When the fall of Byzantium had wrecked the fortunes of Licinius, the Roman
 world was again united beneath the sceptre of a single master. For
 thirty-seven years, ever since Diocletian parcelled out the provinces with
 his colleagues, unity had been unknown, and emperors, whose number had
 sometimes risen to six and sometimes sunk to two, had administered their
 realms on different principles and with varying success.
 
 Constantine, whose victory over his rivals had been secured by his talents
 as an administrator and a diplomatist no less than by his military skill,
 was one of those men whose hard practical ability has stamped upon the
 history of the world a much deeper impress than has been left by many
 conquerors and legislators of infinitely greater genius. He was a man of
 that self-contained, self-reliant, unsympathetic type of mind which we
 recognize in his great predecessor Augustus, or in Frederic the Great of
 Prussia.
 
                               
 
                           Constantine the Great
 
 
 Though the strain of old Roman blood in his veins must have been but
 small, Constantine was in many ways a typical Roman; the hard, cold,
 steady, unwearying energy, which in earlier centuries had won the empire
 of the world, was once more incarnate in him. But if Roman in character,
 he was anything but Roman in his sympathies. Born by the Danube, reared in
 the courts and camps of Asia and Gaul, he was absolutely free from any of
 that superstitious reverence for the ancient glories of the city on the
 Tiber which had inspired so many of his predecessors. Italy was to him but
 a secondary province amongst his wide realms. When he distributed his
 dominions among his heirs, it was Gaul that he gave as the noblest share
 to his eldest and best-loved son: Italy was to him a younger child's
 portion. There had been emperors before him who had neglected Rome: the
 barbarian Maximinus I. had dwelt by the Rhine and the Danube; the politic
 Diocletian had chosen Nicomedia as his favourite residence. But no one had
 yet dreamed of raising up a rival to the mistress of the world, and of
 turning Rome into a provincial town. If preceding emperors had dwelt far
 afield, it was to meet the exigencies of war on the frontiers or the
 government of distant provinces. It was reserved for Constantine to erect
 over against Rome a rival metropolis for the civilized world, an imperial
 city which was to be neither a mere camp nor a mere court, but the
 administrative and commercial centre of the Roman world.
 
 For more than a hundred years Rome had been a most inconvenient residence
 for the emperors. The main problem which had been before them was the
 repelling of incessant barbarian inroads on the Balkan Peninsula; the
 troubles on the Rhine and the Euphrates, though real enough, had been but
 minor evils. Rome, placed half way down the long projection of Italy,
 handicapped by its bad harbours and separated from the rest of the empire
 by the passes of the Alps, was too far away from the points where the
 emperor was most wanted--the banks of the Danube and the walls of Sirmium
 and Singidunum. For the ever-recurring wars with Persia it was even more
 inconvenient; but these were less pressing dangers; no Persian army had
 yet penetrated beyond Antioch--only 200 miles from the frontier--while in
 the Balkan Peninsula the Goths had broken so far into the heart of the
 empire as to sack Athens and Thessalonica.
 
 Constantine, with all the Roman world at his feet, and all its
 responsibilities weighing on his mind, was far too able a man to overlook
 the great need of the day--a more conveniently placed administrative and
 military centre for his empire. He required a place that should be easily
 accessible by land and sea--which Rome had never been in spite of its
 wonderful roads--that should overlook the Danube lands, without being too
 far away from the East; that should be so strongly situated that it might
 prove an impregnable arsenal and citadel against barbarian attacks from
 the north; that should at the same time be far enough away from the
 turmoil of the actual frontier to afford a safe and splendid residence for
 the imperial court. The names of several towns are given by historians as
 having suggested themselves to Constantine. First was his own
 birth-place--Naissus (Nisch) on the Morava, in the heart of the Balkan
 Peninsula; but Naissus had little to recommend it: it was too close to the
 frontier and too far from the sea. Sardica--the modern Sofia in
 Bulgaria--was liable to the same objections, and had not the sole advantage
 of Naissus, that of being connected in sentiment with the emperor's early
 days. Nicomedia on its long gulf at the east end of the Propontis was a
 more eligible situation in every way, and had already served as an
 imperial residence. But all that could be urged in favour of Nicomedia
 applied with double force to Byzantium, and, in addition, Constantine had
 no wish to choose a city in which his own memory would be eclipsed by that
 of his predecessor Diocletian, and whose name was associated by the
 Christians, the class of his subjects whom he had most favoured of late,
 with the persecutions of Diocletian and Galerius. For Ilium, the last
 place on which Constantine had cast his mind, nothing could be alleged
 except its ancient legendary glories, and the fact that the mythologists
 of Rome had always fabled that their city drew its origin from the exiled
 Trojans of AEneas. Though close to the sea it had no good harbour, and it
 was just too far from the mouth of the Hellespont to command effectually
 the exit of the Euxine.
 
