Anastasios II

Anastasius II
A coin of Anastasios II
Emperor of the Byzantine Empire
Reign	3 June 713– November 715
Predecessor	Philippikos Bardanes
Successor	Theodosius III
Died	November 719

Anastasius (Greek: Ἀρτέμιος Ἀναστάσιος Β΄), known in English as Anastasios II or Anastasius II (died 719), was the Byzantine Emperor from 713 to 715.

Anastasios was originally named Artemius (Ἀρτέμιος) and had served as a bureaucrat and Imperial secretary (asekretis) for his predecessors. After the Opsician army in Thrace had overthrown Emperor Philippikos Bardanes (Philippicus), they acclaimed Artemius as Emperor. He chose Anastasius as his regnal name. Soon after his accession, Anastasius II imposed discipline on the army and executed those officers who had been directly involved in the conspiracy against Philippikos.

Anastasios upheld the decisions of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and deposed the Monothelete Patriarch John VI of Constantinople, replacing him with the orthodox Patriarch Germanus in 715. This also put an end to the short-lived local schism with the Catholic Church.

The advancing Umayyad Caliphate surrounded the Empire by land and sea (they penetrated as far as Galatia in 714), and Anastasios attempted to restore peace by diplomatic means. His emissaries having failed in Damascus, he undertook the restoration of Constantinople's walls and the rebuilding of the Roman fleet. However, the death of the Caliph al-Walid I in 715 gave Anastasius an opportunity to turn the tables on his rival. He dispatched an army under Leo the Isaurian, afterwards emperor, to invade Syria, and he had his fleet concentrate on Rhodes with orders not only to resist the approach of the enemy but to destroy their naval stores.