Phocas, a common soldier who raised himself by the aid of a faction to the throne of the East, and for twenty years defied attempts to dethrone him, but, being deserted by his party, was taken, subjected to torture, and beheaded in 610. “His reign,” says Gibbon, “afflicted Europe with ignominious peace, and Asia with desolating war.”
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Phlogiston * Phocion