Inscription in Honour Of the Emperor Theophilus. (See page [183].)
Inscription in Honour Of the Emperor Isaac Angelus. (See page [132].)
What they had most reason to dread was the open sea upon whose margin they stood, its ceaseless, unwearied sap and mine of their foundations, and the furious assaults of its angry waves. This explains some peculiarities noticeable in their construction. The line of their course, for instance, was extremely irregular, turning in and out with every bend of the shore, to present always as short and sharp a front as possible to the waves that dashed against them. They were protected, moreover, by a breakwater of loose boulders,[[885]] scattered in the sea along their base. And the extent to which marble shafts were built, as bonds, into the lower courses of the walls and towers was, doubtless, another precaution adopted to maintain the stability of these fortifications. A large portion of these walls is built in arches closed on their outer face, and seems to be the work of a late age.
The walls had at least thirteen entrances.
The first gate, Top Kapoussi, a short distance to the south of the apex of the promontory, was known as the Gate of St. Barbara (ἡ τῆς μάρτυρος Βαρβάρας καλουμένη Πύλη),[[886]] after a church of that dedication in the vicinity; the presence of a sanctuary consecrated to the patroness of fire-arms at this point being explained by the fact that the Mangana, or great military arsenal of the city, stood a little to the south of the gate.
The gate was guarded also on the north-west, by the Church of St. Demetrius, another military saint, and was therefore sometimes styled by the Greeks, after the Turkish Conquest, the Gate of St. Demetrius.[[887]] It was likewise known as the Eastern Gate,[[888]] owing to its position on the eastern shore of the city.
Here, probably, stood one of the gates of old Byzantium; for when the city was occupied by the Greeks under Xenophon, the Spartan admiral, Anaxibius, escaped to the Acropolis by taking boat in the Golden Horn, and rounding the promontory to the side facing Chalcedon.[[889]] The pier in front of the gate was called the Pier of the Acropolis (ἡ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως σκάλα);[[890]] and for the convenience of the boatmen and sailors frequenting it, a chapel of St. Nicholas, their patron saint, was attached to the Church of St. Barbara.[[891]]
According to the inscriptions[[892]] found upon the gate, it was included in the repairs of the seaward walls in the reign of Theophilus. As became its important position, it was a handsome portal, flanked, like the Golden Gate, by two large towers of white marble,[[893]] and beside it, if not in it, Nicephorus Phocas placed the beautiful gates which he carried away from Tarsus as trophies of his Cilician campaigns.[[894]] On two occasions it served as a triumphal entrance into the city, John Comnenus using it for that purpose in 1126, to celebrate the capture of Castamon;[[895]] and Manuel Comnenus in 1168, on his return from the Hungarian War.[[896]] In 1816 the towers of the gate furnished material for the Marble Kiosk which Sultan Mahmoud IV. erected in the neighbourhood;[[897]] and in 1871 the gate disappeared during the construction of the Roumelian railway.
Proceeding southwards from the Gate of St. Barbara, we reach the entrance known as Deïrmen Kapoussi. It is clearly Byzantine, but its Greek name is lost.