Phocas, a man of the lowest birth, was proclaimed emperor in A.D. 602 by the Byzantine army on the Danube, in which he was serving as centurion. By slaying his predecessor Mauricius together with his five sons he assured the throne to himself, and thereupon proceeded to disgrace his position by cruelty and excesses of every sort. In spite of this he was acknowledged at Rome, where any change in the rule seemed to offer the possibility of betterment, persecuted as the city was by the attacks of barbarians,  p95 strife among her own people, and destructive outbreaks of nature. The letter, in which Pope Gregory the Great welcomes the usurper to the throne begins with the words: "We rejoice that your gentleness and piety have been raised to the imperial throne. May the heavens be filled with joy, and the earth exult, because throughout the whole empire the people, who were just now so full of sorrow, are glad once more" etc. In one solitary respect Phocas did good to Rome: he gave the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV, who on May 13th A.D. 609 dedicated it as a church of all the martyrs. In October 610 Phocas was dethroned by treachery and put to death with fearful tortures; the statues of the usurper, whose repulsive ugliness (small deformed body, red hair, long bushy eyebrows grown in together, a terrible scar which disfigured and discoloured his cheek) is most graphically described by ancient writers, were everywhere overthrown.

See: CIL. VI, 1200 (= Dessau 837); Gregor. Magn. reg. XIII.34.

Valadier, Fabbriche di Roma, fasc. 5 (1826); Jordan I, 2, 246; Huelsen, R. M. 1891, 88. 1902, 58. 1905, 68; Lanciani 262; Boni, Atti, 1903, V.577 ff.º