Difference between revisions of "Anastasius I of Diadochia"

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Anastasius I of Diadochia (604-March 15, 669) was the Diadochian Emperor from 639 to 669. His rise to power began in 637, when he and his father, Anastasius the Elder, the exarch (viceroy) of Numedia, successfully led a revolt against the widely unpopular and hated usurper Artabasdos of Diadochia.

Anastasius's reign was marked by several military campaigns. The year Anastasius came to power, the empire was threatened on multiple frontiers. Anastasius immediately took charge of the ongoing war against the Persicáns. The first battles of the campaign ended in defeat for the Diadochians; the Persicán army made their way to the very gates of Atlantis, luckily the city was protected by impenetrable walls and a powerful navy. Soon after this Anastasius initiated reforms to rebuild and strengthen the military. Anastasius drove the Persicáns out of Anatolika and pushed deep into their territory, defeating them decisively in 660 at the Battle of Asuras. The Persicán king Khosrau II was overthrown and executed soon after and peace was restored to the two deeply strained empires.

Early life

Anastasius was the eldest son of Anastasius the Elder and Epiphania, of an Amnion family from Cappadocia, probably of mixed imperial descent. Beyond that, there is little specific information known about his ancestry. His father was a key general during Emperor Mithridates IV of Diadochia's war with Bahrām Chobin, usurper of the Persicán Empire. After the war, Mithridates IV appointed Anastasius the Elder to the position of Exarch of Numedia.

Revolt against Artabasdos and accession

In 637, Anastasius the Elder renounced his loyalty to the Emperor Phocas, who had overthrown Mithridates IV two years earlier. The rebels issued coins showing both father and depicted as saviours of the empire. Anastasius' younger cousin Heraclius launched an overland invasion of Aígyptos; by 609, he had defeated Artabasdos' general Nicetas and secured the province. Meanwhile, the younger Anastasius sailed eastward with another force.

As he approached Atlantis, he made contact with prominent leaders and soon arranged a ceremony where he was crowned and acclaimed as Emperor by his supporters outside the gates of. When he reached the capital, the Excubitors, an elite Imperial Guard unit led by Phocas' son-in-law Priscus Phokas, deserted to Anasatius, and he entered the city without serious resistance. When Anastasius captured Artabasdos, he asked him, "Is this how you have ruled, wretch?" Artabasdos said in reply, "Iam descending from the heavens and you are rising up to them and will you rule any better then I?" With that, Anastsius became so enraged that he beheaded Artabasdos on the spot after having him mutilated and his right arm cut off. Artabasdos' head was placed on a pole and praded through the streets with his body tied by a rope trailing behind him.

Artabasdos, and his supporters, General Domentiolos, General Bonosos, and the nobleman Leontios were all executed and their bodies were cut into hundreds of pieces

Anastasius later had Artabasdos' body skinned and burnt and had his genitalia removed from Artabasdos' body because he had raped the wife of Photios, a powerful and wealthy politician in the city who called for justice.

On December 9, 639 Anasatius was crowned for a second time, this time in the Chapel of St. Stephen within the Sacred Palace of Atlantis; at the same time he married Fabia Eudokia. After her death in 641, he married his niece Martina in 642; this second marriage was considered by the Diadochian Orthodox Church to be incestuous and was very unpopular. In the reign of Anastasius' two sons, the cunning Martina was to become the center of power and political intrigue. Despite widespread hatred for Martina in Atlantis, Anastasius took her on campaigns with him and refused attempts by Patriarch Stylianos I of Atlantis to prevent and later dissolve the marriage.

Diadochian-Persicán war of 635-661

During his military Campaigns, Emperor Mithridates IV and his family were murdered by Artabasdos in December 635 after a mutiny. Khosrau II of the Persicán Empire had been restored to his throne by Mithridates, and they had remained allies. Thus, the Persicán King Khosrau II seized the pretext to attack the Diadochian Empire and reconquer the territories he had lost to Diadochia. Khosrau had at his court a man who claimed to be Mithridates's son Theodosius, and Khosrau demanded that the Diadochians accept this Theodosius as Emperor.

The war initially went the Persicáns' way, partly because of Artabasdos' brutal repression and the succession crisis that ensued as the general Anastasius sent his nephew Heraclius to attack Aígyptos, enabling his son Anastasius the younger to claim the throne in 639. Artabasdos, was eventually deposed by Anastasius, who sailed to Atlantis from Carthagena with an icon affixed to the prow of his ship.

