CHAPTER LVII.
[(1.)] “Pera, which the Greeks call Kalathan, and the Infidels call it the same.”—The Genoese were already established at Constantinople when Manuel I. ascended the throne (1143). Besides the emporium of Copario in the city of Constantinople, they possessed Orcu in the suburb of Galata (Heyd, Le Colonie Commer., etc., i, 330; Desimone, I Genovesi, etc., 217 et seq.), which they occupied during the reign of the Angelos dynasty, remaining there so long as the Latin Empire lasted, but without ever successfully rivalling the Venetians. After the restoration of the Greek Empire at Constantinople by Michel VIII. in 1261, their fortunes changed in consequence of the great privileges that were accorded to them by the emperor, which included the cession of the suburb of Galata, soon to become the central depôt of all their settlements in Greece, on the shores of the Black Sea and of the Sea of Azoff, a transfer which probably accounts for the appearance of “Mæotis palus, nunc Galatia”, in the list of new names supplied by Codinus (Hieroclis Synecdemus, etc., 313).
Notwithstanding the rivalry of the Venetians, who in 1296 even seized upon Galata, or Pera as the colony was usually called by the Latins, and their frequent quarrels with the Greeks, the commercial prosperity of the Genoese settlement went on increasing until about the middle of the 14th century, when the Customs dues amounted to 200,000 hyperperes, those at Constantinople scarcely reaching the sum of 30,000 hyperperes (Niceph. Greg., ii, 842). This “State within a State”, no doubt excited the cupidity of the Turks after their assumption of power in Europe, and the removal of the sultan’s residence to Adrianople; but the Genoese succeeded for a time in averting the threatening danger by making numerous concessions, as appears by the treaty of commerce concluded by them in 1387 with Murad I., whose successor, Bajazet, lay siege to Constantinople. This monarch, however, was constrained to turn his arms against Timour, and the capital was spared the horrors of a longer siege. The battle of Angora, so fatal to the Ottoman power, delayed for a few decades only the fall of the Greek Empire and the disappearance of the Genoese.—Bruun.
[(2.)] “caused two seas to flow into each other.”—“La formation et l’origine du Bosphore de Thrace,” says Vivien de Saint-Martin (Desc. de l’A. M., ii, 469), “ont donné lieu, chez les anciens comme chez les modernes, aux hypothèses les plus aventureuses, jeux hardis de l’imagination basés sur de vieilles traditions de convulsions et de cataclysmes; les observations de la géologie moderne sont venues anéantir ces systèmes d’époques moins rigoureuses, en démontrant que les terrains de nature différente qui constituent les deux côtés du détroit, n’ont jamais pu être produit par un déchirement, et qu’il existe de toute nécessité depuis l’origine même des choses.” Other authors, including some philologists (Menn, in Jahresbericht über d. Gymn. u. d. Realschule zu Neuss, 1854, 18), think otherwise, so that we need not be surprised if the sages at Constantinople also differed in opinion, or that the people there should have included the cutting of the strait among the exploits of Alexander.—Bruun.
[(3.)] “Troya, on a fine plain, and one can still see where the city stood.”—The ruins of the city of Priam did not exist in Schiltberger’s time any more than they do now; but in the absence of the material vestiges that Lechevalier and other travellers, his successors, believed they found beneath the surface of the earth, there is Homer’s admirable description, precise as that of the most accurate geographer, and which restores to us the primitive map of the Trojan plain. I am here under the necessity of quoting at some length, a passage from Vivien de Saint-Martin’s Description de l’Asie Mineur, 489:—“Dès que l’on accepte le plateau de Bounar-Bachi” (a name, says this author, derived from two sources of the Scamander) “comme l’emplacement de la Troie homérique, les indications circonstanciées et si nombreuses que fournit le Poète sur les localités environnantes, viennent s’adapter d’elles-mêmes an terrain actuel.” “Une ville de fondation éolienne qui usurpe le nom d’Ilion, et qui par la suite des temps et d’obscurité des traditions, prétendit occuper l’emplacement même de la cité de Priam, s’était élevée sur une autre éminence éloignée d’une lieue vers le Nord, et située non plus sur la gauche, mais sur la rive droite du Simoïs. Cette ville est l’Ilium des siècles postérieurs, l’Ilium Recens; et lorsque les poètes ou les historiens de l’époque romaine parlent du berceau de leur race, c’est toujours à cette Ilium éolienne qu’il faut rapporter leurs allusions et leurs descriptions, car le site réel de l’Ilium primitive était dès lors oublié. La nouvelle Ilium est maintenant ruinée, comme l’Ilium homérique; près de l’éminence isolée qu’elle occupa, on trouve aujourd’hui le village Turc de Tchiblak.”
The ruins near the sea and at no great distance from Constantinople, believed by Schiltberger to have been those of the royal city, must have been the remains of Alexandria Troas opposite the island of Tenedos. It was there that the Russian pilgrim Daniel, and the author’s contemporaries, the archdeacon Zosimus and Clavijo, thought they saw the ruins of Troy, as was the case one hundred years later, 1547, with the French traveller Belon, who landed that he might examine them with the greater facility. At the base of a small hillock, but within the circuit of the walls of the city, were some ancient arches and the remains of two palaces in marble (Obs. de plusieurs singularités trouvées en Grèce, en Asie, etc.; in Saint-Martin, ii, 8). Belon passes lightly over the difficulty he experienced in not finding near this, the supposed site of the Homeric city, the two rivers Simoïs and Xanthus.
