
Persian War and accession to the throne
In late 577, despite a complete lack of military experience, Maurice was named as magister militum per Orientem, effectively commander-in-chief of the Roman army in the east. He succeeded General Justinian in the ongoing war against Sassanid Persia. At about the same time he was raised to the rank of patrikios, the empire's senior honorific title, which was limited to a small number of holders.In 578, a truce in Mesopotamia came to an end and the main focus of the war shifted to that front. After Persian raids in Mesopotamia, Maurice mounted attacks on both sides of the Tigris, captured the fortress of Aphumon and sacked Singara. Sassanid emperor Khosrow sought peace in 579, but died before an agreement could be reached and his successor Hormizd IV broke off the negotiations. In 580, Byzantium's Arab allies the Ghassanids scored a victory over the Lakhmids, Arab allies of the Sassanids, while Byzantine raids again penetrated east of the Tigris. Around this time the future Khosrow II was put in charge of the situation in Armenia, where he succeeded in convincing most of the rebel leaders to return to Sassanid allegiance, although Iberia remained loyal to the Byzantines.
The following year an ambitious campaign by Maurice, supported by Ghassanid forces under al-Mundhir III, targeted Ctesiphon, the Sassanid capital. The combined force moved south along the river Euphrates accompanied by a fleet of ships. The army stormed the fortress of Anatha and moved on until it reached the region of Beth Aramaye in central Mesopotamia, near Ctesiphon. There they found the bridge over the Euphrates destroyed by the Persians.
In response to Maurice's advance, Sassanid general Adarmahan was ordered to operate in northern Mesopotamia, threatening the Roman army's supply line. Adarmahan pillaged Osrhoene, and was successful in capturing its capital, Edessa. He then marched his army toward Callinicum on the Euphrates. With the possibility of a march to Ctesiphon gone Maurice was forced to retreat. The retreat was arduous for the tired army, and Maurice and al-Mundhir exchanged recriminations for the expedition's failure. However, they cooperated in forcing Adarmahan to withdraw, and defeated him at Callinicum.
The mutual recriminations were not laid to rest by this. Despite his successes, al-Mundhir was accused by Maurice of treason during the preceding campaign. Maurice claimed that al-Mundhir had revealed the Byzantine plan to the Persians, who then proceeded to destroy the bridge over the Euphrates. The chronicler John of Ephesus explicitly calls this assertion a lie, as the Byzantine intentions must have been plain to the Persian commanders.
Both Maurice and al-Mundhir wrote letters to Emperor Tiberius, who tried to reconcile them. Maurice visited Constantinople himself, where he was able to persuade Tiberius of al-Mundhir's guilt. The charge of treason is almost universally dismissed by modern historians; Irfan Shahîd says that it probably had more to do with Maurice's dislike of the veteran and militarily successful Arab ruler. This was compounded by the Byzantines' habitual distrust of the "barbarian" and supposedly innately traitorous Arabs, as well as by al-Mundhir's staunchly Monophysite faith. Al-Mundhir was arrested the following year on suspicion of treachery, triggering war between Byzantines and Ghassanids and marking the beginning of the end of the Ghassanid kingdom.
In June of 582 Maurice scored a decisive victory against Adarmahan near Constantina. Adarmahan barely escaped the field, while his co-commander Tamkhosrau was killed. In the same month Emperor Tiberius was struck down by an illness which shortly thereafter killed him. In this state Tiberius initially named two heirs, each of whom was to marry one of his daughters. Maurice was betrothed to Constantina, and Germanus, related to emperor Justinian I, was married to Charito. Some historians believe that the plan was to divide the empire in two, with Maurice receiving the eastern provinces and Germanus the western.
On 5 August, Tiberius was on his deathbed and civilian, military and ecclesiastical dignitaries awaited the appointment of his successor. He then chose Maurice and named him Caesar, after which he adopted the name "Tiberius". John of Nikiû and Theophanes the Confessor write that Germanus was proclaimed caesar at the same time. However, on 11 August 582, only Maurice is recorded as Caesar in the subscription of a law of Tiberius. According to John of Nikiû, Germanus was Tiberius' favored candidate for the throne but declined out of humility. Maurice was crowned emperor soon after, on 13 August. Tiberius had reportedly prepared a speech on the matter but at this point was too weak to speak. The quaestor sacri palatii read it for him. The speech proclaimed Maurice as Augustus and sole successor to the throne. On 14 August 582 Tiberius died. Maurice became sole emperor, marrying Constantina in the autumn.
Shortly after his ascension the advantage he had gained at the Battle of Constantina was lost when his successor as magister militum of the east, John Mystacon, was defeated at the River Nymphios by Kardarigan. The situation was difficult: Maurice ruled a bankrupt Empire; it was at war with Persia; he was paying extremely high tribute to the Avars, 80,000 gold solidi a year; and the Balkan provinces were being thoroughly devastated by the Slavs.
Maurice had to continue the war against the Persians. In 586 his troops defeated them at the Battle of Solachon south of Dara. In 588, a mutiny by unpaid Roman troops against their new commander, Priscus, seemed to offer the Sassanids a chance for a breakthrough, but the mutineers themselves repulsed the ensuing Persian offensive. Later in the year they secured a major victory before Martyropolis. The Sassanid commander, Maruzas, was killed, several of the Persian leaders were captured along with 3,000 other prisoners, and only a thousand men survived to reach refuge at Nisibis. The Romans secured much booty, including the Persian battle standards, and sent them, along with Maruzas' head, to Maurice in Constantinople.
In 590, two Parthian brothers, Vistahm and Vinduyih, overthrew King Hormizd IV and made the latter's son, Prince Khosrow II, the new king. The former Persian commander-in-chief, Bahram Chobin, who had rebelled against Hormizd IV, claimed the throne for himself and defeated Khosrow. Khosrow and the two Parthians fled to the Eastern Roman court. Although the Senate unanimously advised against it, Maurice helped Khosrow regain his throne with an army of 35,000 men. In 591 the combined Byzantine-Persian army under generals John Mystacon and Narses defeated Bahram Chobin's forces near Ganzak at the Battle of the Blarathon. The victory was decisive; Maurice finally brought the war to a successful conclusion with the re-accession of Khosrow.
Subsequently, Khosrow was adopted by the emperor in order to seal their alliance. The adoption was made through a rite of adoptio per arma, which ordinarily assumed the Christian character of its partakers. However, the chief Byzantine bishops, "despite their best attempts", failed to convert Khosrow. Khosrow rewarded Maurice by ceding to the empire western Armenia up to the lakes Van and Sevan, including the large cities of Martyropolis, Tigranokert, Manzikert, Ani, and Yerevan. Maurice's treaty brought a new status-quo to the east territorially. Byzantium was enlarged to an extent never before achieved by the empire. During the new "perpetual peace" millions of solidi were saved by the remission of tribute to the Persians.