From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Of Wealth and Wantonness,

which, for three centuries, was “the heart of Ottoman history” and which for ten generations was the home of palled votaries of pleasure, but too often, alas! the hated prison of innocent victims who were condemned to pander to the basest passions of heartless minotaurs of lust and crime.

To the south of Santa Sophia is all that remains of the Hippodrome which, in its heyday of splendor, was regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Modeled after the Circus Maximus of Rome, it served as a forum, as a race course, and a museum in which were collected the choicest sculptures of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. Here were statues of Phidias and Praxiteles and other master sculptors of the ancient world. Among them were an exquisite statue of Helen of Troy, “whose beauty of form and feature drove brave men distraught,” and the famed bronze horses of Lysippus—which were carried off by Dandolo to Venice, where they now adorn the cathedral of San Marco—and countless other masterpieces of scarcely less value and beauty.

Besides serving as a race course the Hippodrome, which had, it is estimated, a seating capacity of a hundred and twenty thousand people, was used for every purpose that could attract a large multitude of people. The Spina—a low wall dividing the Hippodrome into two sections—was, in common parlance, “the axis around which the Byzantine world revolved.” It was the favorite place for athletic sports and for the exhibition of wild animals. It was here that distinguished emperors and generals, like Heraclius and Nicephorus and Belisarius, celebrated their victories over the enemies of the empire. It was here that were witnessed not only the pride, the power, and the glories of New Rome, but also its tragedies, its massacres, its decadence, and ruin. In the acme of its magnificence this historic circus, with its forty tiers of marble seats and its superb promenade which surmounted all, was resplendent with the most beautiful works of Greek and Roman art—spoils from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Mauritania.

Of this marvelous Hippodrome only a part of the site is now visible, while of its ornaments but three are still extant. These are a bare column of masonry once covered with bronze plates which caused it “to gleam like a column of light”; an Egyptian obelisk that antedates the time of Moses, and one of the most ancient relics of Greece. This is the Serpent column from Delphi which, with the bronze Wolf of the Capitol in Rome, “may count as the most precious metal relic which remains from the ancient world.” It bears witness to the final defeat of Xerxes at Platæa, the first great triumph of the West over the East. For eight centuries it served as a pedestal for the golden tripod of the priestess of the god, and during long centuries it was for the Greeks an object of pilgrimage. When, nearly two thousand years later, the East, under Mohammed the Conqueror, was victorious over the West, this secular monument was permitted to remain on the base which has supported it for sixteen centuries that it might continue “to bear witness to the link of New Rome with Old Greece” and endure as a vivid reminder of the pomp of Byzantine rule and of the continuity of civilization.

Scarcely less interesting to me than the age-old remnants of the Hippodrome were the massive and crumbling walls that for a thousand years were the city’s palladium against the barbarian hordes of Asia and Europe. What visions crowd upon the memory as one stands upon this hoary rampart and surveys the scene around one! It was thanks to the impregnable walls of Constantinople no less than to the unique strategic position of the city that Roma Nova was able so long to hold her place as the home of art and letters, history and philosophy; that, in spite of desolating wars which everywhere raged in the rest of the world, and which at times carried their ravaging effects to her very gates, she continued to be the world’s one sure refuge of law, justice, and freedom; that, notwithstanding internecine strife, and changes of dynasties, her government was the one that for centuries afforded the greatest security for life and property; the one under which commerce and civilization were most fostered and most flourishing.

If the walls of Constantinople could speak, what thrilling stories could they not relate of the score of sieges to which they were exposed! For vivid color and breathless interest they surpass the siege of Tyre by Alexander, the siege of Carthage by Scipio, the siege of Jerusalem by Godfrey de Bouillon as described in the glowing epic of Tasso. Unlike the last-named sieges, those directed against the city on the Bosphorus “stand out on the canvas of history by the magnitude of the issues involved to religion, to nations, to civilization.” This is particularly true of the sieges by Saracens, Turks, and Mongols, for, if these barbarians and sworn enemies of the Christian name had succeeded in piercing the walls of this greatest bulwark of civilization before the dawn of the reconstructive work of the fifteenth century, the results to learning, art, Christendom would have been disastrous beyond conception, while progress and social order would have been retarded for untold centuries.

Never, probably, in the history of our race has the possession of any city led to more devastating and longer continued wars, to greater international rivalries and contentions than has the fair capital on the Golden Horn. It was in 673—but little more than a generation after Mohammed’s death—when the Moslems under the Saracen Moawiah laid siege to Constantinople, which was then the greatest and the richest city of the known world. They were defeated but not crushed. Knowing the incalculable treasures the city contained and realizing fully its supreme importance as the center of a world empire, they determined never to desist from their purpose until Constantinople was the capital and sovereign seat of Islam. Not until 1453, after eight centuries of deferred hopes, were their aspirations realized.

For a much longer period has Russia had her longing eyes on what she was wont to call “The Sacred City”—the city which had so long been the goal of the nations of Asia and Europe. From the days of Rurik, the reputed founder of the Russian monarchy, the Muscovites have never ceased to look forward to the time when the peerless city of Constantine would be in the possession of Holy Russia, and when the strategic channel which links the Euxine with the Mediterranean would be under her absolute control.

For a thousand years the forces of Russia continued irresistibly to move toward the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. When Catherine II, “The Semiramis of the North,” in 1787, made her magnificent progress through Southern Russia she entered the city of Kherson under a triumphal arch which bore the inscription “The Way to Byzantium.” As still further expressive of her faith in Russia’s ultimate destiny there was a gate in Moscow named “The Way to Constantinople.”