Gradually, Heraclius built his alliances. Instead of marching east through Mesopotamia, as Romans so often had, he went north and then east from Constantinople along the Bosporus and Black Sea, approaching the Persian frontier from the north through Armenia. Embassies to the Khazars and other Turkic forces on the northern steppes found a good reception, and even inside the Persian forces there were opportunities to discover turncoats. In December 627 at the battle of Nineveh, Heraclius prevailed against Persian forces led by Rhazates—even though the Khazars failed him in the crisis. Holding the front, Heraclius looked south. Alliance with the Axumite Ethiopians—his fellow Christians—brought him support in winning back Yemen and the Red Sea provinces in 629 and afterward. Shaken on the south and now overextended—as would inevitably be revealed when any leader succeeded in opposing them—the Persians tottered. Heraclius finally moved on Ctesiphon, the Persian capital on the Tigris; and Khusro’s court revolted, deposing him, effectively surrendering the war. Heraclius claimed back as his terms for peace all that Khusro had taken from Rome, and the Persian government sank into anarchy and a series of short-lived rulers of no distinction.
Roman imperial title Augustus
Every sign pointed to a lasting victory for Rome over Persia. Heraclius took for himself the ancient Persian title “king of kings,” dropping the traditional Roman imperial title Augustus, just as Alexander had Persianized himself more than 900 years earlier. Back in Constantinople, Heraclius now styled himself basileus, the Greek word for king, and that title would be part of Byzantine pomp for the next 800 years. His reign also marked the effective end of Latin as the official language of empire and the permanent triumph of Greek. To this day, “Rum” is still an eastern name for the empire founded by the descendants of Romulus, but all the romanitas had gone out of it by now.
Heraclius’s ostentation of empire culminated in 630, when he traveled to Jerusalem, there to return the true cross of Christ to its rightful home. He marched into the city barefoot, as befitted a pious Christian pilgrim, carrying the cross himself, and brought it to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The church stood on the site now occupied by an elaborate, labyrinthine basilica shared among various Christian denominations, the spot identified 300 years earlier when the true cross was discovered in Constantine’s reign.
Historical Ottoman 