Anastasius II
Anastasius II was a civil servant made emperor by a mutiny, ruled less than two years, and was executed after trying to take the throne back. His name was Artemios and he was the imperial secretary — the man who drafted the emperor's correspondence — when the army of the Opsikion theme deposed and blinded Philippicus in June 713 and put him on the throne. He was the fourth emperor in three years, in a period of Byzantine history so unstable that no one held power long enough to address why. What he did with the time was competent and unpopular. He purged the officers who had made the previous coups, restored the Chalcedonian orthodoxy Philippicus had abandoned, and repaired the walls of Constantinople. The substantive act was preparing for the siege everyone knew was coming. Arab preparations for a great attack on the capital were reported by his agents, and he stockpiled grain, ordered every household to lay in provisions for three years or leave the city, and sent the fleet to Rhodes to attack the Arab timber supply before it could be turned into ships. The fleet mutinied instead, killed the admiral, and proclaimed a tax collector named Theodosius. Anastasius fled to Nicaea and then took monastic vows at Thessalonica. Leo III was emperor by the time the siege came in 717, and beat it. Anastasius attempted a return in 719 with Bulgar support, was handed over, and was beheaded. The preparations he made are part of why the city held.
- Lived: 680 CE – 719 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, administrator
