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"Let us die for the Roman state and for the holy churches of God."

The son of the exarch of Africa, Heraclius sailed on Carthage to overthrow the hated tyrant Phocas in 610 and inherited an empire in freefall, with the Persians overrunning the East. For a decade he could only watch as Antioch, Jerusalem, and Egypt fell. Then, having painstakingly rebuilt the army and infused the war with religious zeal — casting it as a Christian holy war to recover the True Cross — he took the field in person and turned the tide. In a series of brilliant, audacious campaigns he carried the war into the enemy heartland, allied with the Göktürks, and shattered the last Persian army at Nineveh in 627, forcing Persia to sue for peace and restore the True Cross. It was one of history's greatest reversals. But his triumph was hollow: within a few years the armies of Islam erupted from Arabia, and the exhausted Heraclius lived to see Syria, Palestine, and Egypt — the provinces he had just won back — lost forever to the Arabs. He died a broken and disappointed man.

"I shall not spare the Romans until they deliver up the crucified whom they call God."

Khosrow II Parvez ('the Victorious') brought the Sasanian Empire to its greatest extent since the days of the ancient Achaemenids. Restored to his throne as a young man by the emperor Maurice, he used the murder of his benefactor by Phocas as the pretext for the last great war against Rome — and for nearly two decades it went astonishingly well, as his generals overran Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and much of Asia Minor and twice reached the Bosporus. But Khosrow overreached. Arrogant and increasingly tyrannical, he rejected Heraclius's peace overtures and demanded total submission, only to see the emperor turn the tables and ravage his heartland. As his empire collapsed in defeat, his own nobles and his son Kavad II turned against him; he was overthrown, imprisoned, and executed in 628. His fall plunged Persia into the ruinous civil war that left it helpless before the Arab conquest a decade later.

"The Boar of the Empire does not turn back."

The greatest Sasanian general of the war, Shahrbaraz ('the Boar of the Empire') was the spearhead of Khosrow's conquests, leading the armies that took Antioch, stormed Jerusalem and seized the True Cross, conquered Egypt, and besieged Constantinople in 626. For years he was the most feared soldier in the world. But as the war turned and Khosrow, suspicious and desperate, allegedly ordered his execution, Shahrbaraz turned against his king. In a secret understanding with Heraclius he held his powerful army aloof from the final catastrophe, helping seal Khosrow's doom. In the chaos after the war he briefly seized the Sasanian throne himself in 630, only to be murdered after a reign of just forty days — a fitting end to an age of treachery and collapse.

"The armies of the King of Kings shall water their horses in the Bosphorus."

One of Khosrow's two great commanders alongside Shahrbaraz, the general Shahin drove the Persian conquests through Asia Minor, reaching the shores of the Bosporus opposite Constantinople in 615 and again taking part in the campaigns that nearly extinguished Byzantium. For years he carried the Sasanian banner deeper into Roman territory than any Persian army had gone in centuries. But when Heraclius launched his counteroffensive, Shahin was outgeneralled and defeated in the Caucasus and Armenia. According to tradition, the enraged Khosrow so abused the beaten general — or his memory — that it deepened the disaffection of the Persian nobility. His defeats marked the turning of the tide, and he died, by some accounts of despair, as the war swung against Persia.

"The City of the Virgin shall not fall."

The Patriarch of Constantinople and Heraclius's closest ally, Sergius was the spiritual architect of Byzantine survival. He helped fund the war effort by placing the treasures of the Church at the emperor's disposal, and he supplied the ideology that transformed a losing war into a righteous holy war for the recovery of the True Cross and the defence of Christendom. His supreme moment came in 626, when — with Heraclius far away — the Avars and Persians besieged Constantinople. Sergius rallied the terrified population, parading an icon of the Virgin along the walls and leading the defence with prayer and processions; the city's deliverance was credited to the Virgin's protection, celebrated ever after in the famous hymn the Akathist. He effectively governed the capital in the emperor's absence, and his partnership with Heraclius was central to the empire's improbable victory.

"Thou art just, O Lord, and just is thy judgement."

A capable soldier-emperor, Maurice stabilised the eastern frontier and, in a fateful act of statesmanship, intervened in a Persian civil war to restore the young Khosrow II to his throne — winning peace and an ally, and briefly ending the long Roman–Persian wars. He was an able administrator and military reformer, credited with the influential treatise on strategy, the Strategikon. But his attempts to economise on the army provoked a mutiny, and in 602 the soldiers proclaimed the centurion Phocas emperor. Maurice was captured and, with his sons killed before his eyes, brutally executed — reportedly meeting his death with pious resignation. His murder shattered the peace with Persia, for Khosrow declared war to avenge the emperor who had once saved him, unleashing the last great Roman–Persian war.

"Rule better, if thou canst."

A low-ranking centurion raised to the purple by a mutinous army, Phocas seized the throne by murdering Maurice in 602 and presided over eight years of catastrophe. Cruel, unpopular, and out of his depth, his reign saw the Persians overrun the eastern provinces, revolts and terror at home, and the empire slide toward collapse. His usurpation gave Khosrow the pretext for war, and his misrule left the empire unable to resist the Persian onslaught. In 610 the young Heraclius sailed from Africa to overthrow him; deserted by all, Phocas was captured, reportedly reviled by Heraclius and defiantly answering that his successor would rule no better, and then executed and dismembered. He is remembered as one of the most disastrous of all Byzantine emperors.

"Let there be peace, and let my father answer for his cruelties."

A son of Khosrow II, Kavad II (Sheroe) led the coup of the disaffected nobility that overthrew his father as the war collapsed in 628. He at once made peace with Heraclius on humiliating terms, evacuating all the conquered Roman lands and returning the True Cross, to salvage what he could of a ruined Persia. To secure his shaky throne he had all his brothers and rival princes massacred — and then, within months of his accession, died in the great plague that swept Persia, leaving no capable heir. His brief, bloody reign plunged the Sasanian Empire into a chaotic civil war, with a rapid succession of ephemeral rulers, that left it fatally weakened and utterly unprepared for the Arab armies that would destroy it within fifteen years.