 Byzantium, on the other hand, was thoroughly well known to Constantine.
 For months his camp had been pitched beneath its walls; he must have known
 accurately every inch of its environs, and none of its military advantages
 can have missed his eye. Nothing, then, could have been more natural than
 his selection of the old Megarian city for his new capital. Yet the Roman
 world was startled at the first news of his choice; Byzantium had been so
 long known merely as a great port of call for the Euxine trade, and as a
 first-class provincial fortress, that it was hard to conceive of it as a
 destined seat of empire.
 
 When once Constantine had determined to make Byzantium his capital, in
 preference to any other place in the Balkan lands, his measures were taken
 with his usual energy and thoroughness. The limits of the new city were at
 once marked out by solemn processions in the old Roman style. In later
 ages a picturesque legend was told to account for the magnificent scale on
 which it was planned. The emperor, we read, marched out on foot, followed
 by all his court, and traced with his spear the line where the new
 fortifications were to be drawn. As he paced on further and further
 westward along the shore of the Golden Horn, till he was more than two
 miles away from his starting-point, the gate of old Byzantium, his
 attendants grew more and more surprised at the vastness of his scheme. At
 last they ventured to observe that he had already exceeded the most ample
 limits that an imperial city could require. But Constantine turned to
 rebuke them: "I shall go on," he said, "until He, the invisible guide who
 marches before me, thinks fit to stop." Guided by his mysterious
 presentiment of greatness, the emperor advanced till he was three miles
 from the eastern angle of Byzantium, and only turned his steps when he had
 included in his boundary line all the seven hills which are embraced in
 the peninsula between the Propontis and the Golden Horn.
 
 The rising ground just outside the walls of the old city, where
 Constantine's tent had been pitched during the siege of A.D. 323, was
 selected out as the market-place of the new foundation. There he erected
 the _Milion_, or "golden milestone," from which all the distances of the
 eastern world were in future to be measured. This "central point of the
 world" was not a mere single stone, but a small building like a temple,
 its roof supported by seven pillars; within was placed the statue of the
 emperor, together with that of his venerated mother, the Christian Empress
 Helena.
 
 The south-eastern part of the old town of Byzantium was chosen by
 Constantine for the site of his imperial palace. The spot was cleared of
 all private dwellings for a space of 150 acres, to give space not only for
 a magnificent residence for his whole court, but for spacious gardens and
 pleasure-grounds. A wall, commencing at the Lighthouse, where the
 Bosphorus joins the Propontis, turned inland and swept along parallel to
 the shore for about a mile, in order to shut off the imperial precinct
 from the city.
 
                               
 
                        The Heart of Constantinople
 
 
 North-west of the palace lay the central open space in which the life of
 Constantinople was to find its centre. This was the "Augustaeum," a
 splendid oblong forum, about a thousand feet long by three hundred broad.
 It was paved with marble and surrounded on all sides by stately public
 buildings. To its east, as we have already said, lay the imperial palace,
 but between the palace and the open space were three detached edifices
 connected by a colonnade. Of these, the most easterly was the Great Baths,
 known, from their builder, as the "Baths of Zeuxippus." They were built on
 the same magnificent scale which the earlier emperors had used in Old
 Rome, though they could not, perhaps, vie in size with the enormous Baths
 of Caracalla. Constantine utilized and enlarged the old public bath of
 Byzantium, which had been rebuilt after the taking of the city by Severus.
 He adorned the frontage and courts of the edifice with statues taken from
 every prominent town of Greece and Asia, the old Hellenic masterpieces
 which had escaped the rapacious hands of twelve generations of plundering
 proconsuls and Caesars. There were to be seen the Athene of Lyndus, the
 Amphithrite of Rhodes, the Pan which had been consecrated by the Greeks
 after the defeat of Xerxes, and the Zeus of Dodona.
 
