Justinian II

Justinian II, nicknamed the Slit-Nosed, who lived from 668 or 669 to 4 November 711, was the last Byzantine emperor of the Heraclian dynasty, reigning in two separate periods, 685 to 695 and 705 to 711. The eldest son of Emperor Constantine IV and Anastasia, he came to sole power at sixteen and, like his namesake predecessor Justinian I, pursued an ambitious restoration of the Roman Empire, but responded brutally to any opposition to his will; his despotism generated significant unrest, and he was deposed in 695 after a popular uprising led by Leontius, the military governor of Hellas. During his removal his nose was severed, a mutilation later replaced with a gold prosthesis that gave him his epithet. After years in exile he returned to Constantinople in 705 with Bulgarian military assistance under Tervel; his second reign proved even more autocratic than the first and was marked by failed campaigns against Bulgaria and Arab forces. In 711 mutinous soldiers executed him, and his young son Tiberius was subsequently murdered, extinguishing the Heraclian line. He married twice, first Eudokia, mother of his daughter Anastasia, and then Theodora of Khazaria, mother of his son Tiberius.