The Dark Ages Collection. David HumeЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 archway, on either front, it bore the following inscription in metal:
haec loca Theudosius decorat post fata tyranni.
aurea saecla gerit qui portam construit auro.17
This designation of the arch as a gate suggests that Theodosius may have already contemplated the enclosure of the city by a new wall.18
The other four public gates were those known by the names of Melantias, Rhegion, St. Romanus, and Charisius.19 The stretch of wall descending from the Gate of St. Romanus into the valley of the Lycus, and then ascending to the Gate of Charisius, was known as the Mesoteichion or Middle Wall, and when the city was attacked the enemy usually selected it as the most vulnerable portion of the defences. The gates divided the wall into six sections, each of which had its own division of the garrison, distinguished as the First, the Second, and so on. In each section, except in the short one between the Golden Gate and the sea which was manned by the First division, there was a military gate giving access to the terrace, and these gates were distinguished by the number of the division. Thus the military gate between the Porta Aurea and the Porta Melantiados was known as the gate of the Second.20 The gate of the Sixth, north of the Porta Charisii, was called the gate of the Xylokerkos, from a wooden circus which was near it.
It was twenty-five years after the completion of the wall of Anthemius that the sea-walls of the Constantinian city were extended along the Golden Horn and the Marmora to join the new line of fortification. This work seems to have been carried out under the direction of Cyrus, Prefect of the city, in A.D. 439.21
The Thirteenth Region, beyond the Golden Horn, known as Sycae, and subsequently as Galata,22 was not fortified, and, though formally a part of the city, it was virtually a suburb. The regular communication with this region was by ferry,23 but the Golden Horn was also crossed by a wooden bridge of which the southern end was at Blachernae.24 In the sixth century this was replaced by a bridge of stone.
The Golden Horn itself was the great port of Constantinople. But there were also small harbours on the Propontis. At the end of the fourth century there were two: the Harbour of Eleutherius or of Theodosius,25 and farther east the Harbour of Julian, also known as the New Harbour, and after the sixth century as the Harbour of Sophia.26 At these wharves the corn-ships from Egypt were probably unloaded, for between them were situated the Alexandrine grain magazines.27 In the fifth century the harbour of Eleutherius, which Theodosius the Great had improved and honoured with his own name, was filled up and disused, but a small new harbour was built near it known as the Portus Caesarii.28 It was probably not till a later period, but before the end of the sixth century, that the port of Hormisdas (afterwards known as that of Bucoleon) was constructed.29 These small harbours on the Propontis were a great convenience, indeed a necessity. For the frequently prevailing north winds often rendered it very difficult for ships to round the promontory and enter the Golden Horn. In that gulf the chief landing-place was the Portus Prosphorianus, also called the Bosporion, under the Acropolis and close to the Arsenal.
§ 2. Topography and Buildings
In founding a new city, one of the first things which the practical Romans provided was an abundant supply of water. The construction of aqueducts was a branch of engineering which they had brought to perfection, and it was a task of little difficulty to bring in water from the northern hills. A ruined bit of the old aqueduct is still a striking object in the centre of the city.30 Many reservoirs and cisterns, both open and covered, supplied the inhabitants with water;31 and, a hundred years after the foundation of the city, there were eight public baths (thermae), and 153 private baths in the fourteen Regions.32
Constantine accorded to the citizens of his new capital the same demoralising privilege which Rome had so long enjoyed, a free supply of bread at the public expense. The granaries of Africa were still appropriated to the needs of Rome; the fruitful lands of the Nile supplied Constantinople. There were five corn-stores; there were twenty public bakeries, and 117 ”steps,” from which the bread was distributed to the people, in different parts of the city.33
A visitor to Constantinople soon after its foundation would have been struck by the fact that there was no public sign of pagan worship. The gods of Greece and Rome were conspicuously absent. If he were a pagan, he might walk to the Acropolis and gaze sadly on the temples of Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite, in which the men of old Byzantium had sacrificed, and which Constantine had dismantled but allowed to stand as relics of the past.34 From its very inauguration the New Rome was ostensibly and officially Christian.35 Nor did the statue of the founder, as a sun-god, compromise his Christian intention. In the centre of the oval Forum, which he laid out on the Second Hill just outside the wall of the old Byzantium, he erected a high column with porphyry drums, on the top of which he placed a statue of Apollo, the work of an old Greek master, but the head of the god was replaced by his own. It was crowned with a halo of seven rays, and looked towards the rising sun.36 The column, blackened by time and fire, and injured by earthquakes, still stands,37 the one monument of the founder which has survived. Within the pedestal beneath Constantine is said to have placed the Palladium of Rome and