Lost Roman Heroes - Episode 102: Heraclius (Part 2 - Darkness Falls)

Heraclius arrived on a warship and without shedding a drop of blood, he rid Rome of evil Phocas. Fair-haired. Young. An icon of the Virgin on the prow. That was Heraclius. October 5th, 610 AD. Crowned emperor, married the love of his life, and stepped out into cheering crowds while Persian watchfires burned on the Asian shore less than a mile away. He obviously knew he faced a terrible fight. But he had no idea, that evening, how close to the end Rome already was. What followed was a decade of catastrophe so complete it strains the imagination. Syria gone. Jerusalem fallen. Seven hundred years of Roman rule ended in 21 days. The True Cross carried in triumph to Persia. The Patriarch led away in chains. Nearly a hundred thousand dead. And the army of Rome, once half a million strong, pulverized. Reduced to ten thousand men. Little more. And then the Senate of Rome, that legendary body, over a thousand years old, did something it had never done in all of that time. It wrote a letter to the Persian King of Kings. Begging for mercy. Calling itself his faithful servants. Calling its own emperor Khosrow's obedient son. Khosrow read it. And sent back a reply for the ages. "Khosrow, greatest of gods, and master of the whole earth, to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave." Not his son. His slave. Rome was not struggling. Rome was not in decline. Rome was facing annihilation. The actual, literal end of a civilization that had ruled the world for six centuries. This is Episode 102. DARKNESS FALLS...