The Dark Ages. David Hume

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      § 1. Situation, Walls, and Harbours

      THE history of a thousand years approved the wisdom of Constantine in choosing Byzantium for his new capital. A situation was needed from which the Emperor could exercise imminent authority over south-eastern Europe and Asia, and could easily reach both the Danube and the Euphrates. The water passage where Asia and Europe confront each other was one of the obvious regions to be considered in seeking such a central site. Its unique commercial advantages might have been alone sufficient to decide in its favour. It was the natural meeting-place of roads of trade from the Euxine, the Aegean, and northern Europe. When he determined to found his city by this double-gated barrier between seas and continents, there were a few sites between which his choice might waver. But there was none which in strategical strength could compare with the promontory of Byzantium at the entrance of the Bosphorus. It had indeed some disadvantages. The prevailing winds are north-easterly, and the arrival of sea-borne merchandise was often seriously embarrassed, a fact which the enemies of Constantine did not fail to insist on.1 The frequency of earthquakes2 was another feature which might be set against the wonderful advantages of Byzantium as a place for a capital of the Empire.

      While the whole trend of the passage through which the waters of the Euxine reach the Aegean is from east to west, the channel of the Bosphorus runs from north to south.3 At the point where it widens into the Propontis, the European shore is broken by a deep narrow inlet which penetrates for more than six miles and forms the northern boundary of a hilly promontory, on which Byzantium was built. This inlet or harbour was known as the Golden Horn, and it is the feature which made the fortune of Constantine’s city.

      The shape of Constantinople is a trapezium, but the eastern side is so short that the city may be described as a triangle with a blunted apex. On three sides, north, east, and south, it is washed by water. The area of the city “is about four miles long and from one to four miles wide, with a surface broken up into hills and plains. The higher ground, which reaches an elevation of some 250 feet, is massed in two divisions — a large isolated hill at the south-western corner of the promontory, and a long ridge, divided, more or less completely, by five cross valleys into six distinct eminences, overhanging the Golden Horn.” These two masses of hill “are separated by a broad meadow through which the stream of the Lycus flows athwart the promontory into the Sea of Marmora.”4

      Constantine found the town5 as it had been left by the Emperor Septimius Severus, who had first destroyed and then restored it. The area enclosed by his wall occupied only a small portion of the later city, lying entirely to the east of a line drawn southward from the modern bridge.6 The central place in old Byzantium was the Tetrastoon, north of the Great Hippodrome which Severus built but left incomplete. In the north-east corner rose the fortified Acropolis, on which stood the chief temples. Against the eastern side of the hill, close to the shore, were a theatre and amphitheatre (Kynêgion); on the north a Stadion, for foot-races; on the north-west, the Stratêgion, an open space for military drill.

      The area of Constantine’s city was about four times as large. He built a wall across the promontory from the Propontis to the Golden Horn, about two miles to the west of the wall of Severus. Of this wall of Constantine nothing is left, and its course can only be traced approximately; for within a city the city was enlarged, a new land fortification was built, and the founder’s wall was allowed to fall into decay and gradually disappeared.7

      The New Rome, as Constantinople was called, dissimilar as it was from the Old in all its topographical features, was nevertheless forced to resemble it, or at least to recall it, in some superficial points. It was to be a city of seven hills and of fourteen regions. One of the hills, the Sixth, lay outside the wall of Constantine, on the Golden Horn, and had a fortification of its own. This was the Fourteenth Region. The Thirteenth Region lay on the northern side of the Horn (in Galata) and corresponded to the Region beyond the Tiber in Rome.8

      Constantine was more successful perhaps than he had hoped in attracting inhabitants to his eastern capital. Constantinople was dedicated in A.D. 330 (May 11),9 and in the lifetime of two generations the population had far outgrown the limits of the town as he had designed it. The need of greater space was met partly by the temporary expedient of filling up the sea, here and there, close to the shore, and a suburban town was growing up outside the Constantinian wall.10 The desirability of enlarging the city was forced upon the government,11 and early in the reign of Theodosius II the matter was taken in hand. Anthemius, Praetorian Prefect of the East and pilot of the State during the Emperor’s minority, may be called, in a sense, the second founder of Constantinople; the stones of his great wall still stand, an impressive monument of his fame.

      The new line of circuit was drawn about a mile to the west of the old. The Anthemian wall did not extend the whole way from sea to sea. It was planned so as to take advantage of the fortification round the Sixth Hill, within which the Palace of Blachernae stood, but this north-western quarter of the city has been so changed, partly by subsequent constructions and partly by demolition, that it is impossible, at least without systematic excavation, to determine how the line of defence ran in the fifth century.12

      The wall which was constructed under the auspices of Anthemius (A.D. 413)13 sustained extensive damages from an earthquake in A.D. 447. It was then restored and strengthened by the exertions of the Praetorian Prefect Constantine, and a new outer wall was erected.14 At this time the city might have been exposed at any moment to an attack of the Huns, and the whole work was executed with incredible rapidity in the course of a few months.

      The fortification, thus completed and enlarged, was never afterwards structurally altered. It consists of five parts. The inner wall, which was the main defence, had a mean thickness of about 14 feet, and was strengthened by ninety-six towers, 60 feet high, about 60 yards apart. Each tower had two chambers, of which the upper, entered from the parapet of the wall, contained munitions, and was always occupied by watchmen. Between the inner and the outer wall was a terrace (peribolos) from 50 to 64 feet broad. The outer wall was only 2 to 6½ feet thick, and it was built for the most part in arches; it too had ninety-six towers, varying from 30 to 35 feet in height. Outside the wall was an embankment,15 61 feet broad; and outside the embankment a ditch, of varying depth,16 also 61 feet broad, and divided by low dams.

      The fortification was pierced by ten gates, of which five were exclusively for military purposes. The two sets, civil and military, were arranged alternately. The chief and most famous entrance, nearest to the Sea of Marmora, was the Golden Gate. It may have been erected by Theodosius the Great as a triumphal arch in memory of his victory over the rebel Maximus. This imposing structure was pierced by three archways and was built of huge square blocks of polished marble. Above the central СКАЧАТЬ