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CHAPTER I
CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE
SIXTH CENTURY
THE Byzantine peninsula
has been regarded from a very early date as an ideal situation for a capital
city. Placed at the junction of two great seas which wash the shores of three
continents, and possessed of a safe and extensive anchorage for shipping, it
might become the centre of empire and commerce for the whole Eastern
hemisphere. Yet, owing to an adverse fate, the full realization of this
splendid conception remains a problem of the future. Byzantium as an
independent city was little more than an outpost of civilization; as a
provincial town of the Roman Empire its political position allowed it no scope
for development; as the metropolis of the same Empire in its age of decadence
its fitful splendor is an unsubstantial pageant without moral or political
stability. Lastly, in the hands of the Turk its growth has been fettered by the
prejudices of a nation unable to free itself from the bondage of an effete
civilization.
I. HISTORY
The first peopling of
the site of Constantinople is a question in prehistoric research, which has not
yet been elucidated by the paleontologist. Unlike the Roman area, no relics of
an age of stone or bronze have been discovered here; do not, perhaps, exist,
but doubtless the opportunities, if not the men, have been wanting for such
investigations. That the region seemed to the primitive Greeks to be a wild and
desolate one, we learn from the tradition of the Argonautic expedition; and the
epithet of “Axine”, or inhospitable, applied in the earliest times to the
Euxine or Black Sea. By the beginning, however, of the seventh century before
the Christian era these seas and maritime channels had been explored, and
several colonies had been planted by the adventurous Greeks who issued from the
Ionian seaport of Miletus. Later than the Milesians, a band of Dorians from
Megara penetrated into these parts and, by a strange choice, as it was
afterwards considered, selected a point at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the
Asiatic shore for a settlement, which they called Chalcedon. Seventeen years
later a second party from Megara fixed themselves on the European headland,
previously known as Lygos, nearly opposite their first colony. The leader of
this expedition was Byzas, and from him the town they built was named
Byzantium. The actual limits of the original city are now quite unknown, but
doubtless they were small at first and were gradually extended according as the
community increased in wealth and prosperity. During the classic period of Greek
history the town rose to considerable importance, as its commanding position
enabled it to impose a toll on ships sailing to and from the Euxine Sea; a
power of which, however, it made a very sparing use. It was also enriched by
the countless shoals of fish which, when the north winds blew, descended from
the Euxine and thronged the narrow but elongated gulf called, most probably for
that reason, Chrysoceras or Golden Horn.
Ultimately Byzantium
became the largest city in Thrace, having expanded itself over an area which
measured four and a half miles in circumference, including, probably, the
suburbs. It exercised a suzerainty over Chalcedon and
Perinthus, and reduced the aboriginal Bithynians to a state of servitude
comparable to that of the Spartan Helots. Notwithstanding its natural
advantages, the town never won any pre-eminence among the Hellenic communities,
and nothing more unstable than its political position is presented to us in the
restless concourse of Grecian nationalities. In the wars of Persians with
Greeks, and of Greeks with Greeks, it always became the sport of the contending
parties; and during a century and a half (about 506 BC to 350 BC) it was taken
and retaken at least six times by Medes, Spartans, Athenians, and Thebans, a
change of constitution following, of course, each change of political
connection. In 340 BC, however, the Byzantines, with the aid of the Athenians,
withstood a siege successfully, an occurrence the more remarkable as they were
attacked by the greatest general of the age, Philip of Macedon. In the course
of this beleaguerment, it is related, on a certain wet and moonless night the enemy attempted a surprise, but were foiled by
reason of a bright light which, appearing suddenly in the heavens, startled all
the dogs in the town and thus roused the garrison to a sense of their danger.
To commemorate this timely phenomenon, which was attributed to Hecate, they
erected a public statue to that goddess and, as it is supposed, assumed the
crescent for their chief national device. For several centuries after this
event the city enjoyed a nominal autonomy, but it appears to have been in
perpetual conflict with its civilized or barbarous neighbors; and in 279 BC it
was even laid under tribute by the horde of Gauls who penetrated into Asia and
established themselves permanently in Galatia. After the appearance of the
Roman legionaries in the East the Byzantines were always the faithful friends
of the Republic, while it was engaged in suppressing the independent potentates
of Macedonia and Asia Minor. For its services Byzantium was permitted to retain
the rank of a free city, and its claim to indulgence was allowed by more than
one of the Roman emperors, even after AD 70, when Vespasian limited its rights
to those of a provincial town.
