he making of constantinople under constantine the great

The making of constantinople under constantine the great

The foundation of Constantinople was an event of the utmost political significance. That personal feelings actuated Constantine the Great in the decision to establish a seat of government far from the walls of Rome is doubtless true. The insults to which he was exposed, on the occasion of his visit to the ancient capital of the Empire, in 326, on account of the execution of his wife and of his son, could not fail to annoy him, and make him willing to shake the dust of the rude city from off his feet. To have a placard put on his palace gates comparing him with Nero was not flattering. Certainly the Roman populace did not make respectful subjects. Diocletian also, before Constantine, had found Roman citizens insolent, and2 fled from the slings and arrows of their sarcasm without waiting to meet the Senate, or to be invested with the consular dignity. But after all, personal feelings go only a short way towards the explanation of an event so serious in the history of the Roman State as the establishment of another seat of imperial authority. The volume and force of a mighty river might as well be explained by the drops of a shower which fall into its current. Constantine was too great a statesman to be swayed by mere personal impulse. The foundation of Constantinople was the outward and visible sign of profound changes in the ideas and policy created and long embodied by the city enthroned beside the Tiber. It was the expression of the spirit of a new epoch; as much so as the foundation of Alexandria signified a change in the political conceptions of the Hellenic world, or the building of St. Petersburg marked the new aspirations heaving in the heart of Russia, or the erection, in more recent times, of Washington or Ottawa proclaimed the birth of new commonwealths, and the application of new principles. Old ideas and ancient institutions cannot be altered in one day, or at the caprice of one man. They are not the flimsy things which can be created or destroyed by the wave of a magician’s wand. Con3stantine only placed the copestone on an edifice which other hands, before his reign, had gradually raised from the foundations to the point demanding completion. He finished what others had begun. The creation of the new capital was the result of causes, long in action; not a whim or matter of taste

In the first place, the political relation of the city of Rome to the Roman world had undergone a fundamental change. The citizens of that wonderful city were no longer the proprietors and sovereigns of the realm over which the Roman eagles had spread their wings. The Senate which assembled in the Curia, the people which gathered in the Forum Romanum, had ceased to rule subject cities and nations. That glory had departed. In Gibbon’s mordant language, “The Senate was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity upon the Capitoline hill.” Every freeman within the Empire’s bounds was now the equal of the men whose forefathers had been the kings of the world. Rome was now only one of the great cities of the Roman State, differing from her peers only in the memories and the prestige of a happier and grander past. The government of the world by the city had broken down, and was vested in4 the hands of one supreme man. And that man had gradually become an absolute lord and monarch; who exercised plenary authority wherever he chose to reside, who decked himself with jewels and resplendent robes, who made his throne the lofty peak of a vast hierarchy of nobles and officials, and introduced new methods of administration; a man, perhaps, without a drop of the blood which Romans proudly bore, but a rude provincial, yet to whose will the Eternal City bowed as humbly as the remotest village beneath his sceptre. If a Cassius still lived he might, pointing to the Master of the Empire, well exclaim, “He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves.... Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!” That a city which had been sovereign and self-centred should remain the head and representative of a cosmopolitan State, and of an autocratic Government, was something incongruous and unnatural.

Nor was this the only respect in which the old order had changed and given place to new. Under Constantine the attitude of the Roman Government towards the Christian Church was the direct5 opposite of that maintained by his predecessors. What they had regarded as a hostile organisation, he welcomed as an ally and friend. What they had endeavoured to uproot and destroy, he cultivated and supported. That he entertained a sincere respect for Christianity as a moral and social force, and believed that there was something Divine associated with it, cannot be doubted. And in his opinion, it was the part of true statesmanship to accept the religious and moral revolution that had come into the world, and to utilise it for the welfare of the Empire. This is not the place to discuss the question how wisely the alliance between Church and State was effected, or to decide how much the parties to the union thereby gained or lost. It is enough for our purpose to recognise that the union introduced as profound a change of policy as can be introduced into the affairs of men, that it widened the breach between the past and the present, and rendered the embodiment of the new system of things in forms peculiar to itself perfectly natural, if not inevitable. This was the more certain to occur, seeing Rome continued to be the centre of opposition to the new faith.

Yet another change in the Roman world which explains the appearance of a new capital was6 the increased importance and influence of the Eastern part of the Empire. Not only “captured Greece” but captured Asia also “led captive her captor.” The centre of gravity was now in the East. There commerce was more flourishing, and intellectual life more active. There the population was larger, and grouped in more important cities. There Christianity had its home. Nor was it only in thought, and art, and temper that the East exercised an ascendency. It was, moreover, the post of greatest danger. Its frontiers were exposed to the most formidable attacks which the Roman arms were now called to repel. The secular hostility of Persia along the Tigris and Euphrates, the incursions of Goths and Sarmatians across the lower Danube into the Balkan lands, demanded constant vigilance, and involved frequent warfare. The military front of the Empire was turned eastwards. There “the triumph of barbarism” was meanwhile to be chiefly contested.

But to realise all the circumstances under which Constantinople was founded, we should remember yet another fact. The rule of the Roman world by one man had broken down, just as the rule of that world by the citizens of Rome had failed. A single arm, it was discovered, could not defend the 7frontiers of that vast realm against the numerous and fierce foes who threatened its existence; or repress the insurrections which ambitious men readily raised in widely scattered provinces, when the central authority was too distant to strike promptly and with the necessary vigour. Hence the famous scheme of Diocletian to divide the burden of defending and administering the Empire between four rulers, bound to one another by community of interest. As originally devised, it was a short-lived scheme. But it was superseded only so far as its details were concerned; its fundamental idea had come to stay. At first sight, indeed, the restoration of the system of single rule, in the person of Constantine, seemed to imply the abandonment of the multiple form of government which Diocletian had established. Possibly Constantine may have entertained such a purpose for some time. But eventually he adhered to Diocletian’s plan, and thought to improve upon it by the introduction of the dynastic and hereditary factor, hoping that by distributing the government among members of the same family, joint rule would prove more cordial and permanent, because resting upon a more solid basis. Accordingly, he arranged that after his death the government8 should be divided between his three sons and two nephews.

Of course a city such as Constantine designed could not be built in one day, but such was the eagerness with which the work was pressed forward, that by the spring of 330 sufficient progress had been made to permit the official inauguration of the capital of the East. The 11th of May in that year was appointed to be the city’s birthday. Never is the region about Constantinople so beautiful as at that season. We can therefore readily imagine the splendour in which earth and sea and sky arrayed themselves to greet the advent of the new queen-city, and to match the state and pomp and joy with which men acclaimed that nativity. In honour of the event there was a long series of popular festivities for a period of forty days, 19besides games in the Hippodrome, free access to the Baths of Zeuxippus, free meals, and liberal gifts of money. For many centuries the anniversary of the day was observed as a public holiday, when the Law Courts were closed and races were held in the Hippodrome. And that the lofty scene of the natal day might be acted over, a gilt statue of Constantine, holding a Figure of the Fortune of the city, was placed in a chariot, and under the escort of soldiers in white uniform and carrying lighted tapers in their hands, was borne round the course to receive the homage of the reigning Emperor and the assembled multitudes. Probably the custom was a reminiscence of a procession in which Constantine himself had taken part on the day of the inauguration of the city.

