He looked around him carefully. First he thought of Nicomedia (now Ismid in modern Turkey) where Diocletian had had his camp; but it had been the capital of a heathen king. Then he considered ancient Troy, for the Romans were supposed to be descended from the Trojans. He even began to build walls there. But one day somebody reminded him of the ruined city of Byzantium with its wonderful location.
“That is the place!” he cried.
On foot, with lance in hand and followed by a solemn procession, he marched over pleasant hills and valleys that were still covered with vines and greenery.
As they tried to keep up with him his panting courtiers asked him how big he planned to make the place.
“I shall walk,” he replied, “until God, my invisible Guide, bids me to halt.”
An emperor could get things done in those days. Not much more than four years from the day, hour, and minute that Constantine ordered his architects and engineers and builders to get to work, the city was completed and ready to live in. It was equipped with theaters, public baths, senate houses, a university, courts of justice, granaries, palaces, and magnificent private dwellings, many of them the very ones described by Robert of Clari. It had broad squares, paved avenues, classic porticoes, and aqueducts that brimmed with clear, cool water. It was decorated with marbles, statues, and priceless works of art; at the emperor’s command, the cities of Greece and Asia Minor had been rifled of their most precious treasures to make sure of this.
It was filled with people too. Constantine invited (that was the same thing as ordered) senators to move from Rome. He presented costly buildings to his favorites. He confiscated the estates of many of his rich subjects, especially in Asia Minor, and gave the income to those of his subjects who agreed to live in the new city. Of course, a lot of people came of their own accord. They wanted to get in on something good.
It was lucky indeed that Diocletian and Constantine had taken these steps. For suddenly the Roman Empire began to quake and tremble. All through recorded history and long before, the barbarians from the northern swamps and forests of Europe kept pouring down upon the lands to the south of them. As a matter of fact, the Romans, as well as the Greeks whom Homer wrote his poems about, were from the north. When Homer spoke of the “golden-haired Achaeans,” he was talking about the Greeks. But the men around the Mediterranean—the original Greeks—were dark, as they are today. The Achaeans came from the north.
For a long time Roman might had kept these tribesmen back, and civilization and a comfortable life had flourished. As many men lived in peace or happiness as ever have before or since.
But now all at once Rome grew weak almost as fast as it had grown powerful, and the barbarians rode again. Almost immediately they were able to cross the frontiers whenever they wanted to. Soon the empire couldn’t hold them off at all.