where, five years before, the emperor Mauritius had witnessed the execution of five sons, one after another, uttering at each stroke only the words: “Just art Thou, O Lord, and just is Thy judgment”: and then offering his own head to the sword. Phocas put to death the other conspirators with fearful tortures. Such executions were followed by fresh conspiracies, and these by similar punishments. At last, Crispus, the very stepson of Phocas, rose against him, and invited Heraclius, governor of Africa, to depose the emperor. Heraclius despatched a fleet under the command of his son, bearing the same name. Only as it drew near Constantinople did Phocas hear of it. He prepared for defence, but Crispus secretly traversed all his efforts, pretending to be on his side. After a bloody engagement the fleet appeared before the walls of the capital on Sunday the 4th October, 610. The next morning a senator, whose wife Phocas had dishonoured, appeared with a troop of soldiers at the palace. Phocas was seized, stripped of the purple, his hands bound behind his back, and carried through the city and the fleet before the young Heraclius, who was still on board his vessel. “Wretch,” said Heraclius, “hast thou governed the empire so?” “And wilt thou,” answered Phocas, “govern it better?” Heraclius trampled on him, cut off his hands and feet, and then his head, in sight of the vast throng which lined the shore. His head and limbs were carried on spears through the city, the trunk dragged through the streets, and all at last burnt. Heraclius, accompanied by Crispus, disembarked. He invited Crispus to put on the imperial robe, since he was not come to invest himself with it, but only to avenge Mauritius and his children. Crispus refused, and then Heraclius had nothing to oppose to the request of the patriarch Sergius, who had just succeeded Thomas, that he should be crowned by him. Crispus was given the government of Cappadocia: but becoming a few years later unfaithful to Heraclius, as he had been to his stepfather Phocas, was compelled to receive the torture, and pass the rest of his days in banishment. It may here be said that the dynasty thus begun occupied the throne for five generations. Justinian II., great-great-grandson of Heraclius, was more cruel if possible, than Phocas: he was deposed by an adventurer in 695, and his nose cut off to incapacitate him for any future recovery of the throne. His successor lasted three years: and another for seven; after which Justinian, who wore a golden nose for the one which he had lost, recovered the throne; practised during five years atrocious cruelties, was deposed by a third adventurer, Philippicus Bardanes in 711: put to death, and his head carried to Rome to assure all men that they were delivered from a tyrant, and a special oppressor of the Church.