Iliad, xii, 279, κ.τ.λ.
[41] His reasons for this step can only be surmised. A political motive is scarcely suggested. A second capital cannot have been required to maintain what Rome had conquered, and was soon made an excuse for dissolving the unity of the Empire. His nascent zeal for Christianity, by which he incurred unpopularity at pagan Rome, has been supposed to have prejudiced him against the old capital, and moved him to build another in which the new religion should reign supreme, but these opinions emanate only from writers actuated more or less by bigotry. Although he virtually presided at the Council of Nice and accepted baptism on his death-bed, that he was ever a Christian by conviction is altogether doubtful. For a résumé see Boissier, Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1886; also Burchardt’s Constantine.
[42] For the founding of Constantinople see Gyllius (De Topogr. CP., i, 3), but especially Ducange (CP. Christiana, i, p. 23 et seq.), who has brought together a large number of passages from early and late writers. According to a nameless author (Muller, Frag. Hist., iv, p. 199), Constantine was at one time in the habit of exclaiming: “My Rome is Sardica.” He was born and bred in the East, and hence all his tastes would naturally lead him to settle on that side of the Empire.
[43] It may have been earlier. Petavius (in Ducange) fixes this date, Baronius makes it 325 (c. 95).
[44] Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. He explains it by the death of the daemons who managed them. These semi-divinities, though long-lived, were not immortal.
[45] See Ducange, loc. cit., p. 24.
[46] Philostorgius, ii, 9. Copied or repeated with embellishment, but not corroborated, by later writers, as Nicephorus Cal., viii, 4; Anon. (Banduri), p. 15; Codinus, p. 75. Eusebius is silent where we should expect him to be explicit. The allusion in Cod. Theod., XIII, v, 7, seems to be merely a pious expression.
[47] The result of Diocletian’s persecution must have shown every penetrating spirit that Christianity had “come to stay”: the numerous converts of the better classes were nearly all fanatics compared with Pagans of the same class, who were languid and indifferent about religion. He indulged both parties from time to time.
[48] Zosimus, ii, 30, Anon. Patria (Banduri, p. 4), and indications in Notitia Utriusque Imperii, etc., in which the length of Constantine’s city is put down at 14,705 Roman feet. From Un Kapani on the Golden Horn (near old bridge) it swept round the mosque of Mohammed II, passed that of Exi Mermer, and turned south-east so as to strike the sea near Et Jemes, north-east of Sand-gate. I am describing the imaginary line drawn by Mordtmann (Esquisses topogr. de CP., 1891), who has given us a critical map without a scale to measure it by. It was not finished till after Constantine’s death, Julian, Orat., i, p. 41, 1696.
[49] Anon. (Banduri) and Codinus passim; Eusebius, Vit. Constant., iii, 54, etc.; Jerome, Chron., viii, p. 678 (Migne).