Justinian’s triumph over the Bulgarians emboldened him to undertake the greater scheme of winning back Syria from the Saracens. In 693 he picked a quarrel with the Caliph on the most frivolous grounds: when the annual payment due under the treaty of 686 was tendered to him, he refused to receive the money, because the coins were not the old Roman _solidi_, which had hitherto circulated in Syria and Egypt, and still formed the bulk of the Saracen currency, but new Arab ‘dirhems’ with Abd-el-Melik’s name upon them, which the caliph had lately begun to strike. [Sidenote: Justinian’s Saracen war, 693.] But any pretext was good enough for Justinian: he declared war with a light heart, and led his armies in person across the Taurus into Cilicia. At Sebastopolis near Tarsus he suffered a fearful defeat, mainly caused by the desertion to the Saracens of the unwilling recruits whom he had enlisted from among the captives of the Bulgarian War. When he had rallied his army Justinian was cruel and illogical enough to order those of the corps who had _not_ deserted to be put to death—lest they might follow their comrades’ example in the next battle (693). In the next year the emperor lost Roman Armenia by the revolt of its Governor, a native Armenian named Sumpad, who deserted to the Saracens. Other disasters followed, and the Arabs harried the ‘Anatolic’ and ‘Armeniac’ themes. Meanwhile the young emperor had been making himself most unpopular at home by the exactions necessary for the support of his unlucky war, and still more by persisting in building expensive and unnecessary palaces in the capital, while the war still raged. His two finance ministers, Theodotus, a lapsed abbot who had quitted his monastery, and the eunuch Stephanus, are reported to have gone to the extremes of cruelty in dealing with the citizens. It is said that Theodotus was wont to torture defaulting tax-payers by hanging them over smoky fires and half stifling them. Stephanus preferred the rod: it is said that he even presumed on one occasion—during Justinian’s absence—to seize and beat the empress-dowager Anastasia. The emperor only punished him by ordering him to complete, at his own expense, a building on which he was then engaged.