TAM CITO TAM STABILEM PALLAS VIX CONDERET ARCEM †[[171]]
The third inscription has disappeared from its place on the Porta Xylokerkou, but is preserved in the Greek Anthology.[[172]] It declared that, “The Emperor Theodosius and Constantine the Eparch of the East built this wall in sixty days.”
ΘΕΟΔΟΣΙΟΣ ΤΟΔΕ ΤΕΙΧΟΣ ΑΝΑΞ ΚΑΙ ΥΠΑΡΧΟΣ ΕΩΑΣ
ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΣ ΕΤΕΥΞΑΝ ΕΝ ΗΜΑΣΙΝ ΕΞΗΚΟΝΤΑ
The shortness of the time assigned to the execution of the work is certainly astonishing. Perhaps the statement of the inscriptions will appear more credible if understood to refer exclusively to the second wall, and if we realize the terror which the Huns then inspired. The dread of Attila, “the Scourge of God,” might well prove an incentive to extraordinary performance, and strain every muscle to the utmost tension.
But the question of the time occupied in the reconstruction of the walls is not the only difficulty raised by these inscriptions. They present a question also as regards the official under whose direction that work was executed. For according to them, and Marcellinus Comes, the superintendent of the work was named Constantine.[[173]] Theophanes and subsequent historians, on the other hand, ascribe the undertaking to the Prefect Cyrus.[[174]] This is a serious discrepancy, and authorities are not agreed in their mode of dealing with it. Some have proposed to remove the difficulty by the simple expedient of identifying Constantine and Cyrus;[[175]] while others maintain a distinction of persons, and reconcile the conflicting statements by understanding them to refer, respectively, to different occasions on which the walls were repaired.[[176]]
Cyrus was one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of the city during the reign of Theodosius II.[[177]] On account of his talents and integrity he held the office of Prætorian Prefect, and that of Prefect of the City, for four years, making himself immensely popular by the character of his administration. During his prefecture, in 439, the new walls along the shores of the city were constructed. The fires and earthquakes, moreover, which devastated Constantinople in the earlier half of the fifth century, afforded him ample opportunity for carrying out civic improvements, and he was to be seen constantly driving about the city in his chariot to inspect the public buildings in course of erection, and to push forward their completion. Among other works, he restored the great Bath of Achilles, which had been destroyed in the fire of 433.[[178]] To him also is ascribed the introduction of the practice of lighting the shops and streets of the capital at night.[[179]] He was, moreover, a man of literary tastes, and a poet, who counted the Empress Eudoxia, herself a poetess, one of his admirers.[[180]] In the competition between Greek and Latin for ascendency as the official language of the Government, he took the side of the former by issuing his decrees in Greek, a practice which made the conservative Lydus style him ironically, “Our Demosthenes.”[[181]]
But in the midst of all his success, Cyrus remained self-possessed and sober-minded. “I do not like Fortune, when she smiles much,”[[182]] he was accustomed to say; and at length the tide of his prosperity turned. Taking his seat one day in the Hippodrome, he was greeted with a storm of applause. “Constantine,” the vast assembly shouted, “founded the city; Cyrus restored it.” For a subject to be so popular was a crime. Theodosius took umbrage at the ovation accorded to the renovator of the city, and Cyrus was dismissed from office, deprived of his property, forced to enter the Church, and sent to Smyrna to succeed four bishops who had perished at the hands of brigands. Upon his arrival in that city on Christmas Day he found his people ill-prepared to receive him, so indignant were they that a man still counted a heathen and a heretic should have been appointed the shepherd of their souls. But a short allocution, which Cyrus delivered in honour of the festival, disarmed the opposition to him, and he spent the last years of his life in the diocese, undisturbed by political turmoils and unmolested by robbers.
Returning to the question of the identity of Cyrus with the Prefect Constantine above mentioned, the strongest argument in favour of that identity is the fact that, commencing with Theophanes, who flourished in the latter part of the eighth century, all historians who refer to the fortification of the city under Theodosius II. ascribe the work to Cyrus. That they should be mistaken on this point, it may be urged, is extremely improbable. On this view, the occurrence of the name Constantine instead of Cyrus in the inscriptions and in Marcellinus Comes, is explained by the supposition that the former name was the one which Cyrus assumed, as usual under such circumstances, after his conversion to the Christian faith.[[183]] But surely any name which Cyrus acquired after his dismissal from office could not be employed as his designation in documents anterior to his fall. Perhaps a better explanation is that Cyrus always had both names, one used habitually, the other rarely, and that the latter appears in the inscriptions because more suited than the former to the versification in which they are cast. This, however, does not explain why Marcellinus Comes prefers the name Constantine.
On the other hand, the proposed identification of Cyrus and Constantine is open to serious objections. In the first place, not till the eighth century is the name of Cyrus associated with the land walls of Constantinople. Earlier historians,[[184]] when speaking of Cyrus and extolling his services, say nothing as to his having been concerned in the fortification of the city in 447.