Statues, many of them the work of the finest chisels of antiquity, had been collected from all parts of the Empire to make the new capital a museum of art, and to foster the love of the beautiful. Historical monuments also were there, to suggest the continuity between the past and the present, and to rouse the men of a new age to emulate the noble deeds of the old time before them. Of these monuments none was so inspiring as the Serpent Column brought from Delphi to the Hippodrome, upon whose lowest thirteen coils are graven the names of the heroic little States which hurled the Persians out of Greece. No monument stood more appropriately in a city whose supreme task was to resist the encroachments of barbarism upon the civilised world. Scattered over the city were palatial mansions, some erected at the Emperor’s order for personages whom he wished to attract to the new capital, others built by men of wealth and rank who had come of their own accord to bask in the sunshine of imperial favour. Persons belonging to other classes of society had also been attracted in crowds by openings for business, demand for labourers, exemption from certain taxes, and by the free distribution of bread, for which the cornfields of Egypt furnished 80,000 23modii of wheat. After the pattern of Rome, the good order of the city was secured by the division of the city into fourteen wards or regions, of which twelve lay within the walls, and two were suburban. One of the latter, the 13th ward, was on the site of Galata; the other, the 14th ward, the famous suburb of Blachernæ, stood on the hill now occupied by the quarter of Egri Kapou. Both of these extra-mural suburbs were fortified. Each ward had a curator, who attended to the general interests of that portion of the city; a crier or messenger to give public notice to its inhabitants of matters which concerned them; five night watchmen; and a body of men (colligiati) representing the trade-guilds, and varying in number according to the size or importance of the ward, to render assistance in case of fire. After this survey of the new city, the most loyal son of the old town might come to the ancient Strategion—the ground devoted to military exercises (on the level tract beside the present Stamboul Railway Station)—and gladly bow to the decree inscribed on a column erected there, that Byzantium should henceforth be named New Rome

new roman emperor   CONSTANTIUS AT CONSTANTINOPLE
Upon the death of Constantine, the eastern division of the Empire came under the rule of his second son, Constantius, who soon discovered how much work upon the new seat of government remained to be done. Nor could his visit to Old Rome fail to impress upon his mind the greatness and the difficulty of the task before him. “Having entered,” says the historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of that visit of Constantius, “the Forum of Trajan, the most marvellous structure in the whole world, he was struck with admiration, and looked around in amazement without being able to utter a word, wondering at the array of gigantic buildings, which no pen can describe, and which men can create and see but once in the course of centuries. Abandoning all hope of ever being able to erect anything which would approach even at a respectful distance26 Trajan’s work, he turned his attention to the equestrian statue found in the centre of the Forum, and said to his followers that he would have one made like it. Hormisdas, who accompanied the Emperor, quietly remarked, pointing to the Forum, ‘For such a horse, you must first provide such a stable.’”

Nevertheless, Constantius carried forward the improvement of New Rome to such an extent that Themistius, a contemporary, speaking of the Emperor’s services in the matter, declares that the city was indebted to Constantine the Great only for its name, and owed its actual construction to Constantius. During this reign the fortifications of the city were completed, the Church of the Holy Apostles underwent repair, and the Church of S. Sophia, usually ascribed to the founder of the city, was built, the date of its dedication being the 15th of February 360, two years before Constantius died. Constantius, moreover, placed the city, like Rome, under a Prefect—Præfectus Urbis—and, what is worthy of note, endowed the new capital with a library, thus placing in its hand the lamp of learning which was to shine so far in the world’s history. If we may judge by the terms in which Themistius refers to the foundation of this27 library, the value of books was fully appreciated in those days. “Thus,” he exclaims, “the Emperor has recalled and raised from the dead the souls of wise men and of heroes for the welfare of the city for the souls of wise men are in their wisdom, mind, and intelligence, while their monuments are the books and writings in which their remains are found.” The author of the Areopagitica said no more when he declared, “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up to a life beyond life.”