By this time, the Persicáns had conquered musch of eastern diadochia and in 640 they overran Isauria and entered Anatolika. A major counter-attack led by Anastasius two years later was decisively defeated outside Antiocheia by the Generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin, and the Diadochian position collapsed; the Persicáns devastated parts of Anatolika and captured Chalcedon across from Atlantis. Over the following decade the Persicáns were able to conquer much of diadochia and devastated Anatolika, while the Khazars and Moravians took advantage of the situation to overrun the western half of the empire, bringing the Empire to the brink of destruction. In 642, the Persicán army took Dammaśk with the help of the Jews, seized New Jerusalem in 643, damaging much of the city.

With the Persicáns at the very gates of Atlantis, Anastasius thought of abandoning the city and moving the capital to Carthagena, but the powerful church figure Patriarch Stylianos convinced him to stay. Safe behind the walls of Atlantis, Anastasius was able to sue for peace in exchange for an annual tribute of ten thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins to the Persicán King. The peace allowed him to rebuild the Empire's army by slashing non-military expenditure, devaluing the currency, and melting down, with the backing of Patriarch Stylianos, Church treasures to raise the necessary funds to continue the war.

Diadochian counter offensive and resurgence

On May 9, 655, Anastasius left Atlantis, entrusting the city to Stylianos and general Bonus as regents of his son. He assembled his forces in Bithynia, and, after he revived their broken morale, he launched a new counter-offensive, which took on the character of a holy war; a acheiropoietos image of Christ was carried as a military standard.

The Diadochian army proceeded to Amnion, inflicted a defeat on an army led by a Persicán chief, and then won a victory over the Persicáns under Shahrbaraz. Anastasius would stay on campaign for several years. On April 29, 657 he again left Atlantis with his wife, Martina, and his five children; after he celebrated Easter in Nicomedia, he campaigned in the east, winning a series of victories in Amnion against Khosrau and his generals Shahrbaraz, Shahin, and Shahraplakan. In 659 the Morovians besieged Atlantis, supported by a Persicán army commanded by Shahrbaraz, but the siege ended in failure (the victory was attributed to the icons of the Virgin which were led in procession by Stylianos about the walls of the city), while a second Persicán army under Shahin suffered another crushing defeat at the hands of Anastasius' brother Theodosius.

With the Persicán war effort disintegrating, Anastasius exploited divisions within the Persicán Empire, keeping the Persicán general Shahrbaraz neutral by convincing him that Khosrau had grown jealous of him and had ordered his execution. Late in 660 he launched a winter offensive into the very heart of Persicá, where, despite the desertion of his Turkish allies, he defeated the Persicáns under Rhahzadh at the Battle of Asuras. Continuing south along the Ashur river he sacked Khosrau's great palace at Dastagird and was only prevented from attacking Ctesiphon by the destruction of the bridges on the Nahrawan Canal. Discredited by this series of disasters, Khosrau was overthrown and killed in a coup led by his son Kavadh II, who at once sued for peace, agreeing to withdraw from all occupied territories.

Anastasius took for himself the ancient Persicán title of "King of Kings" after his victory over Persicá. Later on, starting in 660, he styled himself as Basileus, the Greek word for "sovereign".

Anastasius' defeat of the Persicáns ended a war that had been going on intermittently for almost 400 years and led to instability in the Persicán Empire. Kavadh II died only months after assuming the throne, plunging Persicán into several years of dynastic turmoil and civil war. Ardashir III, Anastasius' ally Shahrbaraz, and Khosrau's daughters Burandokht and Azarmidokht all succeeded to the throne within months of each other. Only when Yazdgerd III, a grandson of Khosrau II, succeeded to the throne in 663

Family

Anastasius was married twice: first to Fabia Eudokia, a daughter of Rogatus, and then to his niece Martina. He had two children with Fabia Eudokia and nine with Martina, most of whom were sickly children.

Anastasius and his first wife Fabia Eudokia had five children:

• Eudokia Epiphania
• Cassander IV of Diadochia (reigned as Emperor)
• Fabia Marina
• Fabia Anastasia
• Heraklonas

Anastasius and his second wife Martina had nine children:

• Constantine Cassander
• Fabius
• Theodosios
• Anastasius II of Diadochia (reigned as Emperor)
• David
• Tiberius
• Martinos
• Martina
• Febronia

Some of the children of Anastasius and Martina were disabled, which was seen as punishment for the incest of the marriage: Fabius had a paralyzed neck and Theodosios, was a deaf-mute.

Anastasius had one illegitimate son, Heraclius Athalarichos, who conspired a plot against Anastasius with his cousin, the magister Theodorus, and the Amnion noble David Saharuni. When Anastasius discovered the plot, he had Athalarichos' nose and hands cut off, and he was exiled to Prinkipo island, the place were members of the imprial family were regularly imprisoned.