Emperor Maurice

Maurice (Flavius Mauricius Tiberius) was Roman emperor from 582 to 602, one of the most capable rulers of the late sixth century. A Cappadocian by origin, he rose as a general under Tiberius II, married the emperor's daughter Constantina, and on his accession inherited wars on every front. He concluded a favorable peace with Sassanid Persia in 591 by restoring the deposed Khosrow II, and waged grinding campaigns against the Avars and Slavs along the Danube. The military treatise known as the Strategikon is traditionally ascribed to him or his circle. His insistence on fiscal austerity and on wintering the army across the Danube provoked a mutiny led by the officer Phocas, who seized the throne and had Maurice and his sons executed in 602, an event that helped trigger the catastrophic Roman-Persian war of the early seventh century. He appears in the Epistulae Austrasicae through diplomatic correspondence linking Constantinople with the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia.