eastern emperor, descended from a Cappadocian family, was sent to subdue the tyrant Phocas, whom he totally vanquished in the year 610. In consequence of this victory, young Heraclius was raised to the throne by the suffrages of the senate and people. He confined in a monastery Crispus, the son-in-law of Phocas, whose defection had contributed to his success. Having humbly requested peace from the Persian monarch, who was extending his conquests all over the Asiatic part of the empire, his exorbitant and unjust conditions so exasperated Heraclius, that he at once started from inglorious ease into a conspicuous hero, raised, by vast exertions, a considerable army, conquered the king of Persia, and established his winter-quarters on the banks of the Halys. He next year penetrated into the very heart of Persia, and having resisted the attack of a threefold army of Persians, he surprised the town of Salban. Another of his expeditions was against the Tigris; and he fought a battle near the site of the ancient Nineveh in 627, about the end of the year, at which time he gained a complete victory over the Persians, having slain three of their chiefs with his own hand. He recovered three hundred Roman standards, and set a vast number of captives at liberty. In 628 he made the Persian king put an end to the persecution of the Christians, renounce the conquests of his father in the Roman empire, and restore the true cross, which had been taken from Jerusalem. When at Emesa, he first heard of the name of Mahommed, who invited him to embrace his new faith, but without success. He brought a reproach on his name by adhering to the doctrine of the Monothelites, but, chiefly by espousing his niece Martina for his second wife, by whose influence he divided the succession between Constantine and Heraclon, his son by Martina. He fell into a dropsical complaint, by which he was carried off in the month of February 641, in the thirty-first year of his reign.