Sicilian subjects: but he was so far successful that no further invasion of Sicily was made while he lived, and in Africa, though the patrician Nicephorus is said to have been defeated in 665, no permanent conquest was effected till after his death. From Syracuse he sent for his wife and sons; but, as this foreshadowed a transfer of the seat of government, the citizens, headed by Andrew the chamberlain and the patrician Theodore of Colonia, refused to let them go.
It was not only at Constantinople that Constans was unpopular; and in 668 a plot was formed among those who surrounded him, one of whom, Andrew, son of Troilus, while the Emperor was bathing, poured an unusual quantity of soap over his face so as to blind him, and then killed him by striking him on the head with a silver ewer (15 July). The army proclaimed as emperor an Armenian named Mzhezh, who is said to have been of high character, but seems to have had no other recommendation except good looks, and was reluctant to accept the honour. His elevation found no favour elsewhere, the armies of Italy, Sardinia, and Africa united to overthrow him,[1] the rebellion collapsed (Feb. 669),[2] and the assassin Andrew, Mzhezh himself, and his chief adherents suffered death, among them the patrician Justinian, whose young son, Germanus, afterwards patriarch, was mutilated.
Before turning to the eastern war it is necessary to speak of the military and administrative organization which by a process we cannot trace in detail had been growing up during the reigns of Heraclius and Constans. The co-ordination of civil and military officials instituted by Diocletian had been greatly modified by Justinian, who in many places combined both functions in the hands of one man. From this time the civil governors, where they still existed, gradually became subservient to the military power, and the process was completed by the Persian and Saracen invasions, which made military rule a necessity, while the loss of the eastern provinces caused a new distribution of forces, and therefore new administrative divisions. Hitherto Asia Minor had hardly needed defence; and the only large contingent permanently stationed there was a portion of the palatine troops under the magister militum praesentalis quartered in the north-west, where in a district reaching from Paphlagonia and Galatia to the Hellespont they still remained under the name of imperiale obsequium (ὀψίκιον), while their commander bore the title of Count. Of the countries under the magister militum per Orientem only Isauria and Cilicia remained; but, as his troops were required to defend southern Asia Minor, they were also quartered in part of Cappadocia and the district to the west of it, but were still known as Orientales (ἀνατολικοί). Further west by the Aegean was a section of the Thracian army which had followed Heraclius to the Persian war and were known as Thracesii; but these were under the Anatolic general. Armenia and
