Constantine Podopagouros (; died 25 August 766) was a high-ranking

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

official and, with his brother Strategios, leader of a conspiracy against Emperor

Constantine V Constantine V (; July 718 – 14 September 775) was Byzantine emperor from 741 to 775. His reign saw a consolidation of Byzantine security from external threats. As an able military leader, Constantine took advantage of Third Fitna, civil war ...

(). "Podopagouros" is a

sobriquet A sobriquet ( ) is a descriptive nickname, sometimes assumed, but often given by another. A sobriquet is distinct from a pseudonym in that it is typically a familiar name used in place of a real name without the need for explanation; it may beco ...

that means "crabfoot". Very little is known about his life and career other than his involvement in the conspiracy against the emperor, which came to light in the summer of 766. According to

Theophanes the Confessor Theophanes the Confessor (; 759 – 817 or 818) was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy who became a monk and chronicler. He served in the court of Emperor Leo IV the Khazar before taking up the religious life. Theophanes attended the Second C ...

, Constantine was then and . Constantine and his brother, who at the time was commander of the elite (guard regiment) of the Exkoubitores, were the leaders of the conspiracy which, according to Theophanes, included nineteen high-ranking officials in total, including several senior provincial governors (). After the plot's discovery, the conspirators were publicly paraded and humiliated at the

Hippodrome of Constantinople The Hippodrome of Constantinople (; ; ) was a Roman circus, circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square in Istanbul, Turkey, known as Sultanahmet Square (). The word ...

on 25 August 766, following which Strategios and Constantine were beheaded at the Kynegion, while the others were blinded and exiled. A few days later, the Eparch of the City Prokopios was also dismissed, followed by the deposition and exile of Patriarch Constantine II, after he was implicated by some clergymen in the conspiracy. In his chronicle, Theophanes portrays the conspiracy as part of a reaction against Constantine V's iconoclast policies, stating that some of the conspirators were adherents of the

iconophile Iconodulism (also iconoduly or iconodulia) designates the religious service to icons (kissing and honourable veneration, incense, and candlelight). The term comes from Neoclassical Greek εἰκονόδουλος (''eikonodoulos'') (from – ''i ...

hermit Stephen the Younger of Mount Auxentios, whom the emperor had had publicly humiliated and executed the previous November. Modern scholarship on the other hand is not as clear as to the motivations of the emperor, i.e. whether the death of Stephen, or the humiliation and blinding of seventeen of the nineteen officials and other acts of persecution was due to his hardening stance against iconophile sentiment, or had political motives as a reaction to plots against his life (in which Stephen too may have been implicated).

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Podopagouros, Constantine 766 deaths 8th-century Byzantine people Byzantine officials Executed Byzantine people Patricii Byzantine Iconoclasm 8th-century births 8th-century executions by the Byzantine Empire People executed by decapitation