As to the transformation of Neorion into Horaia, it seems somewhat far-fetched; still, Greeks think it conceivable.[[794]] If both names, indeed, belonged to the gate, a simpler and more probable explanation of the fact would be that the two names had no connection with each other, and that the epithet “Beautiful” was bestowed upon the entrance, towards the close of the Empire, in view of embellishments made in the course of repairs.
The identification of the Gate of the Neorion with the Horaia Pylè involves, however, a difficulty. It makes Ducas contradict other historians, as regards the point to which the southern end of the chain across the Golden Horn was attached during the siege of 1453.
According to Ducas,[[795]] that extremity of the chain was fastened to the Beautiful Gate. Critobulus,[[796]] on the other hand, affirms that it was attached to the Gate of Eugenius (Yali Kiosk Kapoussi), the gate nearest the head of the promontory, and his statement is supported by Phrantzes[[797]] and Chalcocondylas,[[798]] when they, respectively, say that the chain was at the harbour’s mouth, and fixed to the wall of the Acropolis. Now, the correctness of the position assigned to the chain by the three latter historians cannot be called in question. It was the position prescribed for the chain by all the rules of strategy. To have placed the chain at the Gate of the Neorion would have left a large portion of the northern side of the city exposed to the enemy, and permitted the Turkish fleet to command the Neorion and the ships stationed before it. Hence the accuracy of Ducas can be maintained only by the identification of the Beautiful Gate with the Gate of Eugenius instead of with the Gate of the Neorion.
We are, therefore, confronted with the question whether the historian is mistaken as regards the gate to which the city end of the chain was attached, or whether the view prevalent in Constantinople in the sixteenth century respecting the position of the Horaia Pylè should be rejected as unfounded.
In favour of the accuracy of Ducas, it must be admitted that his statements concerning the Horaia Pylè, in other passages of his work, convey the impression that under that name he refers to the entrance nearest the head of the promontory, the Gate of Eugenius (Yali Kiosk Kapoussi). Speaking of the arrangements made for the defence of the sea-board of the city, he describes them as extending, in the first place, from the Xylinè Porta, at the western extremity of the Harbour Walls, to the Horaia Pylè; and then from the Horaia Pylè to the Golden Gate, near the western extremity of the walls along the Sea of Marmora.[[799]] Again, when he describes the blockade of the shore of the city outside the chain by the Sultan’s fleet, he represents the blockade as commencing at the Horaia Pylè and proceeding thence past the point of the Acropolis, the Church of St. Demetrius, the Gate of the Hodegetria, the Great Palace, and the harbour (Kontoscalion), as far as Vlanga.[[800]]
Now, the gate which would naturally form the pivot, so to speak, of these operations was the Gate of Eugenius. There the two shores of the city divide; and that was the farthest point to which the Turkish fleet outside the chain could advance into the Golden Horn. It would be strange if Ducas ascribed the strategical importance of the Gate of Eugenius to another gate. And yet, it must be also admitted that Ducas can be inaccurate. He is inaccurate, for example, in the matter of the gate before which the Sultan’s tent was pitched during the siege,[[801]] and at which the Emperor Constantine fell,[[802]] for he associates these incidents with the Gate of Charisius, instead of with the Gate of St. Romanus; he is inaccurate, as we have seen, in his account of the entry of the Turks through the Kerko Porta;[[803]] and he is inaccurate, again, in saying that the ships which the Sultan carried across the hills from the Bosporus to the Golden Horn were launched into the harbour at a point opposite the Cosmidion (Eyoub),[[804]] instead of at Cassim Pasha. Under these circumstances it is impossible to maintain his accuracy as to the connection of the chain with Horaia Pylè at all hazards, and in the face of all difficulties. His credit will depend upon the value attached to the evidence we have, that the Horaia Pylè was another name for the Gate of the Neorion during the last days of Byzantine Constantinople.
The application of both names to the same gate rests upon the authority of tradition, upon the use and wont followed in the matter by the Greek population of the city in the sixteenth century. If this is really the case, no evidence can be more decisive on the question at issue. Use and wont in respect to the name of a conspicuous public gate, in a much-frequented part of the city, constitutes an irrefutable argument, provided that use and wont goes far enough back in the history of the entrance. In that case, Ducas would be convicted of having mistaken the gate to which the chain was attached, and all the importance which he ascribes to the Horaia Pylè, in his account of the actions of friends and foes along the shores of the city, is only the consistent following up of that error. For any gate to which the chain was supposed, however erroneously, to have been affixed would be represented in the narrative of subsequent events as the point about which the assault and the defence of the sea-board turned, although the gate was not situated where it could, naturally, have sustained that character.
Now, according to Gyllius,[[805]] the gate anciently styled the Gate of the Neorion was called in his day Tchifout Kapoussi (“Hebrew Gate”) by the Turks, and Horaia Pylè by the Greeks, as a matter of common practice. The brief statement of Gerlach[[806]] that the second gate west of the Seraglio Point was named at once the Beautiful Gate and the Jewish Gate implies that these were the names of the gate in current use. Leunclavius[[807]] puts the facts in a somewhat different light. According to him, the common designation of the entrance was “Huræa” (Ebraia, “Hebrew Gate”), and it was only when the Greeks of the city wished to show themselves better acquainted with the truth on the subject that they claimed for the gate the epithet “Horaia.”
This may, perhaps, excite the suspicion that the application of the epithet “Horaia” to the Gate of the Neorion, in the sixteenth century, was due to the fact that it was then known also as the Hebrew Gate (Ebraia). But, on the whole, the more probable view is that the epithet was correctly applied, and, consequently, that Ducas, who was not present at the siege, is mistaken in associating the chain with the Beautiful Gate.
In the charters defining the privileges granted to the Genoese colony in Constantinople during the twelfth century, mention is made of a “Porta Bonu” and a “Porta Veteris Rectoris.”[[808]] As both were associated with the Scala, or Pier, at the service of that colony, they were doubtless the same gate under different names; the former appellation designating it by the proper name of the officer connected in some way with the entrance, the latter by his official title. Nothing is known concerning the Rector Bonus; the name and title are at once Byzantine and Italian. Now, the Genoese quarter in the twelfth century lay to the east of the Gate of the Neorion, and consequently the Porta Bonu, or Porta Veteris Rectoris, must be sought in that direction. It stood, probably, where Sirkedji Iskelessi is now situated.