Julian, the successor of Constantius, was attached to the city by special ties. It was the place of his birth, and there he had received part of his early education. The school he attended was attached to the Basilica which stood on the site of the Cistern now styled Yeri Batan Serai, a little to the south-west of S. Sophia, and thither he went under the conduct of his pædagogue, Mardonius, to study grammar and rhetoric, dressed simply and associating freely with his fellow-students. His progress in his studies soon became the talk of society, and in public opinion presaged his fitness to become, in due time, the ruler of the Empire. Whereupon the jealousy which besets despotic rule was roused in Constantius, and Julian was banished to Nicomedia.28 But Julian always retained a warm affection for the home of his childhood and youth. Speaking of Constantinople in one of his letters he says, “I love her as my mother, for I was born and brought up there, and I can never be guilty of ingratitude towards her.” Nor had he reason to complain of his Alma Mater’s feelings towards himself. When he approached the city, in 361, to assume the crown, the whole population poured out to meet him, and hailed him with transports of joy as at once their sovereign and fellow-citizen. The young capital acquired a greater sense of dignity and importance at the thought that one who had been cradled within its precincts now occupied the throne of the Roman world. Julian spent only ten months in Constantinople as Emperor, his stay being cut short by war with Persia, whose hostility was not less intense since the chief seat of the Empire had been brought nearer to the frontier between the two States. Into those few months, however, Julian put an immense amount of work. The condition of affairs in his native city was not after his heart, either as a statesman, philosopher, or devotee of the ancient faith of Athens and Rome. There the Christianity he would fain destroy was strongly entrenched. There wrangling sects of the new 29creed, more difficult to appease than the wild Franks and Alemanni, who had felt the strength of his arm upon the banks of the Rhine  kept the population in constant turmoil. There was found an Augean stable of official corruption, of unpunished crimes, of relaxed military discipline, and of extravagant luxury at the court. According to Libanius, a thousand cooks, a thousand hairdressers, more than a thousand cup-bearers, a crowd of waiters, swarming like bees in a hive, and eunuchs, thick as flies in early summer, were employed in the service of the imperial palace. One day Julian sent for a barber, and in answer to the summons an official in a gorgeous uniform made his appearance. “But I called for a barber, not for a receiver-general,” exclaimed the indignant Emperor. An investigation of the case having been made, it was discovered that in addition to a large salary the barber enjoyed the right to many perquisites, and received daily rations sufficient for twenty men and as many horses. Julian swept the palace clean of such abuses. Furthermore, Julian increased the importance of the Senate of the city by the embellishment of the Senate-House, by additional privileges conferred on the members of that body, and by taking part in the deliberations of the assembly. He also
30 constructed another harbour on the southern side of the city, placing it in the hollow ground below the heights on which the Hippodrome stands, and thus provided for the convenience and safety of ships that found it difficult to make the Golden Horn from the Sea of Marmora, in the face of the northern winds that prevail in the Bosporus. The harbour was first known as the New Harbour and the Harbour of Julian, but, in the sixth century, it was also named the Harbour of Sophia or the Sophias, in view of extensive repairs made at the instance of the Empress Sophia, the consort of Justin II. The basin of the harbour can still be traced in the configuration of the ground it once occupied, where its memory is preserved by the present name of the locality—Kadriga Limani, the Port of the Galley. At the head of the harbour Julian built a portico, a crescent in shape, and therefore spoken of as the Sigma, from its resemblance to the curved form of that letter in the Greek alphabet. Very appropriately the portico became a favourite lounge of the philosophers in Constantinople, and the scene of their discussions. But what Julian doubtless considered his richest and most filial gift to the city of his birth, was the presentation to its public library of his collection of books.


valens the eastern roman emperor of constantinople
Valens, the next Emperor concerned with the growth of the city, gave special attention to the water-supply of Constantinople—always a serious question owing to the comparative scarcity of water in the immediate neighbourhood. The picturesque aqueduct which, with its double tier of arches garlanded with ivy, still transports water across the valley between the hills surmounted respectively by the Mosque of Sultan Mehemet and the War Office, was built in this reign. It was an addition to the system of water-supply provided by Constantine; a system which, probably, had previously served the town of Byzantium, and which he only extended and improved. Near the eastern end of the aqueduct a splendid public fountain was placed. The Cistern of the Prætorian Prefect, Modestius, now used as a Saddle-Market, near the Mosque of Sultan Mehemet, belongs to this period; and, as a result of the abundance of water thus introduced into the city, several public baths were erected. The Baths or Thermae of Roman Constantinople, we should remember, are the models of what we style the Turkish bath, and it is a curious fact that this mode of bathing has been continued as a habit of popular life only in countries comprised in the eastern division of the Empire.

