This conclusion, based on the narrative of Cantacuzene, is corroborated by the indications which Nicephorus Gregoras[[1154]] furnishes regarding the site of the Neorion. The events which transpired, according to the former historian, at the Neorion at the Heptascalon, or the Neorion of the Byzantines, took place, according to the latter, in the Harbour of the Byzantines, or, more definitely, “the Harbour of the Byzantines facing the east” (τοῦ τῶν Βυζαντίων λιμένος, τοῦ πρὸς ἒω βλέποντος).[[1155]] That the expression “facing the east” denoted the shore of the city facing the Sea of Marmora and the Asiatic coast is manifest, from the use which Nicephorus Gregoras makes of that expression in other passages of his work. The Golden Gate, which stands near the Sea of Marmora, on what would generally be described as the southern shore of the city, stood, according to him, near the city’s eastern shore.[[1156]] Again, the gale from the south, which damaged the city fortifications along the Sea of Marmora in the year 1341, assailed, he says, the eastern walls of the capital.[[1157]] This way of speaking, if not strictly accurate, is justified by the fact that extensive portions of the city beside the Sea of Marmora face east or south-east.
Nor is this all. The harbour in question, adds Nicephorus Gregoras,[[1158]] stood where the walls of the city were protected by boulders; ships issuing from it, in a south wind, could readily make the Bosporus;[[1159]] while ships proceeding from the Bosporus to the harbour passed Chalcedon on the left, and could be watched from Chalcedon, upon their arrival at their destination.[[1160]]
Such facts, we repeat, hold good only of a harbour situated on the shore of the city beside the Sea of Marmora.
It being thus proved that the Harbour of Kaisarius and the Neorion at the Heptascalon were situated on the Marmora side of the city, we return to the question, whether they have disappeared, or were different names for one or other of the harbours already identified.
So far as room for harbours additional to those already identified is concerned, such room could be found only in the level ground at the foot of the Third Hill, extending from the Kontoscalion at Koum Kapoussi to the Harbour of Theodosius at Vlanga, points some 910 yards apart. An additional harbour elsewhere was impossible, owing to the character of the coast. Accordingly, if the Harbour of Kaisarius and the Neorion at the Heptascalon cannot be identified with one or other of the well-known harbours on the Sea of Marmora, they must have been situated between Koum Kapoussi and Vlanga.
So far as the Harbour of Kaisarius is concerned, it could not have been another name for the Harbour of the Bucoleon, or the Harbour of Julian and Sophia, or the Harbour of the Golden Gate. For, as John of Antioch[[1161]] makes perfectly clear in his account of the defence of the city by Phocas against Heraclius, the Harbour of Kaisarius was situated in the same general district as the two former harbours, and to the west of them. Nor can the Harbour of Kaisarius be identified with the Harbour of Theodosius, inasmuch as the latter had been filled in and abandoned[[1162]] before the reigns of Phocas and Constantine IV., in the seventh century, when the Harbour of Kaisarius was still one of the principal ports on the southern coast of the city.[[1163]]
The Harbour of Kaisarius must, therefore, have been either the Kontoscalion, at Koum Kapoussi, or another harbour between that gate and Vlanga. To suppose that it was the Kontoscalion, under an earlier name, is possible, since the name Kontoscalion, we have seen,[[1164]] appears for the first time in the eleventh century. Still the circumstance that a fire which started beside the Harbour of Kaisarius extended to the Forum of the Ox (ἕως τοῦ Βοός),[[1165]] situated at Ak Serai far up the valley that runs northwards from Yeni Kapou, suggests a situation nearer Vlanga.
Turning, next, to the Neorion at the Heptascalon, it could, obviously, not be the Harbour of the Bucoleon, attached to the Imperial Palace; nor the Harbour of the Golden Gate, which was beyond the city limits; nor the Harbour of Theodosius, which had been filled in long before the reign of Cantacuzene, and which in 1400 and 1422, dates respectively not fifty and seventy years after that emperor’s reign, is described as a garden.[[1166]] The Neorion at the Heptascalon, therefore, must have been either the Harbour of Julian and Sophia, or the Kontoscalion, or an additional harbour between Koum Kapoussi and Vlanga. One objection to the first supposition is that the Harbour of Julian and Sophia was so notoriously known under its own special name, that reference to it by another designation is extremely improbable. Another objection is that the indications respecting the site of St. Acacius at the Heptascalon, however vague their character, furnish no ground for believing that the church stood in the vicinity of the Harbour of Julian and Sophia, but support, rather, the opinion that it stood in the neighbourhood of Boudroum Djamissi, in the quarter of Laleli Hamam, situated to the north-west of Koum Kapoussi.[[1167]]
The supposition that the Neorion at the Heptascalon was the same as the Kontoscalion is open to objections equally, if not more, serious. The identity of the two harbours is inconsistent with the fact that the two names occur in the writings of the same author, Cantacuzene,[[1168]] in the same section of his work, in passages not widely separated and treating of kindred matters, without the slightest hint that under the different names he refers to the same thing. The natural impression made by the use of the two names in such a way is that they denote different things. Then, there is an opposition between the respective meanings of the two names, which makes their application to the same object incompatible; a harbour distinguished by a short pier cannot also be a harbour distinguished by seven piers. In the next place, the different accounts which Cantacuzene gives of the condition of the two harbours in his reign imply that he is not speaking of the same port. He refers to the Kontoscalion,[[1169]] in 1348, without a note of disparagement, as a harbour in which he constructed several large triremes for the increase of his fleet; while he describes the Neorion at the Heptascalon,[[1170]] only three years later, as a harbour which had long been neglected, which was full of silt, and which he restored at great expense, for the public advantage, on a scale which entitled it to be styled the New Neorion.[[1171]]
And just as all that Cantacuzene states regarding the two harbours implies that they were different, so does the language of Nicephorus Gregoras. When the latter writer alludes to the Kontoscalion, he describes it as the harbour near the Hippodrome;[[1172]] when he alludes to the Neorion at the Heptascalon, he describes it as the harbour facing the east.[[1173]] Different marks are generally employed to distinguish different objects.[[1174]] This being so, the unavoidable conclusion is that the Neorion at the Heptascalon was a harbour situated between Koum Kapoussi and Yeni Kapou, the only possible situation for an additional harbour.