BAPTISTERY OF SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERAN, ROME.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI.
No subsequent historian has improved upon the glowing passage in which Gibbon summarises the incomparable advantages of its site, which appears, as he well says, to have been “founded by Nature for the centre and capital of a great monarchy.” We may quote the passage in full from his seventeenth chapter:
“Situated in the forty-first degree of latitude—practically the same, it may be noted, as that of Rome, Madrid, and New York—the imperial city commanded from her seven hills the opposite shores of Europe and Asia; the climate was healthy and temperate; the soil fertile; the harbour secure and capacious; and the approach on the side of the continent was of small extent and easy of defence. The Bosphorus and Hellespont may be considered as the two gates of Constantinople; and the prince who procured those important passages could always shut them against a naval enemy and open them to the fleets of commerce. The preservation of the Eastern provinces may, in some degree, be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the barbarians of the Euxine, who, in the preceding age, had poured down their armaments into the heart of the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy and despaired of facing this insurmountable barrier. When the gates of the Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed, within their spacious inclosure, every production which could supply the wants, or gratify the luxury, of its numerous inhabitants. The seacoasts of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of Turkish oppression, still exhibit a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens and plentiful harvests; and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of the most exquisite fish, that are taken in their stated seasons without skill and almost without labour. But, when the passages of the Straits were thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and artificial riches of the North and South, of the Euxine and the Mediterranean. Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and Scythia, as far as the sources of the Tanais and the Borysthenes, whatever was manufactured by the skill of Europe and of Asia, the corn of Egypt and the gems and spices of the farthest India, were brought by the varying winds into the port of Constantinople, which, for many ages, attracted the commerce of the ancient world.”
From a strategical point of view, it was of inestimable advantage that the capital and military centre of the Empire should be within striking distance of the route taken by the nomad populations of the East as they pressed towards the West, at the head of the Euxine. The Scythians, the Goths, and the Sarmatæ had all crossed that great region; the Huns were to cross it in the coming centuries. Placed on shipboard at Constantinople, the legions of the Empire could be swiftly conveyed into the Euxine, and could penetrate up the Danube, Tanais, or Borysthenes to confront the invaders where the danger threatened most.
The story of how Constantine marked out the boundaries of his new capital is well known. Not content with the narrow limits of the ancient city—which included little more than the district now known as Seraglio Point—Constantine crossed the old boundary, spear in hand, and walked with his attendants along the shores of the Propontis, tracing the line as he went. His companions expressed astonishment that he continued so far afield, and respectfully drew the Emperor’s attention to the enormous circuit which the walls would have to enclose. Constantine rebuked them. “I shall still advance,” he said, “until He, the invisible guide who marches before me, thinks it right to stop.” The legend is first found in Philostorgius, and it is not of much importance. But Constantine, as usual, took care to foster the belief that his will was God’s will, even in the matter of founding Constantinople, and that he had but obeyed the clearly expressed command of Heaven. In one of his edicts he incidentally refers to Constantinople as the city which he founded in obedience to the mandate of God (Jubente Deo). It is a phrase which has meant much or little according to the character of the kings who have employed it. With Constantine it meant much, and, above all, he wished it to mean much to his subjects.
Archæologists have not found it an easy task to trace the line of the walls of Constantine, especially on the landward side. It followed the coast of the Propontis from Seraglio Point, the Emperor adding height and strength to the wall of Severus and extending it to the gate of St. Æmilianus, which formed the south-west limit of his city. This section was thrown down by an earthquake and had to be rebuilt by Arcadius and Theodosius II. From St. Æmilianus the landward wall, with seven gates and ninety-five towers, stretched across from the waters of the Propontis to those of the Golden Horn, which was reached, it is supposed, at a point near the modern Djubali Kapou. This was demolished when the city had outgrown it, and Theodosius erected the new great wall which still stands almost unimpaired. The course of the old one can hardly be traced, but it is generally assumed that it did not include all the seven hills of Constantinople, though New Rome, like Old Rome, delighted in the epithet of Septicollis—the Seven-Hilled. Along the Golden Horn no wall was built until five centuries had elapsed. On this side Constantine considered that the city was adequately protected by the waters of the estuary, closed against the attack of an enemy by a huge iron chain, supported on floats, which stretched from the Acropolis of St. Demetrius across to the modern Galata. Confidence in the chain—some links of which are still preserved in the Turkish arsenal—seems to have been thoroughly justified. Only once in all the many sieges of Constantinople was it successfully pierced, when, in 1203, the Crusading Latins burst in upon the capital of the East.
