The plain at the Hebdomon was used, also, for military exercises and athletic sports, and consequently appears under the name of the Campus Martius,[[1232]] as though to give it the prestige of the ground devoted to similar purposes on the banks of the Tiber. There recruits were drilled and trained in the use of arms,[[1233]] and there the popular game of polo was played.[[1234]]
Thither, also, on account of the wide and free space afforded by the plain the population of the city fled, on the occasion of a violent earthquake, to find a temporary abode, or to take part in public supplications for the withdrawal of the calamity.[[1235]] Such services were attended by the emperor and the patriarch, and it was on such an occasion that the Emperor Maurice, a particularly devout man, and the Patriarch Anatolius, proceeded from the city to the Campus, on foot.[[1236]] It was customary, moreover, to hold religious services at the Campus on the anniversary of a great earthquake, to avert the recurrence of the disaster, or to celebrate the fact that it had not been attended with loss of life.[[1237]] There, also, public executions took place,[[1238]] or the heads of persons executed elsewhere were set up for public gaze, as in the case of the Emperor Maurice and his five sons.[[1239]]
But the chief interest of the Hebdomon belongs to it on account of the many associations of the suburb with the life of the Byzantine Court. There, in the early days of the Eastern Empire, while old Roman customs prevailed and the army continued to be a great political factor, an emperor often assumed the purple, in the presence of his legions and a vast concourse of the citizens of the capital. At the suburb, also, triumphal processions sometimes commenced their march to the Golden Gate and the city. And there the emperors had a palace to which they resorted for country air, or to escape the turbulence of the Factions, or to take part in the State ceremonies performed on the adjoining Campus.
The earliest reference to the Hebdomon, though not by name, is in connection with the inauguration of Valens there, in 364, as the colleague of his brother, the Emperor Valentinian: “Valentem, in suburbanum, universorum sententiis concinentibus (nec enim audebat quisquam refragari) Augustum pronuntiavit; decoreque imperatorii cultus ornatum et tempore diademate redimitum in eodem vehiculo secum reduxit.”[[1240]] In commemoration of the event Valens erected a tribune, adorned with many statues, for the accommodation of the emperors when taking part in State functions on the Campus of the suburb.[[1241]] It was known as the Tribune of the Hebdomon (ἐν τῷ Τριβουναλίῳ Ἑβδόμου).[[1242]]
Triumphus Theodosii.
Valens also provided the Harbour of the Hebdomon with a quay, and showed his partiality for the suburb otherwise to such an extent that Themistius ventured to expostulate with him, and to charge him with forgetting to improve and beautify the capital.[[1243]]
After Valens, the following ten emperors were invested with the purple at the Hebdomon: Arcadius,[[1244]] by his father Theodosius the Great, who also raised Honorius to the rank of Cæsar there;[[1245]] Theodosius II.;[[1246]] Marcian;[[1247]] Leo the Great;[[1248]] Zeno;[[1249]] Basiliscus;[[1250]] Maurice;[[1251]] Phocas;[[1252]] Leo the Armenian;[[1253]] and Nicephorus Phocas.[[1254]] Doubtless the fatigue involved in celebrating the ceremony so far from the heart of the city had much to do with transferring the scene of Imperial inaugurations to the Hippodrome.
The custom of installing an emperor thus into his office was the continuation of an old Roman practice which testified to the power acquired by the army in deciding the succession to the throne. We have two accounts of the ceremonies observed on such an occasion at the Hebdomon, given at great length and with minute details by that devoted student and admirer of Byzantine Court etiquette, Constantine Porphyrogenitus.[[1255]] They are interesting, both as an exhibition of public life during the Later Empire, and as an illustration of the extent to which old Roman forms, and even the old Roman spirit, survived the profound changes which the Empire underwent after the capital was removed to the banks of the Bosporus.
When all interested in the event of the day had assembled, the troops present laid their standards prostrate upon the ground, to express the desolation of the State bereft of a ruler. Meanwhile, from every point of the Campus rose the sound of prayer, as the immense multitudes gathered there joined in supplications that God would approve the man who had been chosen as the new chief of the Empire. “Hear us, O God; we beseech Thee to hear us, O God. Grant Leo life; let him reign. O God, Lover of mankind, the public weal demands Leo; the army demands him; the laws wait for him; the palace awaits him. So prays the army, the Senate, the people. The world expects Leo; the army waits for him. Let Leo, our common glory, come; let Leo, our common good, reign. Hear us, O God, we beseech Thee.” At length the emperor-elect appeared, and ascended the Imperial tribune. A coronet was placed upon his head by one high military officer, an armlet upon his right arm by another. And instantly the prostrate standards were lifted high, and the air shook with acclamations: “Leo, Augustus, thou hast conquered; thou art Pius, August. God gave thee, God will guard thee. Ever conquer, worshipper of Christ. Long be thy reign. God will defend the Christian Empire.”[[1256]] This was the first act in the dramatic spectacle. Next came the solemn investiture of the emperor with the Imperial insignia. This took place behind a shield held before him by soldiers of the household-troops known as the Candidati, and when he had been duly robed, crowned, and armed with shield and spear, the screen was removed, and the new sovereign stood before the gaze of his subjects in all his majesty.[[1257]]