Having adopted this conclusion, it only remained for Gyllius to explain how a suburb only one mile from the city could have been styled the Hebdomon. His explanation is that the extramural territory along the Wall of Constantine had been occupied, before its enclosure within the Theodosian lines, by a series of suburbs distinguished from one another by numerals, and that the Hebdomon was so named because it was the seventh suburb in the series. This explanation he supports by pointing to the undoubted fact that one portion of that territory is frequently named the Deuteron[[1190]] by Byzantine writers. And he might have added that other portions of the territory were, respectively, styled the Triton[[1191]] and the Pempton.[[1192]]
Du Cange[[1193]] was unable to accept Gyllius’s interpretation of the phrase, Ἑβδόμῳ Μιλίῳ. He insists upon its correct and only signification; and admits that the suburb derived its name from its situation near the seventh milestone from the capital. Nevertheless he is, impossible though it may seem, in substantial agreement with Gyllius.
The fundamental thesis of Du Cange on the subject is that the term “Hebdomon” had two meanings. Strictly speaking, he grants, it meant the seventh mile; but it was also employed, he maintains, as the designation of the whole district extending between the Wall of Constantine and the seventh milestone. Hence, after the erection of the Theodosian Walls, a considerable portion of the suburb was included within the new city limits, so that the Hebdomon could very well be where Gyllius supposed it stood.
Only, while supporting Gyllius on this point, Du Cange considers that the identification of the Church of St. John at Kesmè Kaya with the Church of St. John the Baptist at the Hebdomon is a mistake. For the latter is described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus[[1194]] as without the city walls in the tenth century, and therefore never stood, like the Church of St. John at Kesmè Kaya, within the Theodosian lines. At the same time, Du Cange does not concede that the church of that dedication in the Hebdomon was near the seventh milestone. In harmony with his view regarding the extent of the area to which the term “Hebdomon” was applied, he holds that the church, though outside the Walls of Theodosius, was close to them. Du Cange differs from Gyllius also in laying great stress upon Tekfour Serai as an indication of the site of the Hebdomon, identifying that palace with the Palace of the Magnaura, one of the noted buildings of the suburb.[[1195]]
What induced Du Cange to maintain the application of the term “Hebdomon” to the whole territory extending from the seventh mile eastwards to the walls of the city was the opinion, that only thus could certain statements regarding the suburb become intelligible or credible. The statement, for instance, that the plain at the Hebdomon was “adjacent” (ἀνακείμενον)[[1196]] to the city implies, he thinks, that the plain of the Hebdomon was contiguous to the city; “quæ (vox) campus urbi adjacuisse situ prodit.” So does, he contends, the statement that the Avars, upon approaching to lay siege to the city, encamped “at what of the city is named the Hebdomon.”[[1197]] For how could an enemy besiege a city without coming close up to its walls? The consideration, however, which above everything else led Du Cange to attach a wider meaning to the term “Hebdomon” than the seventh mile, was the difficulty of believing that the great religious processions which, on the occasion of a severe earthquake, went on foot from the city to the Campus of the Hebdomon to implore Divine Mercy, walked the whole distance of seven miles on that pious errand.[[1198]]
Such a performance seemed to Du Cange, especially when the emperor and the patriarch took part in the procession, incredible; and since he could not imagine the people going to the Hebdomon, in the strict sense of the word, he made the Hebdomon come to the people, by extending the signification of the term.
But Du Cange forgets that the processions to which he refers were recognized to be extraordinary performances, even in the age in which they were undertaken; that they were acts of profoundest humiliation in view of a most awful danger; that they were deeds of penance, whereby men hoped to move the Almighty to spare His people. The distance of seven miles is not too great for men to walk in order to escape a terrible death.
At the same time, it is quite possible that the Campus of the Hebdomon extended some distance towards the city. The plain was not a mathematical point, and a portion of it may have been nearer the city than the seventh milestone itself was. That must be decided by the nature of the ground, not by subjective considerations. But to make the plain reach to the city walls for the reason assigned is preposterous.
This brief account of the arguments with which Gyllius and Du Cange upheld their views must suffice. For all the evidence at our command goes to prove that the suburb occupied the site of the modern village of Makrikeui.
In support of this proposition there are, first, express statements to the effect that the Hebdomon, taken as a whole, was seven miles distant from the city. That is how Theophylactus Simocatta,[[1199]] for instance, indicates the situation of the suburb: “It was a place seven miles from the city”—ἐν τῷ λεγομένῳ Ἑβδόμῳ (τόπος δὲ οὗτος τοῦ ἄστεος ἀπὸ σημείων ἑπτὰ). That is how Idatius, also, describes the suburb’s position, when speaking of the inauguration of Valens and of Arcadius there: “Levatus est Constantinopoli in Milliario VII.”[[1200]] And it is in the same terms that Marcellinus Comes refers to the suburb, when he records the fact that Honorius was created Cæsar in it: “Id est, septimo ab urbe regia milliario.” To understand such expressions as denoting the whole territory between the walls of the city and the seventh milestone is out of the question. As employed by these writers, the term “Hebdomon” or “Septimum” means a definite place, reached only when a person stood seven miles from the point whence distances from Constantinople were measured.