Constans II
Constans II ruled Byzantium for twenty-seven years, moved the imperial residence to Sicily, and was murdered in his bath with a soap dish. Born in 630, he was made emperor at eleven in 641 after his father Constantine III died and his half-brother Heraklonas was deposed and mutilated — four rulers in a single year. He inherited a catastrophe. Syria, Palestine and Egypt had been lost to the Arab conquests within a decade, and the empire had lost perhaps half its revenue and two-thirds of its territory. He lost more. The Arabs built a fleet and destroyed a Byzantine one at the Battle of the Masts off Lycia in 655, with Constans present and escaping by exchanging clothes with a sailor. What saved him was the Muslim civil war that followed Uthman's murder, which bought a truce and about a decade. He used it on the Balkans and on the west. He also tried to end the argument over the wills of Christ by forbidding anyone to discuss it — the Typos of 648 — and, when Pope Martin I and Maximus the Confessor refused, had the pope arrested in Rome, tried in Constantinople and exiled to Cherson, where he died, and had Maximus's tongue and right hand cut off. He had his own brother Theodosius killed in 660 and left the capital permanently afterwards. He settled at Syracuse in 663, taxed Italy heavily, and was killed in his bath in 668 by a chamberlain. The bronze from the Pantheon's roof, which he had stripped on a visit to Rome, was captured by Arab pirates on the way to Constantinople.
- Lived: 630 CE – 668 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
