During the tenth century, the port and palace, then called Bucoleon, received special marks of Imperial favour. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, noted for his devotion to the Fine Arts, adorned the quay of the harbour with figures of animals, brought from various parts of the Empire.[[1035]] Possibly, the group of the Lion and the Bull was placed there by him. He also attached a fishpond to the palace.
Later, Nicephorus Phocas added a villa, which he made his usual place of residence.[[1036]] It was probably the building with the row of three windows, supported by a lion at either end. A still more important change was introduced by the same emperor. His austere character, and the heavy taxes he imposed for the maintenance of the army, made him exceedingly unpopular, notwithstanding his eminent services as the conqueror of the Saracens. So strong did the hostile feeling against him become, that, returning once from a visit to the Holy Spring of the Pegè, he was mobbed at the Forum of Constantine, and narrowly escaped being stoned to death before he could reach the palace.[[1037]] Rumours of a plot to dethrone and kill him were also in circulation. He therefore decided to convert the Great Palace into a fortress, and to provision it with everything requisite to withstand a siege.[[1038]]
Accordingly, he surrounded the grounds of the Imperial residence with a strong and lofty wall, which described a great arc from the neighbourhood of Ahour Kapoussi on the east to Tchatlady Kapou on the west, and thus cut off the palace from the rest of the city.[[1039]] Luitprand,[[1040]] who saw the wall soon after its erection, says of it: “The palace at Constantinople surpasses in beauty and strength any fortifications that I have ever seen.” Within this wall the Palace of Bucoleon was, of course, included.
Labarte[[1041]] and Schlumberger[[1042]] maintain, indeed, that Nicephorus surrounded the Palace of Bucoleon with special works of defence, and constituted it a citadel within the fortifications of the Great Palace. But Leo Diaconus, Cedrenus and Zonaras, our authorities on the subject, make no such statement.[[1043]]
Ruins of the Palace of Hormisdas.
As might be expected, historical events of considerable importance transpired at the Port and the Palace of the Bucoleon.
Here, in 919, Romanus Lecapenus, admiral of the fleet, made the naval demonstration which compelled Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus to accept him as a colleague, and to surrender the administration of affairs into his hands.[[1044]]
It was here that the memorable conspiracy against Nicephorus Phocas was carried out, in 969, by John Zimisces, with the connivance of the Empress Theophano.[[1045]] Under cover of the night, the conspirators embarked at Chalcedon, the residence of Zimisces at the time, and in the teeth of a strong north wind, and with snow falling heavily, crossed to the Bucoleon. A low whistle announced their arrival to their accomplices, who were watching on the terrace of the palace; and in response, a basket held fast by ropes was stealthily lowered and raised, again and again, until one by one all in the boat were lifted to the summit. The last to ascend was Zimisces himself. Then the traitors made for the apartment in which they expected to find the emperor. Nicephorus, who had received some intimation of the plot, was not in his usual chamber, and the conspirators, fearing they had been betrayed, were about to leap into the sea and make their escape, when a eunuch appeared and guided them to the room in which the doomed sovereign lay fast asleep on the floor, on a leopard’s skin, and covered with a scarlet woollen blanket. Not to spare their victim a single pang, they first awakened the slumberer, and then assailed him with their swords as he prayed, “Lord, have mercy upon me.” As if to add irony to the event, Nicephorus met his fate, it is said, on the very day on which the fortifications around the palace were completed. After this, guards were stationed, at night, on the quay of the Harbour of the Bucoleon, to warn off boats that approached the shore.[[1046]]
From this point, Alexius Comnenus entered the Great Palace, after the deposition of Nicephorus Botoniates; leaving his young wife and her immediate relatives in the residence by the shore, while he himself, with the members of his own family, proceeded to the higher palace (τὸ ὑπερκείμενον παλάτιον).[[1047]] Here, also, in 1170, Amaury, King of Jerusalem, landed on the occasion of his visit to Manuel Comnenus, to seek the emperor’s aid against Saladin. Access to the palace by this landing, says William of Tyre,[[1048]] in his account of that visit, was reserved, as a rule, for the emperor exclusively. But it was granted to Amaury as a special honour, and here he was welcomed by the great officers of the palace, and then conducted through galleries and halls of wonderful variety of style, to the palace on an eminence, where Manuel and the great dignitaries of State awaited the arrival of the king.