Constans alienates Pope Vitalian in 668 by declaring Ravenna independent.

His plans to make the city a permanent capital and a strategic center for the defense of the West against the Arabs are cut short by his assassination at the baths of Daphne on September 15, thus ending the career of the last of Constantinople’s emperors to venture into the West.

In the absence of the sons of Constans II, the imperial general Mezezius is proclaimed Emperor by the army in Syracuse and reigns in Sicily for a few months.

When the news of the assassination of Constans reached his son Constantine IV in Constantinople, an expedition had been sent to depose and kill Mezezius.

His court is deported in 669 to Constantinople.