Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight years ago a little fleet of
 galleys toiled painfully against the current up the long strait of the
 Hellespont, rowed across the broad Propontis, and came to anchor in the
 smooth waters of the first inlet which cuts into the European shore of the
 Bosphorus. There a long crescent-shaped creek, which after-ages were to
 know as the Golden Horn, strikes inland for seven miles, forming a quiet
 backwater from the rapid stream which runs outside. On the headland,
 enclosed between this inlet and the open sea, a few hundred colonists
 disembarked, and hastily secured themselves from the wild tribes of the
 inland, by running some rough sort of a stockade across the ground from
 beach to beach. Thus was founded the city of Byzantium.
 
 The settlers were Greeks of the Dorian race, natives of the thriving
 seaport-state of Megara, one of the most enterprising of all the cities of
 Hellas in the time of colonial and commercial expansion which was then at
 its height. Wherever a Greek prow had cut its way into unknown waters,
 there Megarian seamen were soon found following in its wake. One band of
 these venturesome traders pushed far to the West to plant colonies in
 Sicily, but the larger share of the attention of Megara was turned towards
 the sunrising, towards the mist-enshrouded entrance of the Black Sea and
 the fabulous lands that lay beyond. There, as legends told, was to be
 found the realm of the Golden Fleece, the Eldorado of the ancient world,
 where kings of untold wealth reigned over the tribes of Colchis: there
 dwelt, by the banks of the river Thermodon, the Amazons, the warlike women
 who had once vexed far-off Greece by their inroads: there, too, was to be
 found, if one could but struggle far enough up its northern shore, the
 land of the Hyperboreans, the blessed folk who dwell behind the North Wind
 and know nothing of storm and winter. To seek these fabled wonders the
 Greeks sailed ever North and East till they had come to the extreme limits
 of the sea. The riches of the Golden Fleece they did not find, nor the
 country of the Hyperboreans, nor the tribes of the Amazons; but they did
 discover many lands well worth the knowing, and grew rich on the profits
 which they drew from the metals of Colchis and the forests of Paphlagonia,
 from the rich corn lands by the banks of the Dnieper and Bug, and the
 fisheries of the Bosphorus and the Maeotic Lake. Presently the whole
 coastland of the sea, which the Greeks, on their first coming, called
 Axeinos--"the Inhospitable"--became fringed with trading settlements, and
 its name was changed to Euxeinos--"the Hospitable"--in recognition of its
 friendly ports. It was in a similar spirit that, two thousand years later,
 the seamen who led the next great impulse of exploration that rose in
 Europe, turned the name of the "Cape of Storms" into that of the "Cape of
 Good Hope."
 
 The Megarians, almost more than any other Greeks, devoted their attention
 to the Euxine, and the foundation of Byzantium was but one of their many
 achievements. Already, seventeen years before Byzantium came into being,
 another band of Megarian colonists had established themselves at
 Chalcedon, on the opposite Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. The settlers
 who were destined to found the greater city applied to the oracle of
 Delphi to give them advice as to the site of their new home, and Apollo,
 we are told, bade them "build their town over against the city of the
 blind." They therefore pitched upon the headland by the Golden Horn,
 reasoning that the Chalcedonians were truly blind to have neglected the
 more eligible site on the Thracian shore, in order to found a colony on
 the far less inviting Bithynian side of the strait.
 
                               
 
                          Early Coin Of Byzantium.
 
 
                               
 
             Late Coin Of Byzantium Showing Crescent And Star.
 
 
 From the first its situation marked out Byzantium as destined for a great
 future. Alike from the military and from the commercial point of view no
 city could have been better placed. Looking out from the easternmost
 headland of Thrace, with all Europe behind it and all Asia before, it was
 equally well suited to be the frontier fortress to defend the border of
 the one, or the basis of operations for an invasion from the other. As
 fortresses went in those early days it was almost impregnable--two sides
 protected by the water, the third by a strong wall not commanded by any
 neighbouring heights. In all its early history Byzantium never fell by
 storm: famine or treachery accounted for the few occasions on which it
 fell into the hands of an enemy. In its commercial aspect the place was
 even more favourably situated. It completely commanded the whole Black Sea
 trade: every vessel that went forth from Greece or Ionia to traffic with
 Scythia or Colchis, the lands by the Danube mouth or the shores of the
 Maeotic Lake, had to pass close under its walls, so that the prosperity of
 a hundred Hellenic towns on the Euxine was always at the mercy of the
 masters of Byzantium. The Greek loved short stages and frequent stoppages,
 and as a half-way house alone Byzantium would have been prosperous: but it
 had also a flourishing local trade of its own with the tribes of the
 neighbouring Thracian inland, and drew much profit from its fisheries: so
 much so that the city badge--its coat of arms as we should call
 it--comprised a tunny-fish as well as the famous ox whose form alluded to
 the legend of the naming of the Bosphorus.
 