Within the area we have described, great if compared with the original Byzantium, but small in comparison with the size to which it grew by the reign of Theodosius II., Constantine planned his city. Probably no great capital has ever been built so rapidly. It was finished, or so nearly finished that it was possible to hold a solemn service of dedication, by May, 330—that is to say, within four years. Throughout that period Constantine seems to have had no thought for anything else. He urged on the work with an enthusiasm equal to that which Dido had manifested in encouraging her Tyrians to raise the walls of Carthage,—Instans operi regnisque futuris.
The passion for bricks and mortar consumed him. Like Augustus, he thought that a great imperial city could not be too lavishly adorned as a visible proof of present magnificence and a guarantee of future permanence. Nor was it in Constantinople alone that he built. Throughout his reign new public buildings kept rising in Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and the cities of Gaul. His impatience manifested itself in his letters to his provincial governors. “Send me word,” he wrote imperiously to one of them, “not that work has been started on your buildings, but that the buildings are finished.” To build Constantinople he ransacked the entire world, first for architects and builders, and then for art treasures. With such impetuous haste there was sure to be scamped work. Some of the buildings crumbled at the first slight tremor of earthquake or did not even require that impulse from without to collapse into ruin. It is by no means impossible that the havoc which seems to have been wrought in Constantinople by earthquakes during the next two or three centuries was largely due, not to the violence of the seismic disturbances but to insecure foundations and bad materials. The cynical Julian compared the city of Constantine to the fabled gardens of Adonis, which were planted afresh each morning and withered anew each night. Doubtless there was a substantial basis of fact for that bitter jibe.
Yet, when all allowances are made, it was a marvellous city which Constantine watched as it rose from its foundation. Those who study the archæology of Constantinople in the rich remains which have survived in spite of Time and the Turk, are surprised to find how constantly the history of the particular spot which they are studying takes them straight back to Constantine. Despite the multitude of Emperors and Sultans who have succeeded him, each anxious to leave his mark behind him in stone, or brick, or marble, Constantinople is still the city of Constantine. In the centre, he laid out the Augustæum, the ancient equivalent, as it has well been pointed out, of the modern “Place Imperiale.” It was a large open space, paved throughout in marble, but of unknown shape, and historians have disagreed upon the probability of its having been circular, square, or of the shape of a narrow rectangle. It was full of noble statuary, and was surrounded by an imposing pile of stately buildings. To the north lay the great church of Sancta Sophia; on the east the Senate House of the Augustæum, so called to distinguish it from the Senate House of the Forum; on the south lay the palace, entered by an enormous brazen gate, called Chalce, the palace end of the Hippodrome, and the Baths of Zeuxippus. The street connecting the Augustæum with the Forum of Constantine was known as Μέση, or Middle-street, and was entered on the western side. In the Augustæum, which later Emperors filled with famous statues, there stood in Constantine’s day a single marble column known as the Milion—from which were measured distances throughout the Empire,—a marble group representing Constantine and Helena standing on either side of a gigantic cross, and a second statue of Helena upon a pedestal of porphyry. It was in this Augustæum, moreover, that was to stand for a thousand years the huge equestrian statue of Justinian, known through all the world and described by many a traveller before the capture of the city by the Turks, who broke it into a thousand pieces.