And then my father looked at me. I met his gaze unflinching. Partly this was pride- was I to humble myself when he had just cleared the way to exalting me above everyone else in the Roman Empire save him alone? And partly, I admit on this page where I must be truthful before the Lord, it was calculation. Having just degraded my two uncles, my father could hardly take vengeance against me. Upon whom would he then rely? My brother? Little Herakleios was not even in the throne room, being confined to his bed by yet another sickness. He had already come close to dying several times in his short, unhappy life. He would have to succeed only once to ruin all my father's plans if he set me aside along with my uncles.

Whatever my reasons, I had gauged my father aright. When he saw I would not bend my neck before him, he nodded and said, "This is the spirit an Emperor must have to rule, yielding to nothing and no one until he is dead."

I have remembered those words all my life, and lived by them.

My uncles, also being of the line of the great Herakleios, had their share of his indomitable spirit. Had they accepted their demotion and lived quietly afterwards, I think my father would have left them at peace: had he wished to inflict harsh punishment on them, he could have done so at the outset, rather than merely depriving them of the imperial dignity.

But Herakleios and Tiberius, having had the title of Emperor since they were children, had never lost the appetite for the power accruing to the title, power they had never tasted but always seen, just as in the pagan myth Tantalos never ate the grapes that hung always barely out of reach.

And so, rather than choosing retirement, they slipped out of the palace before dawn broke the next morning and rowed in a small boat across the narrow water of the Golden Horn to Sykai. Forgetting what had happened to Leo in the throne room, they used his argument with the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts, and succeeded with it better than they deserved.