Of all the ancient
historians one only has left us a description capable of giving some visual
impression as to the appearance of old Byzantium. “This city”, says Dion
Cassius, “is most favorably situated, being built upon an eminence, which juts
out into the sea. The waters, like a torrent, rushing downwards from the Pontus
impinge against the promontory and flow partly to the right, so as to form the
bay and harbors, but the main stream runs swiftly alongside the city into the
Propontis. The town is also extremely well fortified, for the wall is faced
with great square stones joined together by brazen clamps, and it is further
strengthened on the inside through mounds and houses being built up against it.
This wall seems to consist of a solid mass of stone, and it has a covered
gallery above, which is very easily defended. On the outside there are many
large towers, perforated with frequent loopholes and ranged in an irregular
line, so that an attacking party is surrounded by them and exposed on all sides
at once. Toward the land the fortifications are very lofty, but less so on the
side of the water, as the rocks on which they are founded and the dangers of
the Bosphorus render them almost unassailable. There are two harbors within the
walls, guarded by chains, and at the ends of the moles inclosing them towers facing each other make the passage impracticable
to an enemy. I have seen the walls standing and have also heard them speaking;
for there are seven vocal towers stretching from the Thracian gates to the sea.
If one shouts or drops a pebble in the first it not only resounds itself or
repeats the syllables, but it transmits the power for the next in order to do
the same; and thus the voice or echo is carried in regular succession through
the whole series”.
At the end of the second
century the Byzantines were afflicted by the severest trial which had ever come
within their experience. In the tripartite struggle between the Emperor Severus
and his competitors of Gaul and Asia, the city unfortunately threw in its lot
with Niger, the Proconsul of Syria. Niger soon fell, but Byzantium held out
with inflexible obstinacy for three years and, through the ingenuity of an
engineer named Priscus, defied all the efforts of the victor. During this time
the inhabitants suffered progressively every kind of hardship and horror which
has been put on record in connection with sieges of the most desperate
character. Stones torn from the public buildings were used as projectiles,
statues of men and horses, in brass and marble, were hurled on the heads of the
besiegers, women gave their hair to be twisted into cords and ropes, leather
soaked in water was eaten, and finally they fell on one another and fed on
human flesh. At last the city yielded, but Severus was exasperated, and his
impulse of hostility only ceased with the destruction of the prize he had won
at such a cost in blood and treasure. The garrison and all who had borne any
public office, with the exception of Priscus, were put to death, the chief
buildings were razed, the municipality was abolished, property was confiscated,
and the town was given over to the previously subject Perinthians, to be
treated as a dependent village. With immense labor the impregnable
fortifications were leveled with the ground, and the ruins of the first bulwark
of the Empire against the barbarians of Scythia attested the wisdom and
temperance of the master of the East and West.
But the memory of
Byzantium dwelt in the mind of Severus and he was attracted to revisit the
spot. In cooler moments he surveyed the wreck; the citizens, bearing olive
branches in their hands, approached him in a solemn and suppliant procession;
he determined to rebuild, and at his mandate new edifices were reared to supply
the place of those which had been ruined. He even purchased ground, which had
been previously occupied by private gardens, for the laying out of a
hippodrome, a public luxury with which the town had never before been adorned. But the hateful name of Byzantium was abolished and the new city was
called Antonina by Severus, in honour of his eldest sons; a change, however,
which scarcely survived the life of its author. Through Caracalla, or
some rational statesman acting in the name of that reprobate, the city regained
its political privileges, but the fortifications were not restored, and for
more than half a century it remained defenseless against the barbarians, and
even against the turbulent soldiery of the Empire. Beginning from about 250 the
Goths ravaged the vicinity of the Bosphorus and plundered most of the towns,
holding their own against Decius and several other short-lived emperors. Under
Gallienus a mutinous legion is said to have massacred most of the inhabitants,
but shortly afterwards the same emperor gave a commission to two Byzantine
engineers to fortify the district, and henceforward Byzantium again appears as
a stronghold, which was made a centre of operations against the Goths, in the
repulse of whom the natives and their generals even played an important part.
In 323 Licinius, the
sole remaining rival of Constantine, after his defeat in a great battle near
Adrianople, took refuge in Byzantium, and the town again became the scene of a
contest memorable in history, not for the magnitude of the siege, but for the
importance of the events which it inaugurated. Licinius soon yielded, and a new
era dawned for Byzantium, which in a few years became lastingly known to the
nations as the City of Constantine.