Making the most of his relationship to the family of Constantine, he took advantage of the discontent which the administration of Valens had provoked, and having won the populace of the city and a body of troops by means of liberal donatives, seized the palace and installed himself as Emperor. A sharp war with Valens ensued, in which the usurper was at length captured and put to death, while his partizans, and even persons suspected of having favoured his cause, were put to the torture, and had their property confiscated. Thus Constantinople learned—not for the last time—the meaning of a reign of terror. A signal example also was made of Chalcedon (Kadi Keui), on the opposite Asiatic shore, because its inhabitants had sided with Procopius. The walls of the town were ruthlessly torn down, and it was with the material thus made available that the Aqueduct of Valens was built and that the Baths of Constantine were repaired. Yet33 more serious was the quarrel of Valens with the Goths, whom he had permitted to cross the Danube in their retreat before the Huns, and settle in the territory we know as Bulgaria. The officials entrusted with the control of the refugees, and with the duty of providing them with food, did their work with such stupidity and rapacity that the high-minded Goths flew to arms, and, at the close of a struggle extending for upwards of a year, inflicted in 378 an overwhelming defeat upon the imperial forces, outside the walls of Adrianople. The Emperor himself and two-thirds of his army lay dead upon the field. The Roman legions had not known such a disaster since they were defeated by Hannibal at Cannæ. Flushed with victory, the Goths marched upon Constantinople, assailed the walls, and nearly burst the gates open. The honours of the defence fell to the widow of Valens, the Empress Dominica, who, with the money found in the treasury, raised a body of troops among the citizens, arming them with what weapons could be found. A body of Arab soldiers, recently arrived in the city, also rendered valuable aid. Sallying forth, they closed with the Goths in a desperate struggle. Victory wavered between the two sets of barbarians; when, suddenly, a long-haired, almost naked Arab, utter34ing a loud, hoarse, and doleful cry, like a bird of evil omen, rushed upon the Goths, and drawing his dagger, cut the throat of an opponent, and then slaked his thirst at the flowing wound. What with the impression produced by this horrid incident, added to a growing sense of the impossibility of their taking a fortified place, the Goths gave up the contest and retired from the city. This was the first siege of Constantinople.


EASTERN ROMAN EMPEROR THEODOSIUS 
With the accession of Theodosius I., a brighter day dawned upon the Empire. He not only subdued the Goths, but converted them into allies, and persuaded them to put 40,000 of their brave troops at his service. He even induced their aged king, Athanaric, who had sworn never to set a friendly foot upon Roman soil, to visit Constantinople. The visitor was profoundly impressed by the appearance of the city. “Now,” said he, “I see what I often heard of, but never believed, the renown of this great city.” Then, surveying the city’s situation, the movement of ships coming and going, the splendid fortifications, the crowded population made up of various nationalities, like streams coming from different directions to gush from the same fountain, the well-ordered troops, he exclaimed, “Verily, the Emperor is a god upon35earth; whoso lifts a hand against him is guilty of his own blood.” Upon the death of Athanaric, which occurred about a fortnight after he reached Constantinople, Theodosius buried the body of his guest with royal honours in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and, by this act of chivalrous courtesy, bound the Goths more firmly to his side.

