Constans II

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Image:Hexagram-Constans II and Constantine IV-sb0995.jpg Constans Heraclius, known in English as Constans II and called Pogonatus, meaning the Bearded, (November 7, 630–September 15, 668) was Byzantine emperor from 641 to 668.

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Biography

Constans was the son of Constantine III, and due to the rumours that Heraclonas and Martina had poisoned Constantine III he was named co-emperor in 641.

Under Constans, the Byzantines completely withdrew from Egypt, and the Arabs launched numerous attacks on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Sea. Constans sent a fleet to attack the Arabs at Finike in 655, but was defeated: 500 Byzantine ships were destroyed in the battle, and the emperor himself risked to be killed. The Arabs were preparing to attack Constantinople, but didn't carry out the plan when civil war with the Shiites broke out among them. In 658 he defeated the Slavs on the Danube River, temporarily slowing their advance throughout the Balkans.

Constans grew increasingly fearful that his younger brother, Theodosius, could oust him from the throne: he therefore obliged him first to take the orders, and later had Theodosius killed. His sons Constantine, Heraclius, and Tiberius were named co-emperors. However, having attracted the hatred of citizens of Constantinople, Constans decided to leave the capital and to move to Syracuse, in east Sicily. From here, in 661, he launched an assault against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which then occupied most of southern Italy. Taking advantage of the fact that Lombard king Grimoald I was engaged against the Franks, he disembarked at Taranto and sieged Lucera and Benevento. However, the latter resisted and Constans withdrew to Naples, while part of his army was destroyed by the Beneventani at Forino, between Avellino and Salerno.

In 663 Constans visited Rome for 12 days—no emperor having set foot in Rome for two centuries— and was received with great honor by Pope Vitalian (reigned 657-672). Although on friendly terms with Vitalian, he stripped buildings, including the Pantheon, of their ornaments and bronze to be carried back to Constantinople, and declared the Patriarch of Rome to have no jurisdiction over the Patriarch of Ravenna, since that city was the seat of the exarch, his immediate representative.

His subsequent moves in Calabria and Sardinia were marked by further strippings and request of tributes that enraged his Italian subjects. Romours that he was going to move the capital of the empire to Syracuse were probably fatal for Constans. On September 15, 668 he was assassinated in his bath by his chamberlain. Constantine succeeded him as Constantine IV, a brief usurpation in Sicily by Mezezius being quickly suppressed.

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