 Adjoining the Baths, to the north, lay the second great building, on the
 east side of the Augustaeum--the Senate House. Constantine had determined
 to endow his new city with a senate modelled on that of Old Rome, and had
 indeed persuaded many old senatorial families to migrate eastward by
 judicious gifts of pensions and houses. We know that the assembly was
 worthily housed, but no details survive about Constantine's building, on
 account of its having been twice destroyed within the century. But, like
 the Baths of Zeuxippus, it was adorned with ancient statuary, among which
 the Nine Muses of Helicon are specially cited by the historian who
 describes the burning of the place in A.D. 404.
 
 Linked to the Senate House by a colonnade, lay on the north the Palace of
 the Patriarch, as the Bishop of Byzantium was ere long to be called, when
 raised to the same status as his brethren of Antioch and Alexandria. A
 fine building in itself, with a spacious hall of audience and a garden,
 the patriarchal dwelling was yet completely overshadowed by the imperial
 palace which rose behind it. And so it was with the patriarch himself: he
 lived too near his royal master to be able to gain any independent
 authority. Physically and morally alike he was too much overlooked by his
 august neighbour, and never found the least opportunity of setting up an
 independent spiritual authority over against the civil government, or of
 founding an _imperium in imperio_ like the Bishop of Rome.
 
                               
 
                  The Atmeidan Hippodrome And St. Sophia.
 
 
 All along the western side of the Augustaeum, facing the three buildings
 which we have already described, lay an edifice which played a very
 prominent part in the public life of Constantinople. This was the great
 Hippodrome, a splendid circus 640 cubits long and 160 broad, in which were
 renewed the games that Old Rome had known so well. The whole system the
 chariot-races between the teams that represented the "factions" of the
 Circus was reproduced at Byzantium with an energy that even surpassed the
 devotion of the Romans to horse racing. From the first foundation of the
 city the rivalry of the "Blues" and the "Greens" was one of the most
 striking features of the life of the place. It was carried far beyond the
 circus, and spread into all branches of life. We often hear of the "Green"
 faction identifying itself with Arianism, or of the "Blue" supporting a
 pretender to the throne. Not merely men of sporting interests, but persons
 of all ranks and professions, chose their colour and backed their faction.
 The system was a positive danger to the public peace, and constantly led
 to riots, culminating in the great sedition of A.D. 523, which we shall
 presently have to describe at length. In the Hippodrome the "Greens"
 always entered by the north-eastern gate, and sat on the east side; the
 "Blues" approached by the north-western gate and stretched along the
 western side. The emperor's box, called the Kathisma, occupied the whole
 of the short northern side, and contained many hundreds of seats for the
 imperial retinue. The great central throne of the Kathisma was the place
 in which the monarch showed himself most frequently to his subjects, and
 around it many strange scenes were enacted. It was on this throne that the
 rebel Hypatius was crowned emperor by the mob, with his own wife's
 necklace for an impromptu diadem. Here also, two centuries later, the
 Emperor Justinian II. sat in state after his reconquest of Constantinople,
 with his rivals, Leontius and Apsimarus, bound beneath his footstool,
 while the populace chanted, in allusion to the names of the vanquished
 princes, the verse, "Thou shalt trample on the Lion and the Asp."
 
 Down the centre of the Hippodrome ran the "spina," or division wall, which
 every circus showed; it was ornamented with three most curious monuments,
 whose strange juxtaposition seemed almost to typify the heterogeneous
 materials from which the new city was built up. The first and oldest was
 an obelisk brought from Egypt, and covered with the usual hieroglyphic
 inscriptions; the second was the most notable, though one of the least
 beautiful, of the antiquities of Constantinople: it was the three-headed
 brazen serpent which Pausanias and the victorious Greeks had dedicated at
 Delphi in 479 B.C., after they had destroyed the Persian army at Plataea.
 The golden tripod, which was supported by the heads of the serpents, had
 long been wanting: the sacrilegious Phocians had stolen it six centuries
 before; but the dedicatory inscriptions engraved on the coils of the
 pedestal survived then and survive now to delight the archaeologist. The
 third monument on the "spina" was a square bronze column of more modern
 work, contrasting strangely with the venerable antiquity of its
 neighbours. By some freak of chance all three monuments have remained till
 our own day: the vast walls of the Hippodrome have crumbled away, but its
 central decorations still stand erect in the midst of an open space which
 the Turks call the Atmeidan, or place of horses, in dim memory of its
 ancient use.
 
