Sigurd, King of Norway, saw the games given here in 1111; there was a spectacle in which people appeared as if riding in the air, some sort of fireworks, also music with playing of organs, harps, and other instruments.[294] Benjamin of Tudela (1161) says, “lions, bears, and leopards were shown, and all nations of the world were represented, together with surprising feats of jugglery.” The hippodrome was used for spectacles after the change of masters. An Italian MS. of 1582 in the British Museum describes the ambassadors and princes sitting on staging, with a large stand for the band in the “piazza” of the hippodrome; the Sultan and his son sat on an inclosed and covered throne.[295]
Augusteum.—“In front of the palace,” says Procopius, “there is a forum surrounded with columns. The Byzantines call this forum the Augusteum. On the eastern side stands the Senate-house.” Other writers speak of it as the Agora of the Milion, or simply as the Milion, from the building which adjoined it. Zonaras seems to call it the Proaulion of the Great Church. Round its sides were peristyles, and the buildings mentioned in the first chapter, most of which were rebuilt by Justinian. It was laid with a marble floor of long slabs, a portion of which was discovered many feet below the present level, together with the inscribed base of the silver statue of Eudoxia, when Fossati built the new government offices in 1848.
“Outside the palace the public baths of Zeuxippus and the great porticoes and all the buildings on either hand as far as the Forum of Constantine are the work of the emperor Justinian.”[296] Large pillars have frequently been found which appear to have formed part of colonnades in the Augusteum. Gyllius saw seven large Corinthian columns, forty-six feet high over all and “twenty foot ten digits apart.” On the shaft of one was cut the name of Constantine, with the signal of the cross he saw in the heavens, and the inscription ΕΝ ΤΟΥΤΩ ΝΙΚΑ. These, he seems to suggest, may have belonged to the Milion. On this is built up a characteristic piece of restoration by Paspates, who sees in the seven columns, standing over twenty feet apart, and obviously in a straight line, “a square building resting on seven columns,” to which he adds an upper range of pillars supporting a domed chamber. Bondelmontius, who is also cited for these columns, says there were six, and all in a row. They were almost certainly a part of the nine columns seen by Clavijo[297] before the Fall, when he was told that “a great palace used to stand on the top of them, where the patriarch and his clergy held their meetings.”
This great square, surrounded by colonnades, contained so many statues and other works of art that Labarte well calls it an open air museum. To the north, opposite the south-west corner of the church, was the colossal bronze equestrian statue of Justinian surmounting a pillar, which, according to Procopius, stood on seven stages of steps and was covered with bronze reliefs. The king looked to the east, and carried the orb of the earth surmounted by a cross in his hand. The pillar had originally been erected by Arcadius to support a silver statue of Theodosius his father. The statue of Justinian, which replaced that of Theodosius, was destroyed by lightning in 1492.[298] The fragments were seen by Gyllius, and, from measurements which he gives, it seems to have been from twice to three times natural size. Bondelmontius says the pillar was seventy cubits high. A very good drawing of the statue, now amongst the MSS. of the Serai library, made about the year 1340, is reproduced by Mordtmann. This pillar and its statue is often called the Augusteum, and it probably gave its name to the place in which it stood.
The Milion.—It is probable that the city milestone existed before Constantine, who may have built the structure over it. According to Du Cange[299] the Augusteum, with which it was so closely associated, was often called by its name; so that Codinus tells us that the church of S. Phocas was built “in the Milion.” It appears to have formed the western boundary and gate of this forum, or at least of its inner part, if divided, and to have been connected with a colonnade running north and south as well as with the Mese. It is spoken of as a colonnade (embolos), as vaulted (kamara and phournikon), or as having many arches (apsides). Cedrenus and other writers speak of statues in the apsis or kamara of the Milion. It can hardly be doubted that it had four large arches facing different ways. A structure of this kind remains at Lattaquieh, which is about ten metres square and was surmounted by a dome. De Vogüé[300] compares it with ruins of a similar erection found at Palmyra, the Mesomphalion of Nicaea, and the Umbilicus of Antioch described by Dion Chrysostom, and others. This last stood at the centre of the two great colonnaded streets that ran east to west and north to south through the city.
The principal reference to the Milion is the description by Nicetas[301] of the struggle with the insurgent troops in the reign of Alexius Manuel. “As many buildings as adjoined the Great Church and commanded the Augusteum were seized by the rebels, who scaled the large apsis which stands over the Milion, and also fortified the church of S. Alexius, which is joined to the Augusteum. But the imperial troops made a sally from the great palace and established themselves in the church of S. John called Diippus; and the agora was full of men who were injured by those on the apsis of the Milion, and on the church of S. Alexius. But fresh troops from the palace filled all the thoroughfares and passages leading to S. Sophia. The rebels, coming out of the temple and passing by the Augusteum, became engaged with the others in the narrow ways, and the conflict remained uncertain, until the imperial troops drove back from the streets those who had come out of S. Sophia and shut them within the Augusteum. The imperial troops broke open the gates of the Augusteum, and the rebels were forced from the top of the Milion by the troops mounting the apsides, while the rest of them, being worsted in the Augusteum, gave way; but a shower of missiles was kept up from the part called Macron, overlooking the Augusteum, and the neighbouring chamber of Thomais. They took refuge in the pronaos of the church, where is the Archangel Michael in mosaic standing with drawn sword as if on guard. The imperial troops, because of the narrowness, were unable to follow them with advantage, nor did the insurgents dare to trust themselves out again. The patriarch descended into the proskenion or protekdikeion of the church, and then harangued them to prevent further sacrilege.”
In the Ceremonies we twice read of the emperor passing through the nave of S. Sophia and its Royal Gate, then across the narthex, and, by the louter (fountain), reaching the steps of the athyr (atrium). “Then he passes through the Milion, and along the Mese and reaches the Forum, where is the Chapel of S. Constantine.” Labarte, wrongly explaining this as the Forum Augusteum, instead of that of Constantine, makes the louter the baptistery, and the athyr its porch. Other processions from the Palace to the Church through the Milion have been given by Labarte.
The colonnades adjoining the Milion are mentioned in the account of a fire which attacked a part of the Great Church in the reign of Isaac Angelus. “The parts by the apsis of the Milion, and the Macron, and the place called the Synods were burnt. The porticoes of Domninus were reduced to ashes, as well as the two covered ways starting on both sides of the Milion one of which reaches to the Philadelphion.”[302] The Philadelphion was towards Constantine’s forum, and the other way probably led from the Milion north and south to the church and the palace gate.
We learn from Agatho the Deacon[303] that in the porticoes (stoai) of the Milion were represented the seven Œcumenical Synods of Constantinople; this is probably what is meant by Nicetas, where he speaks of “The Synods” as quoted above (see, however, Mordtmann, p. 68). The seven synods is one of the iconographic schemes given by the Byzantine Manual, and they are represented in the mosaics at the Nativity Church at Bethlehem.
Horologium.—In close connection both with the Milion and the church was the court of “the time-measure”—a sundial or water-clock. At the triumphal entry of Basil “they passed along the Mese up to the Milion, and entered through the embolos of the Milion into the Horologium, and, having put off their crowns in the metatorium within the Beautiful Gate, they entered the narthex.”[304] The Horologium is constantly spoken of as being near the baptistery, and was certainly on the south side of the church.