When Constantine determined to supplant the ancient capital on the Tiber by building a new city in a place of his own choice,[41] he does not appear to have been more acute in discerning the advantages of Byzantium than were the first colonists from Megara. It is said that Thessalonica first fixed his attention; it is certain that he began to build in the Troad, near the site of Homeric Ilios; and it is even suggested that when he shifted his ground from thence he next commenced operations at Chalcedon.[42] By 328,[43] however, he had come to a final decision, and Byzantium was exalted to be the actual rival of Rome. This event, occurring at so advanced a date and under the eye of civilization, yet became a source of legend, so as to excel even in that respect the original foundation by Byzas. The oracles had long been lapsing into silence,[44] but their place had been gradually usurped by Christian visions, and every zealot who thought upon the subject conceived of Constantine as acting under a special inspiration from the Deity. More than a score of writers in verse and prose have described the circumstances under which he received the divine injunctions, and some have presented to us in detail the person and words of the beatific visitant.[45] On the faith of an ecclesiastical historian[46] we are asked to believe that an angelic guide even directed the Emperor as he marked out the boundaries of his future capital. When Constantine, on foot with a spear in his hand, seemed to his ministers to move onwards for an inordinate distance, one of them exclaimed: “How far, O Master?” “Until he who precedes me stands,” was the reply by which the inspired surveyor indicated that he followed an unseen conductor. Whether Constantine was a superstitious man is an indeterminate question, but that he was a shrewd and politic one is self-evident from his career, and, if we believe that he gave currency to this and similar marvellous tales, we can perceive that he could not have acted more judiciously with the view of gaining adherents during the flush of early Christian enthusiasm.[47]
The area of the city was more than quadrupled by the wall of Constantine, which extended right across the peninsula in the form of a bow, distant at the widest part about a mile and three-quarters from the old fortifications.[48] This space, by comparison enormous, and which yet included only four of the hills with part of the Xerolophos, was hastily filled by the Emperor with buildings and adornments of every description. Many cities of the Empire, notably Rome, Athens, Ephesus, and Antioch, were stripped of some of their most precious objects of art for the embellishment of the new capital.[49] Wherever statues, sculptured columns, or metal castings were to be found, there the agents of Constantine were busily engaged in arranging for their transfer to the Bosphorus. Resolved that no fanatic spirit should mar the cosmopolitan expectation of his capital the princely architect subdued his Christian zeal, and three temples[50] to mythological divinities arose in regular conformity with pagan custom. Thus the “Fortune of the City” took her place as the goddess Anthusa[51] in a handsome fane, and adherents of the old religion could not declare that the ambitious foundation was begun under unfavourable auspices. In another temple a statue of Rhea, or Cybele, was erected in an abnormal posture, deprived of her lions and with her hands raised as if in the act of praying over the city. On this travesty of the mother of the Olympians, we may conjecture, was founded the belief which prevailed in a later age that the capital at its birth had been dedicated to the Virgin.[52] That a city permanently distinguished by the presence of an Imperial court should remain deficient in population is opposed to common experience of the laws which govern the evolution of a metropolis. But Constantine could not wait, and various artificial methods were adopted in order to provide inhabitants for the vacant inclosure. Patricians were induced to abandon Rome by grants of lands and houses, and it is even said that several were persuaded to settle at Constantinople by means of an ingenious deception. Commanding the attendance in the East of a number of senators during the Persian war, the Emperor privately commissioned architects to build counterparts of their Roman dwellings on the Golden Horn. To these were transferred the families and households of the absent ministers, who were then invited by Constantine to meet him in his new capital. There they were conducted to homes in which to their astonishment they seemed to revisit Rome in a dream, and henceforth they became permanent residents in obedience to a prince who urged his wishes with such unanswerable arguments.[53] As to the common herd we have no precise information, but it is asserted by credible authority that they were raked together from diverse parts, the rabble of the Empire who derived their maintenance from the founder and repaid him with servile adulation in the streets and in the theatre.[54]
By the spring of 330[55] the works were sufficiently advanced for the new capital to begin its political existence, and Constantine decreed that a grand inaugural festival should take place on the 11th of May. The “Fortune of the City” was consecrated by a pagan ceremony in which Praetextatus, a priest, and Sopater, a philosopher, played the principal parts;[56] largess was distributed to the populace, and magnificent games were exhibited in the Hippodrome, where the Emperor presided, conspicuous with a costly diadem decked with pearls and precious stones, which he wore for the first time.[57] On this occasion the celebration is said to have lasted forty days,[58] and at the same time Constantine instituted the permanent “Encaenia,” an annual commemoration, which he enjoined on succeeding emperors for the same date. A gilded statue of himself, bearing a figure of Anthusa in one hand, was to be conducted round the city in a chariot, escorted by a military guard, dressed in a definite attire,[59] and carrying wax tapers in their hands. Finally, the procession was to make the circuit of the Hippodrome and, when it paused before the cathisma, the emperor was to descend from his throne and adore the effigy.[60] We are further told that an astrologer named Valens was employed to draw the horoscope of the city, with the result that he predicted for it an existence of 696 years.[61]
After the fall of Licinius it appears most probable that Constantine, as a memorial of his accession to undivided power, gave Byzantium the name of Constantinople.[62] When, however, he transformed that town into a metropolis, in order to express clearly the magnitude of his views as to the future, he renamed it Second, or New Rome. At the same time he endowed it with special privileges, known in the legal phraseology of the period as the “right of Italy and prerogative of Rome”;[63] and to keep these facts in the public eye he had them inscribed on a stone pillar, which he set up in a forum, or square, called the Strategium, adjacent to an equestrian statue of himself.[64] To render it in all respects the image of Rome, Constantinople was provided with a Senate,[65] a national council known only at that date in the artificial form which owes its existence to despots. After his choice of Byzantium for the eastern capital Constantine never dwelt at Rome, and in all his acts seems to have aimed at extinguishing the prestige of the old city by the grandeur of the new one, a policy which he initiated so effectively that in the century after his death the Roman Empire ceased to be Roman.[66]
