It is impossible to verify the origins and place of birth of John George Heracleus Basilicos; in his surviving documents there are no mentions of his native land.
[2] It is probable that Heracleus' first name, John, was not his genuine name and that he had instead assumed it according to the usual practice of the rulers of the Romanian principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia).
[3] In documents from 1573 onwards, Heracleus is consistently called just "John George Heracleo"[2] or variations thereof, such as the Italian "Joan Georgio Heraclio".
[5] The contemporary political situation in the Balkans, and Moldavia specifically, with confusion in regards to lines of successions and frequent interference by external powers, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, Poland or Russia, encouraged the hopes of ambitious adventurers with only questionable connections to actual ruling families.
On that day, he managed to recruit four Greek witnesses (including an Orthodox priest) to declare before the apostolic notary Reynero Borman that Heracleus had once been Prince of Wallachia and that he was the nephew of Iacob Heraclid.
[2] In a July 1570 letter, Heracleus instead referred to his father simply as "Jovanni" and titled him "King of Serbia and Prince of the Peloponnese".
[2] On 28 September 1570, Heracleus, in Genoa at the time, wrote a letter to Alvise I Mocenigo, Doge of Venice, offering assistance in defending Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire[4] as part of the ongoing Fourth Ottoman–Venetian War.
[10] In this letter, he styled himself as ex genere imperatorum Flaviorum Augustorum Romanorum moxque Constantinopolitanorum, Dei gratia restaurator ac magnus Magister equitum Sancti Georgii, totius Græciæ succesor, rex Peloponensis, Moldaviæ, Vallachiæ, etc..[11] On 30 November 1573,[10] Heracleus succeeded in garnering a sparse monthly pension from Philip II of Spain.
[8] In his 1583 legal process, Heracleus used the style "Prince of the Morea, Despot of Moldavia, King of Macedonia and Albania" as well as "Grand Master of the Order of Saint George".
In these documents, the now quite aged Heracleus petitioned for increasing his pension since the current amount, 25 gold escudos, was not enough to support his poor family in Naples.