Page "Phocas" Paragraph 5

The Church needed money to pay for hospitals, maternities, orphanotrophies – all social infrastructures that the state had left to the clergy.

Phocas faced great opposition and was regarded by many as a " populist ".

His coup d ' état was the first violent regime change in Constantinople since its foundation by Constantine.

He is reported to have responded to this opposition with cruelty, allegedly killing thousands in an effort to keep control of the government.

This was probably an exaggeration.

No histories actually written under Phocas survive, and thus we are dependent for information on historians writing under his successors, who had an interest in blackening Phocas ' reputation.