Remains of a palace now on the sea-wall, exactly to the south of the curve of the hippodrome, are thought to be portions of the palace “Hormisdas” which Justinian occupied before he came to the throne (B, on Plan, [Fig. 2]). Close to the sea-wall farther to the west was the double church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus and SS. Peter and Paul, of which the first survives as Little Sancta Sophia (A, on [Fig. 2]). These were early works of Justinian, and his monogram and that of Theodora appear on the capitals of S. Sergius.
Procopius tells us that the church of S. Sergius was “close to the king’s palace which was formerly called by the name of Hormisdas. This was once his own private house,” and when he became emperor “he joined it to the other imperial apartments.” The Great Palace was higher up the slope, against the hippodrome and Augusteum, to which its gates opened.
It was long after Justinian that the great palace reached its maximum development; the Chrysotriclinum was erected by his successor Justin II. The houses of Marina and Placidia were still in use at the end of the sixth century, although this is mentioned by neither Labarte nor Paspates. The wedding of the daughter of Phocas was celebrated in the former,[283] and “the Royal palace of Placidia” is referred to by John of Ephesus. The writer tells us that Tiberius II., the successor of Justin II., made large additions to the palace. Before he reigned alone the wife and daughters of Tiberius occupied the house of Hormisdas, “as it was situated just below the palace, and he would go down and spend the evening with them and return early in the morning to the palace.”[284]
Justinian II. also added to the palace, and in the ninth century Theophilus built the Triconcha. Basil the Macedonian still further increased the assemblage of buildings.
It is clear that in the time of Justinian there were at least four more or less separate palaces grouped together—the Great Palace, Hormisdas, and those of Marina and Placidia.
Hippodrome.—The information in regard to the hippodrome brought together in the works before mentioned, and by Gyllius, cannot be recapitulated here.[285] As the ground fell away steeply towards the south, that end had to be raised high on vaults, and this retaining wall, perhaps forty feet high, forming a semicircular curve, still exists.[286] On either side rose the tiers of the marble seats. At the north end was the royal stand, called Kathisma, from which the emperors watched the games; this was raised above arched chambers, where the chariots for the arena were kept. The south-west end was called Sphendone—The Curve. A rough draft of Constantinople, made early in the fifteenth century for Bondelmontius, reproduced by Mordtmann, shows columns standing on the retaining wall around this curved end. A clear representation of this semicircle of columns is also given in the Nuremberg Chronicle. Banduri reproduces from Panvinius, who wrote in the middle of the sixteenth century, a drawing of the hippodrome which seems to have been made with considerable care. Beneath it is written, “The ruins of the circus or hippodrome of Constantinople as they were a hundred years before the capture of the city by the Turks.”[287] But that it should have been in a ruinous state at this time is not borne out by the accounts of writers like Clavijo and Bondelmontius, who described it in the generation before the Fall: on the contrary, we should suppose this to be one of the draughts for the Venice view of the city published about 1570, with which it agrees in many respects.[288] This bird’s-eye view shows the monuments on the Spina, the Grand Stand and its “Podium” of vaults, and also the high external retaining wall of the curve, above which the columns again appear, but set back from its face, so as to leave a passage outside the columns, the outer wall being finished with a battlement. It is true that in the engraving it is rendered as if these columns were attached to a wall, or rather as if a wall were built between the columns, for they appear both inside and out; but this interpretation cannot be given to a description of this colonnade by Gyllius.[289] “In the front of the hippodrome facing the Propontis there was a range of seventeen pillars of white marble standing when I first came to Constantinople, going round that part of the hippodrome which lies between south and west.” They stood on a low wall, about two feet six inches high towards the hippodrome, but outside it was fifty feet to the ground. They were of the Corinthian order, three feet five inches in diameter and twenty-eight feet high, standing eleven feet apart on pedestals; above them was an architrave to which rings were fixed for curtains. “Above was another range of pillars, which were remaining some time after the taking of the city by the Turks.” These last were only reported to Gyllius; and if we accept such a second tier we may suppose that it ranged with a colonnade surmounting the containing wall of the terraces of seats. Paspates makes from this account a wonderful and impossible arrangement; he supposes the first-mentioned columns to have been continued along the external sides of the hippodrome, he further rears the second range on them, and this he thinks upheld the immense mass of the rising seats. “If we suppose,” he says, “the height of those in the upper row to have been twenty-one feet, we have about fifty-six feet as the height of the wall on which the seats for the spectators were built.”
These columns probably formed an open screen through which the spectators might see the sparkling waters of the Propontis, set with the blue jewels of Prince’s Islands and the white peaks of Olympus rising far away to the left—one of the most beautiful scenes in the world. This addition of a natural spectacle behind the scene was frequently obtained in ancient theatres: the best known is that at Taormina. Clavijo[290] speaks of the hippodrome as being “surrounded by white marble pillars,” but he adds “thirty-seven in number.” The anonymous Russian who wrote about the same time says “thirty columns and their summits are united by an architrave.” See [Fig. 2]. An “open hippodrome” and a “covered hippodrome” are mentioned by the Byzantine writers. Labarte distinguishing them, placed the latter within the palace. Byeljayev, however, conjectures that the covered hippodrome was a part of the Great Hippodrome. Be this as it may, the “rings for curtains” of Gyllius suggest that portions were sheltered by a Velarium.
Bondelmontius[291] writes thus of the hippodrome: “In it those cf noble birth joust in the presence of the people, and there are combats and tournaments. It is 690 bracchia long and 134 wide, and it is built above vaults, in which a cistern of the best water covers the whole of the space mentioned. At the head of the hippodrome are high pillars [of Kathisma] where the emperor sits with his nobles, and on both sides in its length are seats of marble arranged in steps where the people sit and see all the games.” On the outside towards S. Sophia there was the church of S. Stephen, “from the galleries of which the ladies watched their chosen champions.” On the Spina he notices a fountain where the wounded were laid, the two obelisks, and the three serpents “with open mouths from which, it is said, on days of jousting water, wine, and milk used to spout.” At the end of the Spina were four small marble columns where the emperor sat on feast days.[292]
Besides the bronze serpentine column from Delphi, there still stands in the hippodrome an Egyptian obelisk, set up by Theodosius I. on a pedestal sculptured with a representation of the emperor viewing the games from the Kathisma, and a record of the methods used in erecting the obelisk by means of ropes and winches. Nicetas in his life of S. Ignatius says that a brazen pine-apple surmounted this obelisk. A third monument is a large built-up obelisk of stone, pitted all over where pins which attached bronze plates were inserted. An inscription often quoted, records that Constantine, father of Romanus, repaired it and added to its beauty. The casing of bronze was probably covered with reliefs and ornament, as was the case with the pillar in the Augusteum, and the anemodulium, which was set up by Theodosius in the Forum Tauri. This last was an obelisk entirely cased with bronze, “having reliefs[293] of cattle, sheep and skipping lambs; peasants labouring or playing on their pipes, and birds; there was also represented the sea, and sea-gods, and cupids playing at ball. On the point was a statue of a woman which turned to the slightest breath of the wind.”
Among the statues in the hippodrome mentioned by Nicetas as having been destroyed was the colossal bronze Hercules, and a sundial which was in the form of an eagle with wide expanded wings trampling on a serpent. The twelve hours were marked out beneath its wings, six on either side, and the sun shining through a hole in each wing marked the hour or the day. Near the eastern goal was a row of statues of charioteers, driving their chariots and turning the goal. Besides these there were many other statues of persons and animals; an elephant with a proboscis that moved is mentioned, but it is not clear however that this last was in the hippodrome.