The barbarians, however, were by no means the only disturbers of the peace of the Empire with whom Theodosius found it necessary to deal. Society in the Roman world was distracted by the conflict between pagans and Christians on the one hand, and by the keener strife between Christian sects on the other, and it was the ambition of Theodosius to calm these troubled waters. For this laudable end he employed the questionable means of edicts for the violent suppression of heathenism and heresy. To destroy the old faith of the Empire was comparatively an easy task, although it involved him in a war with the pagan party in the West. But to uproot the tares of heresy was a more formidable undertaking; they were so numerous, vigorous, and difficult to distinguish from the true wheat. For the space of forty years, the views of Arius on the Person of Christ had prevailed in Constantinople, and the churches of the city were36 in the hands of that theological party. Only in one small chapel, the Church of Anastasia, was the Creed of Nicæa upheld there by Gregory of Nazianzus, and despite his eloquence he was a voice crying in the wilderness. But Theodosius, having been won over to the Nicene Creed, determined to make it the creed of the State. Accordingly, upon his arrival in Constantinople on the 20th of November 380, he sent for Demophilus, the Arian bishop of the city, and commanded him either to accept the orthodox views or leave Constantinople. Demophilus had the courage of his convictions, and, bidding his flock in S. Sophia farewell, left the capital in obedience, as he said, to the injunction, “When they persecute you in one city, flee ye to another.” All the churches of the city were now transferred to the orthodox party. The Arians, however, maintained religious services according to their own tenets outside the city walls, in the district known as the Exokionion (quarter of the outside column). The name was due to the presence there of a column surmounted by a statue of Constantine. Owing to their association with the district, Arians were sometimes designated Exokionitæ. The district lay immediately outside the gateway in the Constantinian walls already noted as the Ancient 37Gate of late Byzantine times, and as Isa Kapoussi since the Turkish Conquest. It can therefore be readily identified, and, curiously enough, under the disguise of a Turkish garb—Alti Mermer, the Six Marbles—the locality still retains its old name. For the Turkish designation is due to a misunderstanding of the meaning of the term Exakionion, a corrupt form of Exokionion frequently employed by Byzantine writers

goths in the streets of constantinople


GOTHS BECAME ALLIES OF CONSTANTINOPLE

The barbarians, however, were by no means the only disturbers of the peace of the Empire with whom Theodosius found it necessary to deal. Society in the Roman world was distracted by the conflict between pagans and Christians on the one hand, and by the keener strife between Christian sects on the other, and it was the ambition of Theodosius to calm these troubled waters. For this laudable end he employed the questionable means of edicts for the violent suppression of heathenism and heresy. To destroy the old faith of the Empire was comparatively an easy task, although it involved him in a war with the pagan party in the West. But to uproot the tares of heresy was a more formidable undertaking; they were so numerous, vigorous, and difficult to distinguish from the true wheat. For the space of forty years, the views of Arius on the Person of Christ had prevailed in Constantinople, and the churches of the city were36 in the hands of that theological party. Only in one small chapel, the Church of Anastasia, was the Creed of Nicæa upheld there by Gregory of Nazianzus, and despite his eloquence he was a voice crying in the wilderness. But Theodosius, having been won over to the Nicene Creed, determined to make it the creed of the State. Accordingly, upon his arrival in Constantinople on the 20th of November 380, he sent for Demophilus, the Arian bishop of the city, and commanded him either to accept the orthodox views or leave Constantinople. Demophilus had the courage of his convictions, and, bidding his flock in S. Sophia farewell, left the capital in obedience, as he said, to the injunction, “When they persecute you in one city, flee ye to another.” All the churches of the city were now transferred to the orthodox party. The Arians, however, maintained religious services according to their own tenets outside the city walls, in the district known as the Exokionion (quarter of the outside column). The name was due to the presence there of a column surmounted by a statue of Constantine. Owing to their association with the district, Arians were sometimes designated Exokionitæ. The district lay immediately outside the gateway in the Constantinian walls already noted as the Ancient 37Gate of late Byzantine times, and as Isa Kapoussi since the Turkish Conquest. It can therefore be readily identified, and, curiously enough, under the disguise of a Turkish garb—Alti Mermer, the Six Marbles—the locality still retains its old name. For the Turkish designation is due to a misunderstanding of the meaning of the term Exakionion, a corrupt form of Exokionion frequently employed by Byzantine writers  




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