Three sources of strength will enable Heraclius…
621 CE
Three sources of strength will enable Heraclius to turn defeat into victory.
The first is the pattern of military government as he and the nucleus of his army know it in the exarchates of North Africa or Ravenna.
As it had been in the West, so it now is in the East.
Civil problems are inseparable from the military: Heraclius cannot hope to dispense justice, collect taxes, protect the church, and assure the future to his dynasty unless military power reinforces his orders.
A system of military government, the exarchate, has accomplished these objectives so well in the West that, in a moment of despair, Heraclius seeks to return to the land of his origins.
In all likelihood, he applies similar principles of military rule to his possessions throughout Asia Minor, granting his generals (strategoi) both civil and military authority over those lands that they occupy with their “themes,” as the army groups, or corps, are called in the first years of the seventh century.
Second, during the social upheaval of the previous decade, the imperial treasury had doubtless seized the estates of prominent individuals who had been executed either during Phocas' reign of terror or after his death.
In consequence, though the treasury lacks money, it nonetheless possesses land in abundance, and Heraclius can easily support with grants of land those cavalry soldiers whose expenses in horses and armament he cannot hope to meet with cash.
If this hypothesis is correct, then, even before 622, themes, or army groups—including the guards (Opsikioi), the Armenians (Armeniakoi), and the Easterners (Anatolikoi)—are given lands and settled throughout Asia Minor in so permanent a fashion that, before the century is out, the lands occupied by these themes will identified by the names of those who occupy them.
The Opsikioi are to be found in the Opsikion theme, the Armeniakoi in the Armeniakon, and the Anatolikoi in the Anatolikon.
The term theme will cease hereafter to identify an army group and describe instead the medieval Greek imperial unit of local administration, the theme under the authority of the themal commander, the general (strategos).
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