1-10. Byzantium and the Foundation of the New Rome
Europe and Asia are separated by the broad expanses of the Euxine and Aegean seas, together stretching nearly a thousand miles from the Crimea to the mountains of Crete, and in ancient times almost fringed 'round with Greek cities. It is not all a land of the vine and the olive, even in Aegean waters, for the Russian wind sweeps over the whole region except in sheltered parts, as where Trebizond is protected by the Caucasus, Philippi by the Rhodope, or Sparta by Taygetus, or where Ionia hides behind the Mysian Olympus and the Trojan Ida. For all its heat in summer, Constantinople is quite as cold in winter as London, and the western ports of the Black Sea are more cumbered with ice than the north of Norway.
But the Aegean and the Euxine are not a single broad sheet of water. In the narrows between them the coasts of Europe and Asia draw so close together that we can sail for more than two hundred miles in full view of both continents. Leaving the warm South behind at Lesbos (Mitylene) we pass from the Aegean to the Propontis (Marmora) by the Hellespont (Dardanelles) a channel of some fifty miles in length to Gallipoli, and two or three miles broad. Then a voyage of a hundred and forty miles through the more open waters of the Propontis brings us to the Bosphorus, which averages only three-quarters of a mile wide, and has a winding course of sixteen miles from Byzantium to the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the Euxine. It follows that a city on the Propontis is protected north and south by the narrow passages of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and that all traffic between the Aegean and the Euxine must pass its walls. Moreover, the Bosphorus lay more conveniently than the Dardanelles for the passage from Europe to Asia. Thus two of the chief trade-routes of the Roman world crossed each other at Byzantium.
The Megarians may have had some idea of these things when they colonised Chalcedon (B.C. 674) just outside the south end of the Bosphorus, on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. But the site of Chalcedon has no special advantages, so that its founders became a proverb of blindness for overlooking the superb position of Byzantium across the water, which was not occupied till B.C. 657. At the south end of the Bosphorus, but on the European side, a blunt triangle is formed by the Propontis and the Golden Horn, a deep inlet of the Bosphorus running seven miles to the north-west.
On the rising ground between them was built the city of Byzantium. Small as its extent was in Greek times, it played a great part in history. Its command of the corn trade of the Euxine made it one of the most important strategic positions in the Greek world, so that its capture by Alexander (it had repulsed Philip) was one of the chief steps of his advance to empire. It formed an early alliance with the Romans, who freed it from its perpetual trouble with the barbarians of Thrace, whom neither peace nor war could keep quiet. Vespasian (A.D. 73) took away its privileges and threw it into the province of Thrace. In the civil wars of Septimius Severus it took the side of Pescennius Niger, and held out for two years after Niger's overthrow at Issus in 194. Severus destroyed its walls, and made it a subject-village of Perinthus. Caracalla made it a city again, but it was sacked afresh by Gallienus.
Meanwhile the Gothic vikings came sailing past its ruined walls to spread terror all over the Aegean and to the shores of Italy. Under the Illyrian emperors it was fortified again. Even then it was taken first by Maximin Daza and then by Constantine in the first Licinian war, so that its full significance only came out in the second. Licinius was a good general, and pivoted the whole war upon it after his defeat at Hadrianople. He might have held his ground indefinitely, if the destruction of his fleet in the Hellespont had not driven him from Byzantium.
The lesson was not lost on Constantine. He began the work some time after his visit to Rome, and pushed it forward with impatience. He traced his walls to form a base two and a half miles from the apex of the triangle. Byzantium stood on a single hill, but he took in five, and his successors counted seven, according to the number of the hills of Rome. The market-place was on the second hill, where his camp had been during the siege. He erected great buildings, and gathered works of art from all parts to adorn it. The temples of Byzantium remained, though they were overshadowed by the great cathedral of the Twelve Apostles. Some heathen ceremonies also were used, for Constantinople was the last and greatest colony of Rome, and for centuries retained the flavour of a Latin city. He gave it a senate also, and brought over many of the senators of Rome to be senators of the New Rome — for such was its official title, though it has always been known as the City of Constantine. The Northmen called it simply Miklagard, the Great City.
It never had much in the way of amphitheatre or beast-fights: amusement more Christian and humane was provided by a circus and horse-races. Its corn largesses were like those of Rome, and the corn of Egypt was diverted to its use, leaving that of Sicily and Africa for Rome. The New Rome stood next to the Old in rank and dignity, being separated from the province of Europa, and governed by proconsuls till it received a Praefectiis Urbi like Rome in 359. The bishop also noon shook off his dependence on Perinthus, and was recognised as standing next to the bishop of Rome, “because Constantinople is New Rome” by the Council of 381. This ousted Alexandria from the second place, and the jealousy thereupon arising had important ecclesiastical consequences. The work was complete, so far as the hasty building would allow, by the spring of 330, and 11 May of that year is the official date for the foundation of Constantinople.
It would be hard to overestimate the strength given to the Empire by the new capital. So long as the Romans hold the sea, the city was impregnable. If it was attacked on one side, it could draw supplies from the other; and when it was attacked on both sides in 628, Persians and Avars could not join hands across the Bosphorus. Even when the command of the sea was lost, it still remained a fortress of uncommon strength. So stood Constantinople for more than a thousand years. Goths and Avars, Persians and Saracens, Bulgarians and Russians, dashed in vain upon its walls, and even the Turks failed more than once. It was often enough taken in civil war by help from within; but no foreign enemy ever stormed its walls till the Fourth Crusade in A.D. 1204. The Arian controversy first made it clear that the heart of the Empire was in the Greek world, or more precisely in Asiatic Greece between the Taurus and the Bosphorus; and of the Greek world Constantinople was the natural capital
It did not however at once become the regular residence of the emperors. Constantine himself died in a suburb of Nicomedia, Constantius led a wandering life, Jovian never reached the city, and Valens in his later years avoided it. Theodosius was the first emperor who made it his usual residence. But the commercial supremacy of Constantinople was assured from the outset. The centre of gravity of Asia Minor had shifted northward since the first century, and the Bosphorus gave an easier passage to Europe than the Aegean. So the roads which had converged on Ephesus now converged on Constantinople. It dominated the Greek world; and the Greek world was the solid part of the Empire which resisted all attacks for ages.
The loss was more apparent than real when first the Slavic lands were torn away, then Syria and Egypt, and lastly Sicily and Italy. The Empire was never struck in a vital part till the Seljuks rooted out Greek civilization from the highland of Asia Minor in the eleventh century. Even after that it was still a conquering power under the Comnenians and the house of Lascaris; and its fate was never hopeless till its last firm ground in Asia was destroyed by the corrupt and selfish policy of Michael Palaeologus.
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