The tongue of land on
which Constantinople is built is essentially a low mountainous ridge, rising on
three sides by irregular slopes from the sea. Trending almost directly eastward
from the continent of Europe, it terminates abruptly in a rounded headland
opposite the Asiatic shore, from which it is separated by the entrance of the Bosphorus,
at this point a little more than a mile in width. This diminutive peninsula,
which is bounded on the north by the inland extension of the Bosphorus, called
the Golden Horn, and on the south by the Propontis or Sea of Marmora, has a
length of between three and four miles. At its eastern extremity it is about a
mile broad and it gradually expands until, in the region where it may be said
to join the mainland, its measurement has increased to more than four times
that distance. The unlevel nature of the ground and reminiscences of the seven
hills of classical Rome have always caused a parallel to be drawn between the
sites of the two capitals of the Empire, but the resemblance is remote and the
historic import of the Roman hills is totally wanting in the case of those of
Constantinople. The hills of the elder city were mostly distinct mounts, which
had borne suggestive names in the earliest annals of the district. Every
citizen had learned to associate the Palatine with the Roma Quadrata of
Romulus, the Aventine with the ill-omened auspices of Remus, the Quirinal with
the rape of the Sabine women, the Esquiline with the murder of King Servius,
the Capitol with the repulse of the Gauls by Manlius; and knew that when the
standard was raised on the Janiculum the comitia were assembled to transact the
business of the Republic. But the Byzantine hills are little more than
variations in the face of the slope as it declines on each side from the
central dorsum to the water, and have always been nameless unless in the
numerical descriptions of the topographer. On the north five depressions
constitute as many valleys and give rise to six hills, which are numbered in
succession from the narrow end of the promontory to the west. Thus the first
hill is that on which stood the acropolis of Byzantium. Two of the valleys, the
third and fifth, can be traced across the dorsum of the peninsular from sea to
sea. A rivulet, called the Lycus, running from the mainland, joins the
peninsula near its centre and then turns in a south-easterly direction so as to
fall into the Propontis. The valley through which this
stream passes, the sixth, hounds the seventh hill, an elevation known as the
Xerolophos or Drymount, which, lying in the southwest, occupies more than a
third of the whole area comprised within the city walls. From every high point
of the promontory the eye may range over seas and mountains often celebrated in
classic story—the Trojan Ida and Olympus, the Hellespont, Athos and Olympus of
Zeus, and the Thracian Bosphorus embraced by wooded hills up to the “blue
Symplegades” and the Euxine, so suggestive of heroic tradition to the Greek
mind. The Golden Horn itself describes a curve to the north-west of more than
six miles in length, and at its extremity, where it turns upon itself, becomes
fused with the estuary of two small rivers named Cydarus and Barbyses.
Throughout the greater part of its course it is about a quarter of a mile in
width, but at one point below its centre, it is dilated into a bay of nearly
double that capacity. This inlet was not formerly, in the same sense as it is
now, the port of Constantinople; to the ancients it was still the sea, a moat
on a large scale, which added the safety of water to the mural defences of the
city; and the small shipping of the period was accommodated in artificial
harbors formed by excavations within the walls or by moles thrown out from the
shore. The climate of this locality is very changeable, exposed as it is to
north winds chilled by transit over the Russian steppes, and to warm breezes
which originate in the tropical expanses of Africa and Arabia. The temperature
may range through twenty degrees in a single day, and winters of such arctic
severity that the Golden Horn and even the Bosphorus are seen covered with ice
are not unknown to the inhabitants. Variations of landscape due to vegetation
are found chiefly in the abundance of plane, pine, chestnut, and other trees,
but more especially of the cypress. Earthquakes are a permanent source of
annoyance, and have sometimes been very destructive. Such in brief are the
geographical features of this region, which the caprice of a prince, in a
higher degree, perhaps, than its natural endowments, appointed to contain the
metropolis of the East.
When Constantine
determined to supplant the ancient capital on the Tiber by building a new city
in a place of his own choice, 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. By 328, 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, 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. On the
faith of an ecclesiastical historian 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, 0 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 marvelous 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.
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. 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. 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 to
mythological divinities arose in regular conformity with pagan custom. Thus the
“Fortune of the City” took her place as the goddess Anthusa in a handsome fane,
and adherents of the old religion could not declare that the ambitious
foundation was begun under unfavorable 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. 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. 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.
By the spring of 330 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; 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. On this occasion the celebration is said to have lasted forty
days, 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, 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. 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.
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. 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”;
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. To render
it in all respects the image of Rome, Constantinople was provided with a
Senate, 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.
Constantine is credited
with the erection of many churches in and around Constantinople, but, with the
exception of St. Irene, the Holy Cross, and the Twelve Apostles, their
identification rests with late and untrustworthy writers. One, St. Mocius, 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. 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.
After the age of
Constantine the progress of New Rome as metropolis of the east was extremely
rapid, the suburbs became densely populous, and in 413 Theodosius II gave a
commission to Anthemius, 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, 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. With the rumor 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, 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, by the Byzantine historians, and by
the practice of antiquity in times of impending hostility.
CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE
SIXTH CENTURY
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