GALATA TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE
The stairway down which the Turkish lady is hurrying leads to one of the many steamboat piers adjoining the bridge.
In the reign of Arcadius, events of great moment in the history of the city occurred. In the first place, the government of the Empire, which had been in the hands of Theodosius alone for a few months, was now again divided between his sons, the West falling to Honorius, the East becoming the dominion of Arcadius. This proved the final division of the government, and prepared the way for the ultimate sundering of Europe into two worlds. For it stimulated a conflict of interests and occasioned a warfare of intrigues that strengthened the tendency for the parts of the Empire to fall apart and form, practically, distinct States. Thus, however, the individuality and independence of Constantinople came to be clearly and fully asserted. In the next place, under Arcadius, the question how far Constantinople and the Balkan lands were to remain under the control of the Germans settled to the south of the Danube reached its most critical stage. Would the East be Teutonized, as the West was destined to be? Was the unity of Europe to assume a Germanic form after the old Roman unity was broken? There were moments in the reign of Arcadius when the signs of the times indicated that the same destiny awaited both divisions of the Empire. Alaric, at the head of the Visigoths, was ravaging the Balkan peninsula, and seemed ready to establish a permanent kingdom there. Constantinople was full of Germans. A fair-haired German lady, the Empress Eudoxia, shared the throne of Arcadius. Germans were largely employed as workmen and as household servants. Germans demanded liberty to worship in a church within the walls, according to the Arian views introduced among them by Ulfilas. Chrysostom, opposed their demand, and carried on a mission for the conversion of the Goths in the city to the orthodox faith. The politicians of the capital were divided into a Roman and a German party. Gainas, a Goth, was in command of the army, and had become all-powerful. At his instance, Rufinus and Eutropius, successively chief Ministers of the Government of Arcadius, were put to death. He incited the Ostrogoths settled in Asia Minor to rebel, and brought them over to Europe to support his ambitious plans. He filled Constantinople with Gothic soldiers, and twice attempted to burn down the palace. And when, in view of the precautions taken against him, he found it prudent to quit the city, it was with the idea of returning with a larger force to make himself the master of the place. His plan failed, as such schemes often fail, through an accident of an accident. A Gothic soldier treated a poor beggar woman roughly; a citizen took her part and struck the assailant dead. In the condition of the public mind, this proved the spark which produces a tremendous explosion. The city gates were immediately closed and the ramparts manned, while an infuriated mob went through the city hunting for Goths, and did not cease from the mad pursuit until the blood of 7000 victims had stained the streets of the city. Gainas was pursued and defeated, and eventually his head was sent to Constantinople by the Huns among whom he had sought refuge. This, indeed, did not put all further trouble at the hands of Goths to an end, but it was the knell of German domination in Constantinople and the East. The reign of Arcadius is the watershed upon which streams, which might have flowed together, separated to run in opposite directions and through widely diverse scenes of human affairs. The inscription, “ob devictos Gothos,” upon the column of Claudius Gothicus now acquired a deeper meaning.
But one cannot think of the reign of Arcadius without recalling the fact that for six years of that reign Constantinople was adorned by the virtues, and thrilled by the eloquence, of John Chrysostom. Although popular with the masses, he provoked the bitter hostility of the Court and of a powerful section of the clergy, by his scathing rebukes of the frivolous and luxurious habits of fashionable society, and by the strictness of his ecclesiastical rule. He had the misfortune to quarrel with the ladies of the city, including the Empress, for their extravagance and looseness of manners. Ladies of fashion, for instance, saw nothing unbecoming in taking a swim in the public cisterns of the city. A sermon, preached while a statue of the Empress was being inaugurated close to the cathedral of S. Sophia, filled the cup of his offences. It may not be true that in the course of the discourse he compared the Empress to Herodias demanding the head of his namesake, John the Baptist. But whatever the precise form of his words, he said enough to exasperate her to a degree that made her insist upon his final banishment, notwithstanding all the popular opposition to that step. By a strange fate, the pedestal of the column which bore the statue still remains, being now placed for safe keeping within the railing that encloses a narrow strip of ground on the northern side of the Church of S. Irene, in the first court of the Seraglio. A Latin inscription upon it records the erection of the monument in honour of Eudoxia, ever Augusta, by Simplicius, the Prefect of the city; while an inscription in Greek adds the information that the statue was of silver, the column of porphyry, and that the monument stood near the Senate-House.
Notwithstanding, however, the anxieties of the period, the improvement of the city continued to go forward. The splendour of the Court was increased by the erection of four princely mansions, placed respectively at the disposal of the Empress and her three daughters, Arcadia, Marina, and the famous Pulcheria. New Thermæ were built, one of them, the Thermæ Arcadianæ, situated near the Sea of Marmora on the level tract below S. Irene, being a great ornament to the city. A more abundant supply of water was secured by the construction of the large open reservoir, whose basin, 152 metres square, now occupied by vegetable gardens and houses, is still seen to the south-west of the Mosque of Sultan Selim, above the quarter of the Phanar. But the most notable addition to the equipment of the capital was a great forum placed upon the summit of the Xerolophus, the hill at the south-western corner of the city. It was commonly known as the Forum of Arcadius, but sometimes also as the Forum of Theodosius, on account, probably, of additions made to it by Theodosius II., the son and successor of Arcadius.
REFUGEE HUTS ON THE MARMORA