Theodosius

Theodosius (; 4 August 583 – shortly after 27 November 602) was the eldest son of Byzantine Emperor Maurice (582–602) and was co-emperor from 590 until his deposition and execution during a military revolt. Along with his father-in-law Germanus, he was briefly proposed as successor to Maurice by the troops, but the army eventually favoured Phocas instead. Sent in an abortive mission to secure aid from Sassanid Persia by his father, Theodosius was captured and executed by Phocas's supporters a few days after Maurice. Nevertheless, rumours spread that he had survived the execution, and became popular to the extent that a man who purported to be Theodosius was entertained by the Persians as a pretext for launching a war against Byzantium. Biography Theodosius was the first child of Maurice and his wife, the augusta Constantina. He was born on 4 August 583 (according to the contemporary John of Ephesus and other chroniclers) or 585 (according to the later histories of Theophanes the Confessor and Kedrenos). He was the first son to be born to a reigning emperor since Theodosius II in 401, and was accordingly named after him. The papal envoy, or apocrisiarius, to Constantinople, the future Pope Gregory the Great, acted as his godfather. The scholar Evagrius Scholasticus composed a work celebrating Theodosius' birth, for which he was rewarded by Maurice with the rank of consul. A few years after his birth, possibly in 587, Theodosius was raised to the rank of caesar and thus became his father's heir-apparent. Three years later, on 26 March 590, he was publicly proclaimed as co-emperor. In late 601 or early February 602, Maurice married Theodosius to a daughter of the patrician Germanus, a leading member of the Byzantine Senate. The historian Theophylact Simocatta, the major chronicler of Maurice's reign, also records that on 2 February 602, Germanus saved Theodosius from harm during food riots in Constantinople.