The honorary president of the Geographical Society at Paris has lately sought to prove, that the city of Priam should be looked for where Lechevalier conceived it to be, that is to say, at Bunarbashí, whence Dr. Schliemann believes he is justified in removing it to the neighbourhood of Ilium Recens or Hissarlik, as the result of the successful explorations conducted by himself with the assistance of his wife. Although some English and most German authorities applaud the zeal with which his work was performed, and the great importance of his discoveries to students of archæology, all are not so readily persuaded that the question of the position of Ilium is solved, seeing that the topographical details, as we receive them from Homer, are drawn from the imagination of the poet, rather than after the reality.—Bruun.
[(4.)] “for all [kinds of] pastime that might be desired in front of the palace.”—The games, chiefly of Eastern origin, that were held in the open space in front of the imperial residence, are mentioned by various authors. It will here suffice to quote from the writings of a predecessor of Schiltberger, and of one who followed after him.
When Edrisi visited Constantinople, circa 1161, sports were held in the hippodrome, which he considered the most marvellous in the universe. It had to be passed before reaching the palace, an edifice unequalled in its proportions and in the beauty of its construction (Jaubert edition, 297). Bertrandon de la Brocquière, 1432 (Early Travels in Palestine, Bohn edition, 1848), thus describes one of the sports he witnessed in the large and handsome square in front of St. Sophia: “I saw the brother of the emperor, the despot of the Morea, exercise himself with a score of other horsemen. Each had a bow, and they gallopped along the enclosure throwing their hats before them, which, when they had passed, they shot at; and he who with his arrow pierced the hat or was nearest to it, was esteemed the most expert.”—Ed.
[(5.)] “he has no longer that power, so the apple has disappeared.”—Stephen of Novgorod (Pout. Rouss. loud., ii, 14), a pilgrim passing through Constantinople about the year 1350, certifies that the emperor held in his hand a kind of golden apple surmounted by a cross. Clavijo says the “pella redonda dorada” was in its place, and so, we may conclude, was the cross; because in 1420, Zosimus (Pout. Rouss. loud., ii, 38) saw the cross on the apple that was in the emperor’s hand; it is probable, therefore, that these insignias were removed between the years 1420–1427, at which latter date Schiltberger spent some months at Constantinople after his escape from bondage.
A short time before the author’s arrival in the city of the Cæsars, the aged Manuel died (1425), and John, his son and successor, was forced to sign a treaty of peace with the Turks, the conditions being of the most onerous nature; for he was deprived of all his possessions with the exception of the capital, the appanages in the Morea of the Greek princes, and a few fortresses on the shores of the Black Sea (Zinkeisen, Gesch. d. O. R., i, 533); he also covenanted to pay the sultan an annual tribute of 300,000 aspres, and to make him numerous presents of great value as a mark of personal regard. In such circumstances the unfortunate monarch must have been under the necessity of laying hands upon all the gold he could come across, and Schiltberger’s bon mot on the disappearance of the apple together with the emperor’s power, might be taken literally.
Zosimus relates that the statue which held the apple was distant an arrow’s flight from the hippodrome, doubtlessly the “fine square for tilting”, now known as the Meïdan. The magnificent palace wherein receptions were held, and that excited the admiration of Schiltberger, must have been the Boukoleon and Daphna which adjoined the hippodrome (Dethier, Der Bosphor und Constantinopel, Wien, 1873, 22). This edifice was greatly neglected during the reigns of the last of the Palæologi, and after his conquest of Constantinople, Mahomet II. ordered its complete destruction.
The other palace noticed was the Blackernes, in which Clavijo (Hakluyt Soc. Publ. 29) was received by the emperor Manuel. Near it, Bertrandon de la Brocquière found a “fausse braie d’un bon et haut mur en avant du fossé, qui était en glacis excepté dans un espace de deux cents pas à l’une de ses extrémités près du palais”. This must have been the place where Schiltberger saw a “getüll.”[1]—Bruun.
(5A.) The statement that the statue was placed on a pillar is corroborated by Cedrenus in his Chronicles, and in the Annals of Zonaras, in which works we find it stated that the great pillar Augusteon was erected in the fifteenth year of the reign of Justinian, the statue being placed on it two years later. When Bertrandon de la Brocquière saw the equestrian statue, which he inadvertently calls that of Constantine, it grasped a sceptre in the left hand. Pierre Gilles, the naturalist and author, sent to the Levant by Francis I. of France, found portions of this statue in the melting house where ordnance were cast, it having been overturned and destroyed in 1523 (Antiquities of Constantinople, London, 1729); or in 1525, according to the anonymous author of the Constantiniade. The proportions were colossal, for the leg exceeded the height of a man, and the nose was nine inches in length, as were also the hoofs of the horse. Gilles represents that the statue, which was made of brass, faced the East, as if the emperor was marching against the Persians; the right arm was stretched out, and in the left hand was a globe to signify universal power over the whole world, all success in war being attributed to the cross fixed on the top. He was dressed like Achilles, in a coat of mail and shining helmet.
It is certain that the globe and cross disappeared fully one hundred years before the arrival at Constantinople of Gilles, whose detailed description of the statue must have reference to its original condition.—Ed.
[1]See [page 84.]