 Along the outer eastern wall of the Hippodrome on the western edge of the
 Augustaeum, stood a range of small chapels and statues, the most important
 landmark among them being the _Milion_ or central milestone of the empire,
 which we have already described. The statues, few at first, were increased
 by later emperors, till they extended along the whole length of the forum.
 Constantine's own contribution to the collection was a tall porphyry
 column surmounted by a bronze image which had once been the tutelary
 Apollo of the city of Hierapolis, but was turned into a representation of
 the emperor by the easy method of knocking off its head and substituting
 the imperial features. It was exactly the reverse of a change which can be
 seen at Rome, where the popes have removed the head of the Emperor
 Aurelius, and turned him into St. Peter, on the column in the Corso.
 
                               
 
                  Building A Palace (from a Byzantine MS.)
 
 
 North of the Hippodrome stood the great church which Constantine erected
 for his Christian subjects, and dedicated to the Divine Wisdom (_Hagia
 Sophia_). It was not the famous domed edifice which now bears that name,
 but an earlier and humbler building, probably of the Basilica-shape then
 usual. Burnt down once in the fifth and once in the sixth centuries, it
 has left no trace of its original character. From the west door of St.
 Sophia a wooden gallery, supported on arches, crossed the square, and
 finally ended at the "Royal Gate" of the palace. By this the emperor would
 betake himself to divine service without having to cross the street of the
 Chalcoprateia (brass market), which lay opposite to St. Sophia. The
 general effect of the gallery must have been somewhat like that of the
 curious passage perched aloft on arches which connects the Pitti and
 Uffizi palaces at Florence.
 
 The edifices which we have described formed the heart of Constantinople.
 Between the Palace, the Hippodrome, and the Cathedral most of the
 important events in the history of the city took place. But to north and
 west the city extended for miles, and everywhere there were buildings of
 note, though no other cluster could vie with that round the Augustaeum.
 The Church of the Holy Apostles, which Constantine destined as the
 burying-place of his family, was the second among the ecclesiastical
 edifices of the town. Of the outlying civil buildings, the public
 granaries along the quays, the Golden Gate, by which the great road from
 the west entered the walls, and the palace of the praetorian praefect, who
 acted as governor of the city, must all have been well worthy of notice. A
 statue of Constantine on horseback, which stood by the last-named edifice,
 was one of the chief shows of Constantinople down to the end of the Middle
 Ages, and some curious legends gathered around it.
 
                               
 
     Fifteenth-Century Drawing Of The Equestrian Statue Of Constantine.
 
 
 It was in A.D. 328 or 329--the exact date is not easily to be fixed--that
 Constantine had definitely chosen Byzantium for his capital, and drawn out
 the plan for its development. As early as May 11, 330, the buildings were
 so far advanced that he was able to hold the festival which celebrated its
 consecration. Christian bishops blessed the partially completed palace,
 and held the first service in St. Sophia; for Constantine, though still
 unbaptized himself, had determined that the new city should be Christian
 from the first. Of paganism there was no trace in it, save a few of the
 old temples of the Byzantines, spared when the older streets were levelled
 to clear the ground for the palace and adjoining buildings. The statues of
 the gods which adorned the Baths and Senate House stood there as works of
 art, not as objects of worship.
 
 To fill the vast limits of his city, Constantine invited many senators of
 Old Rome and many rich provincial proprietors of Greece and Asia to take
 up their abode in it, granting them places in his new senate and sites for
 the dwellings they would require. The countless officers and functionaries
 of the imperial court, with their subordinates and slaves, must have
 composed a very considerable element in the new population. The artizans
 and handicraftsmen were enticed in thousands by the offer of special
 privileges. Merchants and seamen had always abounded at Byzantium, and now
 flocked in numbers which made the old commercial prosperity of the city
 seem insignificant. Most effective--though most demoralizing--of the gifts
 which Constantine bestowed on the new capital to attract immigrants was
 the old Roman privilege of free distribution of corn to the populace. The
 wheat-tribute of Egypt, which had previously formed part of the public
 provision of Rome, was transferred to the use of Constantinople, only the
 African corn from Carthage being for the future assigned for the
 subsistence of the older city.
 
 On the completion of the dedication festival in 330 A.D. an imperial edict
 gave the city the title of New Rome, and the record was placed on a marble
 tablet near the equestrian statue of the emperor, opposite the Strategion.
 But "New Rome" was a phrase destined to subsist in poetry and rhetoric
 alone: the world from the first very rightly gave the city the founder's
 name only, and persisted in calling it Constantinople.