Constantine is credited with the erection of many churches[67] in and around Constantinople, but, with the exception of St. Irene,[68] the Holy Cross,[69] and the Twelve Apostles,[70] their identification rests with late and untrustworthy writers. One, St. Mocius,[71] is said to have been built with the materials of a temple of Zeus, which previously stood in the same place, the summit of the Xerolophos, outside the walls. Another, St. Mena, occupied the site of the temple of Poseidon founded by Byzas.[72] Paganism was tolerated as a religion of the Empire until the last decade of the fourth century, when it was finally overthrown by the preponderance of Christianity. Laws for its total suppression were enacted by Theodosius I, destruction of temples was legalized, and at the beginning of the fifth century it is probable that few traces remained of the sacred edifices which had adorned old Byzantium.[73]
After the age of Constantine the progress of New Rome as metropolis of the east was extremely rapid,[74] the suburbs became densely populous, and in 413 Theodosius II gave a commission to Anthemius,[75] the Praetorian Prefect, to build a new wall in advance of the old one nearly a mile further down the peninsula. The intramural space was thus increased by an area more than equal to half its former dimensions; and, with the exception of some small additions on the Propontis and the Golden Horn, this wall marked the utmost limit of Constantinople in ancient or modern times. In 447 a series of earthquakes, which lasted for three months, laid the greater part of the new wall in ruins, fifty-seven of the towers, according to one account,[76] having collapsed during the period of commotion. This was the age of Attila and the Huns, to whom Theodosius, sooner than offer a military resistance, had already agreed to pay an annual tribute of seven hundred pounds of gold.[77] With the rumour that the barbarians were approaching the undefended capital the public alarm rose to fever-heat, and the Praetorian Prefect of the time, Cyrus Constantine, by an extraordinary effort, not only restored the fortifications of Anthemius, but added externally a second wall on a smaller scale, together with a wide and deep fosse,[78] in the short space of sixty days. To the modern observer it might appear incredible that such a prodigious mass of masonry, extending over a distance of four miles, could be reared within two months, but the fact is attested by two inscriptions still existing on the gates,[79] by the Byzantine historians,[80] and by the practice of antiquity in times of impending hostility.[81]
II. Topography
Having now traced the growth of the city on the Golden Horn from its origin in the dawn of Grecian history until its expansion into the capital of the greatest empire of the past, I have reached the threshold of my actual task—to place before the reader a picture of Constantinople at the beginning of the sixth century in its topographical and sociological aspects. The literary materials, though abundant, are in great part unreliable and are often devoid of information which would be found in the most unpretentious guide-book of modern times.[82] On the other hand the monumental remains are unusually scanty, insignificant indeed compared with those of Rome, and few cities, which have been continuously occupied, have suffered so much during the lapse of a few centuries as Constantinople. Political revolution has been less destructive than that of religion, and Moslem fanaticism, much more than time or war, has achieved the ruin of the Christian capital. On this ground, the same calamities which Christianity inflicted on paganism in the fourth century, she suffered herself at the hands of Islam in the fifteenth.
The modern visitor, who approaches Constantinople, is at once impressed by the imposing vista of gilded domes and minarets, which are the chief objective feature of the Ottoman capital. It is scarcely necessary to say that in the sixth century the minaret, uniquely characteristic as it is of a Mohammedan city, would be absent, but the statement must also be extended to the dome, the most distinctive element in Byzantine architecture, which at the date of my description scarcely yet existed even in the conception of the builder.[83] If we draw near from the Sea of Marmora (the Propontis) at the time of this history, we shall observe, extending by land and sea from the southernmost point, the same ranges of lofty walls and towers, now falling into universal ruin, but then in a state of perfect repair. Within appear numerous great houses and several tall columns interspersed among a myriad of small red-roofed dwellings, densely packed; and here and there the eye is caught by a gleam of gilded tiles from the roof of a church or a palace. In order to inspect the defences on the land side, the aspect of the city most strongly fortified, we must disembark near the south-west corner of the Xerolophos, the locality now known as the Seven Towers. Without the city, towards the west, the ground consists of flowery meadows diversified by fruit-gardens and by groves of cypress and plane trees.[84] Almost at the water’s edge is an imposing bastion, which from its circular form is called the Cyclobion.[85] Proceeding inland we shall not at this date find a road winding over hill and dale from sea to sea as at the present day.[86] Most of the country is occupied by walled philopatia or pleasaunces in which landscape gardening has been developed with considerable art, suburban residences of the Byzantine aristocracy.[87] In a grove about a mile from the shore we come upon a certain well, which is regarded as sacred and frequented by sufferers from various diseases on account of the healing virtue attributed to its waters.[88] Northwards the extramural district abutting on the Golden Horn is called Blachernae from the chief of a Thracian tribe, which formerly occupied this quarter.[89] Here, contiguous to the wall, we may notice a small summer palace on two floors, built of brick with rows of stone-framed, arched windows, now undergoing restoration and extension by the Emperor Anastasius.[90] A few paces further on is a Christian chapel dedicated to the Theotokos or Mother of God, founded by Pulcheria,[91] the pious but imperious sister of Theodosius II, and finally the maiden wife of the Emperor Marcian. Hard by is a natural well,[92] which from its interesting associations is now beginning to ripen into sanctity.
The scheme of fortification consists of three main defences: (1) a foss, (2) an outer wall with frequent towers, and (3) an inner wall, similar, but of much greater proportions.