Читать книгу Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor - Robert Walsh - Страница 12

Flavius Phocas was crowned in 602; he died in 610, after a reign of eight years. He murdered his predecessor Mauricius, and decapitated him and his five children: he was himself assassinated by his successor Heraclius. He is represented as a monster among the emperors: his person small and deformed; his hair and eyebrows red and shaggy; and his cheeks disfigured with scars; his temper was savage; his pleasures brutal; and he was grossly ignorant, not only of letters, but his own profession−war. From the time of Justinian, the pleadings of the courts had been in Latin, but from the reign of Phocas, they were held in Greek, and the writings formed a barbarous mixture of Greek and Latin characters.