With these indications as the basis for a decision, can the claim that the tower S is the Tower of Anemas be maintained? The tower answers to the description of Anna Comnena in being a tower in the city walls close to the Palace of Blachernæ. Nor is its situation at variance with the statement of Leonard of Scio that it stood in the neighbourhood of the Xylo Porta, although there are three towers between it and that gate. Furthermore, it is one of a pair of towers that might be designated the Towers of Anemas.
The main reason, however, which induced Dr. Paspates to identify the tower S with the prison of Anemas was the proximity of the tower to the chambers C in the adjoining wall, which he regarded as prison-cells. This view of the character of those chambers is, for reasons already intimated, extremely doubtful. But even if prison-cells, that fact alone would not be conclusive proof that they were the prison of Anemas. For the prison of Anemas is always described as a tower; and by no stretch of language can that designation be applied to the chambers in the body of the wall.[[536]]
The force of this objection would, indeed, be met if proof were forthcoming that the tower S gave access to the chambers C, and formed an integral part of a common system. But the evidence is all on the other side. From the manner in which the tower S blocks the windows of some of the chambers, it is clear, as already observed, that the tower S and the adjoining chambers belong to different periods, and were built without regard to each other. There is no trace of any means of communication between the tower and the two upper series of chambers, and we have no reason to think, but the reverse, that the lowest series of chambers could be reached from it. So far as the chambers are concerned, the tower S is an independent building, upon whose identity they throw no light. Whether it was the prison of Anemas must be determined by its own character. Was it suitable for a prison? Above all, is its age compatible with the view that it was the prison of Anemas?
In answer to the former question, it cannot be denied that the tower S could be used as a place of confinement. The chamber F, which is supposed to have been a cistern, may have been a dungeon. The L-shaped chamber in the second story may have served for the detention of great personages placed under arrest. Still, on the whole, the tower S seems rather an extension of the residential tower N than a dungeon.
But the point of most importance in the whole discussion is the comparative ages of the towers N and S. As a building in existence when Alexius Comnenus occupied the throne of Constantinople, the Tower of Anemas was, at least, seventy years older than the Tower of Isaac Angelus. Hence, if the tower S is the former, it must be older than the tower N, which Dr. Paspates identifies with the Tower of Isaac Angelus. But the evidence which has been submitted goes to prove that the tower S is more recent than the tower N. These towers, therefore, cannot be, respectively, the Tower of Anemas and the Tower of Isaac Angelus. Nothing can prove that the tower S is the Tower of Anemas, until S is shown to be earlier than N, or the identification of the tower N with the Tower of Isaac Angelus is abandoned as erroneous.
Dr. Paspates,[[537]] indeed, assigned the tower S to the reign of Theophilus in the ninth century, on the ground that a block of stone upon which some letters of that emperor’s name are inscribed is built into the tower’s north-western face. But a little attention to the way in which that stone is fitted into the masonry will make it perfectly evident that the stone has not been placed there to bear part of an inscription, but as ordinary material of construction, obtained from some other edifice. Consequently, it throws no light upon the age of the tower.
Where, then, was the Tower of Anemas? Perhaps, in our present state of knowledge, no answer which will commend itself as perfectly satisfactory can be given to the question.
The simplest solution of the difficult problem is that the tower L, which bears the inscription in honour of Isaac Angelus, is, after all, the tower erected by that emperor, though greatly altered by injuries and repairs; and that the towers N and S together constituted the prison-tower of Anemas, S being a later addition.
Others may prefer to hold the view that the tower N is the Tower of Anemas, and the tower S that of Isaac Angelus, pointing in support of this opinion to the cells in the tower N, reached from the stairway by narrow vaulted passages. This would mean, practically, that the Tower of Isaac Angelus was the Tower of Anemas renovated and enlarged.
Possibly, others may be disposed, notwithstanding the inscription of Isaac Angelus upon it, to regard the tower L as the Tower of Anemas, and the tower N, with the later addition of S, as that of Isaac Angelus.