 As an independent state Byzantium had a long and eventful history. For
 thirty years it was in the hands of the kings of Persia, but with that
 short exception it maintained its freedom during the first three hundred
 years that followed its foundation. Many stirring scenes took place
 beneath its walls: it was close to them that the great Darius threw across
 the Bosphorus his bridge of boats, which served as a model for the more
 famous structure on which his son Xerxes crossed the Hellespont. Fifteen
 years later, when Byzantium in common with all its neighbours made an
 ineffectual attempt to throw off the Persian yoke, in the rising called
 the "Ionic Revolt," it was held for a time by the arch-rebel Histiaeus,
 who--as much to enrich himself as to pay his seamen--invented strait dues.
 He forced every ship passing up or down the Bosphorus to pay a heavy toll,
 and won no small unpopularity thereby for the cause of freedom which he
 professed to champion. Ere long Byzantium fell back again into the hands
 of Persia, but she was finally freed from the Oriental yoke seventeen
 years later, when the victorious Greeks, fresh from the triumph of Salamis
 and Mycale, sailed up to her walls and after a long leaguer starved out
 the obstinate garrison [B.C. 479]. The fleet wintered there, and it was at
 Byzantium that the first foundations of the naval empire of Athens were
 laid, when all the Greek states of Asia placed their ships at the disposal
 of the Athenian admirals Cimon and Aristeides.
 
 During the fifth century Byzantium twice declared war on Athens, now the
 mistress of the seas, and on each occasion fell into the hands of the
 enemy--once by voluntary surrender in 439 B.C., once by treachery from
 within, in 408 B.C. But the Athenians, except in one or two disgraceful
 cases, did not deal hardly with their conquered enemies, and the
 Byzantines escaped anything harder than the payment of a heavy war
 indemnity. In a few years their commercial gains repaired all the losses
 of war, and the state was itself again.
 
 We know comparatively little about the internal history of these early
 centuries of the life of Byzantium. Some odd fragments of information
 survive here and there: we know, for example, that they used iron instead
 of copper for small money, a peculiarity shared by no other ancient state
 save Sparta. Their alphabet rejoiced in an abnormally shaped {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}, which
 puzzled all other Greeks, for it resembled a {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~} with an extra limb. The
 chief gods of the city were those that we might have expected--Poseidon the
 ruler of the sea, whose blessing gave Byzantium its chief wealth; and
 Demeter, the goddess who presided over the Thracian and Scythian corn
 lands which formed its second source of prosperity.
 
 The Byzantines were, if ancient chroniclers tell us the truth, a luxurious
 as well as a busy race: they spent too much time in their numerous inns,
 where the excellent wines of Maronea and other neighbouring places offered
 great temptations. They were gluttons too as well as tipplers: on one
 occasion, we are assured, the whole civic militia struck work in the
 height of a siege, till their commander consented to allow restaurants to
 be erected at convenient distances round the ramparts. One comic writer
 informs us that the Byzantines were eating young tunny-fish--their
 favourite dish--so constantly, that their whole bodies had become well-nigh
 gelatinous, and it was thought they might melt if exposed to too great
 heat! Probably these tales are the scandals of neighbours who envied
 Byzantine prosperity, for it is at any rate certain that the city showed
 all through its history great energy and love of independence, and never
 shrank from war as we should have expected a nation of epicures to do.
 
 It was not till the rise of Philip of Macedon and his greater son
 Alexander that Byzantium fell for the fifth time into the hands of an
 enemy. The elder king was repulsed from the city's walls after a long
 siege, culminating in an attempt at an escalade by night, which was
 frustrated owing to the sudden appearance of a light in heaven, which
 revealed the advancing enemy and was taken by the Byzantines as a token of
 special divine aid [B.C. 339]. In commemoration of it they assumed as one
 of their civic badges the blazing crescent and star, which has descended
 to our own days and is still used as an emblem by the present owners of
 the city--the Ottoman Sultans. But after repulsing Philip the Byzantines
 had to submit some years later to Alexander. They formed under him part of
 the enormous Macedonian empire, and passed on his decease through the
 hands of his successors--Demetrius Poliorcetes, and Lysimachus. After the
 death of the latter in battle, however, they recovered a precarious
 freedom, and were again an independent community for a hundred years, till
 the power of Rome invaded the regions of Thrace and the Hellespont.
 
 Byzantium was one of the cities which took the wise course of making an
 early alliance with the Romans, and obtained good and easy terms in
 consequence. During the wars of Rome with Macedon and Antiochus the Great
 it proved such a faithful assistant that the Senate gave it the status of
 a _civitas libera et foederata_, "a free and confederate city," and it was
 not taken under direct Roman government, but allowed complete liberty in
 everything save the control of its foreign relations and the payment of a
 tribute to Rome. It was not till the Roman Republic had long passed away,
 that the Emperor Vespasian stripped it of these privileges, and threw it
 into the province of Thrace, to exist for the future as an ordinary
 provincial town [A.D. 73].
 
