Maurice | |||||||||
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![]() Solidus of Emperor Maurice | |||||||||
Byzantine emperor | |||||||||
Reign | 13 August 582 – 27 November 602 | ||||||||
Predecessor | Tiberius II | ||||||||
Successor | Phocas | ||||||||
Co-emperor | Theodosius (590–602) | ||||||||
Born | Mauricius[a] 539 Arabissus, Cappadocia (now Afşin, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey) | ||||||||
Died | 27 November 602 (aged 63) Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) | ||||||||
Burial | |||||||||
Spouse | Constantina | ||||||||
Issue among others | |||||||||
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Dynasty | Justinian | ||||||||
Father | Paul | ||||||||
Religion | Chalcedonian Christianity |
Maurice (Latin: Mauricius;[a] Greek: Μαυρίκιος, translit. Maurikios; 539 – 27 November 602) was Byzantine 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, a dissatisfied officer named Phocas usurped the throne, having Maurice and his six sons executed. 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 Muslim 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.
Given the seventeenth of June, in the nineteenth year of the reign of our most religious lord, Mauritius Tiberius Augustus, the eighteenth year of the consulship of our said lord, and the fourth indiction.
The formula is Oxyrhynchite, but our one Mephite and one Arsinoite document also show it. In Oxyrhynchos, Νέος is consistently absent up to 588, with the names in the order Tiberius Mauricius; after that one finds Mauricius Novus Tiberius in almost all examples.
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