Cities of Heraclius

Abstract

The Hellenistic and Roman passion for founding, or renaming, Eastern cities in honour of their rulers abated only with the decline of urban life itself under the Byzantines, although it was never entirely forgotten. The last notable example seems to be the tragi-comic career of Tralles (Aydin) as Andronikopolis or Palaiologopolis in 1278–82. But the last emperor to have notably bestowed his (or his family's) name on cities with the old gusto seems to have been Heraclius. It was perhaps part of a recognizable pattern of traits—the complex naming of his sons, the family groups on his coins, the concern for his own title, the quest for the True Cross, and the style of his victory despatch from Nineveh—in which one may glimpse in Heraclius a relentless and self-conscious sense of dynasty and historicity.