 Though deprived of a liberty which had for long years been almost nominal,
 Byzantium could not be deprived of its unrivalled position for commerce.
 It continued to flourish under the _Pax Romana_, the long-continued peace
 which all the inner countries of the empire enjoyed during the first two
 centuries of the imperial _regime_, and is mentioned again and again as
 one of the most important cities of the middle regions of the Roman world.
 
 But an evil time for Byzantium, as for all the other parts of the
 civilized world, began when the golden age of the Antonines ceased, and
 the epoch of the military emperors followed. In 192 A.D., Commodus, the
 unworthy son of the great and good Marcus Aurelius, was murdered, and ere
 long three military usurpers were wrangling for his blood-stained diadem.
 Most unhappily for itself Byzantium lay on the line of division between
 the eastern provinces, where Pescennius Niger had been proclaimed, and the
 Illyrian provinces, where Severus had assumed the imperial style. The city
 was seized by the army of Syria, and strengthened in haste. Presently
 Severus appeared from the west, after he had made himself master of Rome
 and Italy, and fell upon the forces of his rival Pescennius. Victory
 followed the arms of the Illyrian legions, the east was subdued, and the
 Syrian emperor put to death. But when all his other adherents had yielded,
 the garrison of Byzantium refused to submit. For more than two years they
 maintained the impregnable city against the lieutenants of Severus, and it
 was not till A.D. 196 that they were forced to yield. The emperor appeared
 in person to punish the long-protracted resistance of the town; not only
 the garrison, but the civil magistrates of Byzantium were slain before his
 eyes. The massive walls "so firmly built with great square stones clamped
 together with bolts of iron, that the whole seemed but one block," were
 laboriously cast down. The property of the citizens was confiscated, and
 the town itself deprived of all municipal privileges and handed over to be
 governed like a dependent village by its neighbours of Perinthus.
 
 Caracalla, the son of Severus, gave back to the Byzantines the right to
 govern themselves, but the town had received a hard blow, and would have
 required a long spell of peace to recover its prosperity. Peace however it
 was not destined to see. All through the middle years of the third century
 it was vexed by the incursions of the Goths, who harried mercilessly the
 countries on the Black Sea whose commerce sustained its trade. Under
 Gallienus in A.D. 263 it was again seized by an usurping emperor, and
 shared the fate of his adherents. The soldiers of Gallienus sacked
 Byzantium from cellar to garret, and made such a slaughter of its
 inhabitants that it is said that the old Megarian race who had so long
 possessed it were absolutely exterminated. But the irresistible attraction
 of the site was too great to allow its ruins to remain desolate. Within
 ten years after its sack by the army of Gallienus, we find Byzantium again
 a populous town, and its inhabitants are specially praised by the
 historian Trebellius Pollio for the courage with which they repelled a
 Gothic raid in the reign of Claudius II.
 
 The strong Illyrian emperors, who staved off from the Roman Empire the
 ruin which appeared about to overwhelm it in the third quarter of the
 third century, gave Byzantium time and peace to recover its ancient
 prosperity. It profited especially from the constant neighbourhood of the
 imperial court, after Diocletian fixed his residence at Nicomedia, only
 sixty miles away, on the Bithynian side of the Propontis. But the military
 importance of Byzantium was always interfering with its commercial
 greatness. After the abdication of Diocletian the empire was for twenty
 years vexed by constant partitions of territory between the colleagues
 whom he left behind him. Byzantium after a while found itself the border
 fortress of Licinius, the emperor who ruled in the Balkan Peninsula, while
 Maximinus Daza was governing the Asiatic provinces. While Licinius was
 absent in Italy, Maximinus treacherously attacked his rival's dominions
 without declaration of war, and took Byzantium by surprise. But the
 Illyrian emperor returned in haste, defeated his grasping neighbour not
 far from the walls of the city, and recovered his great frontier fortress
 after it had been only a few months out of his hands [A.D. 314]. The town
 must have suffered severely by changing masters twice in the same year; it
 does not, however, seem to have been sacked or burnt, as was so often the
 case with a captured city in those dismal days. But Licinius when he had
 recovered the place set to work to render it impregnable. Though it was
 not his capital he made it the chief fortress of his realm, which, since
 the defeat of Maximinus, embraced the whole eastern half of the Roman
 world.
 
 It was accordingly at Byzantium that Licinius made his last desperate
 stand, when in A.D. 323 he found himself engaged in an unsuccessful war
 with his brother-in-law Constantine, the Emperor of the West. For many
 months the war stood still beneath the walls of the city; but Constantine
 persevered in the siege, raising great mounds which overlooked the walls,
 and sweeping away the defenders by a constant stream of missiles, launched
 from dozens of military engines which he had erected on these artificial
 heights. At last the city surrendered, and the cause of Licinius was lost.
 Constantine, the last of his rivals subdued, became the sole emperor of
 the Roman world, and stood a victor on the ramparts which were ever
 afterwards to bear his name.