BYZANTIUM
later CONSTANTINOPLE (Istanbul)
NW Turkey.
City at the S end of the Bosphorus.
The original Greek settlement was located at the elevated E apex of a roughly triangular peninsula bordered
on the S by the Propontis (the Sea of Marmara, linking
the Bosphorus with the Hellespont or Dardanelles) and
on the N by a grand, elongated natural harbor, the
Golden Horn (
Strab. 7.6.2). The peninsula was in part
cut NW-SE by a stream, the Lycus. In late antique times
the city expanded W across the hills and valleys of the
peninsula, filling it out; the area across the Golden Horn
to the N and the nearer European shores of the Bosphorus were built up somewhat, and settlements across
the straits in Asia were claimed as suburbs. The commercial significance (shipping, fishing, tolls) of its location
and the strategic importance it gained from its superb
defensive position (Cass. Dio 75.10; cf.
Paus. 4.31.5)
explain the considerable role Byzantium played in Classical times and, together with its proximity to the troublesome Danubian and E frontiers, Constantine's decision
to devalue Rome's functions and make of Byzantium,
henceforth Constantinople, the chief city of the Roman
Empire.
There is evidence for prehistoric settlement on the site,
but Byzantium proper was founded, sometime in the 7th
c. B.C., by Megarians who were probably assisted by
groups from other Greek cities. In the late 6th and early
5th c. B.C. it was under Persian control. Subsequently it
was usually an Athenian ally, and as such it strenuously resisted Philip II of Macedon in a celebrated siege
(340-339 B.C.). During the 2d c. the town sided with
Rome in her E wars, and thereafter strategic and economic considerations commended it to Rome's care. In the
late 2d c. A.D., however, Byzantium sided with Pescennius
Niger, and as a result was besieged by the forces of Septimius Severus for more than two years (Cass. Dio
75.12); after its capitulation Severus all but destroyed it.
But it was too important a site to ignore, and soon afterward he began its reconstruction and even enlarged it,
and subsequent rulers gave it additional buildings. During the Tetrarchy Byzantium was overshadowed by Nicomedia, but in A.D. 330, after several years of construction on a much enlarged site, it became at Constantine's
direction a new and Christian city, for eleven centuries
thereafter the seat of the Eastern Roman, Byzantine
Empire.
Archaeological information about Greek Byzantium is
scarce. Little excavation has been done and little can be,
largely because of the superimposition of later structures.
The perimeter of the site in Greek times, enclosing the
heights upon which the Haghia Sophia and the Ottoman
Serai now stand, seems to have been a little less than 2
km in length; the exact line of the walls, with their several gates and 27 towers, cannot now be established
(Cass. Dio 75.10.3; cf.
Paus. 4.31, and Dion. Byz. 6ff).
Almost certainly the Megarian acropolis was within the
limits of the Serai. Inside the city walls, chiefly in the
N part of the town, there were several temples and sanctuaries, among them those of Zeus, Athena, Poseidon,
and Dionysos. Near the center of the W limit of the
walls was a square called the Thrakion (
Xen. Anab.
7.1.24). Just to the N of this was a strategion. The agora
was in the vicinity of Haghia Sophia Square and contained a bronze statue of Helios (Malalas 291ff), also
apparently known as the Zeuxippos, a name perpetuated
in the area in Byzantine times. Other Greek constructions, such as cisterns, gymnasia, and a stadium are also
recorded; there seems also to have been a theater. All
these monuments have disappeared, though remains of
shrines to Artemis, Aphrodite, and Apollo have been
found in excavations between the Haghia Sophia and the
Haghia Eirene.
Equally little is known of Roman Byzantium, though
it is apparent that practical and political buildings were
erected by the Roman government; we hear, for example,
of an aqueduct built in the time of Hadrian. The plan
of the Roman town cannot be recovered, though some
facts about the Severan rebuilding are known; parallels
with Severus' enlargement and aggrandizement of Leptis
come to mind. At Byzantium he doubled the walled area,
moving the land-side N-S wall nearly half a km W of
the old Greek line—its N extremity reached the Golden
Horn at a point a little to the E of the present Galata
Bridge. It was perhaps then that the agora was given
porticos all around, gaining the name of tetrastoon. From
it Severus ran a porticoed avenue W to his new wall,
presumably to a gate therein. He also began a hippodrome to the SW of the tetrastoon; this, some 450 m
long in its final form, was enlarged and finished by Constantine. Severus also built a theater, probably near
where the Serai kitchens now stand, and baths, apparently
in the style and toward the scale of the imperial baths of
the capital; these were placed hard by the NE end of the
hippodrome, next to the tetrastoon.
Constantine's estimate of the value and importance of
the site after he besieged Licinius there in 324 was even
more favorable than that of Severus. He razed the latter's walls, and from about 325 vast resources of men
and money were provided to frame and pursue his goal
of a new capital, an almost entirely new city five times
the area of the Severan town. The new land walls were
laid out some 3 km W of the Severan walls, and within
this huge enclosure there progressed one of the largest
and most important exercises in city-making ever undertaken by Western man, to be continued off and on by
Constantine's successors for more than two centuries. In
a sense Rome was the model—there were seven hills,
fourteen administrative regions, a comparable building
typology and an idealized distribution thereof—but there
were also more specifically Hellenistic and eastern influences at work. Most of this astonishing undertaking has
disappeared, but fortunately we have texts that enumerate many buildings and works of art and that describe
imperial ceremonies more or less topographically; also,
there are precious descriptions by pilgrims and visitors
made during and after Byzantine times, and drawings
made relatively soon after the Turkish conquest of 1453
which record remains no longer in existence (Richter,
Unger, Preger, Ebersolt, Gyllius, Freshfield, etc.).
There were provided a capitolium, a golden milestone,
and two senate houses. The tetrastoon became an imperial square, an Augusteon, and Constantine added a
large forum of curved plan about 600 m to the W, just
beyond the line of the former Severan wall. There a
great column of porphyry was erected which carried a
statue showing Constantine with the attributes of Apollo;
the mutilated shaft still stands (Çemberlitaş). The Constantinian city plan cannot be recovered. We know only
that the new forum was connected with the Augusteon,
probably by a continuation of Severus' avenue, and that
to the N and W of the forum arteries fanned out to the
Golden Horn and across the widening peninsula to the
major gates in the new land walls.
Just N of the Augusteon a large church of basilican
plan was begun, the forerunner of the celebrated Haghia
Sophia of Justinian's time; Constantine began several
other major churches. To the S of the Augusteon, toward
the present Mosque of Sultan Ahmed (the Blue Mosque),
Constantine built his palace, the Daphne, entered from
the Augusteon through a bronze gate (the Chalke) and a
guards' quarter. The Daphne was also connected with the
hippodrome in that the elevated kathisma or imperial
loge there was a part of the palace; in these dispositions
(as in others in the new city) one can clearly see the
inspiration of Rome, in respect to the physical and symbolic relationships there among the forum, the palace on
the Palatine, and the Circus Maximus (with its loges high
in the facade of the Domus Augustana above). The
sphendone or curved SW end of the Hippodrome, raised
on powerful piers and vaults above the ground that falls
steeply towards the Marmara, was made into a cistern,
as were, then and later, a number of declivities in the
city, which were cut to rectangular shape and lined,
sometimes vaulted over, in the Roman way.
Everywhere Constantine's people placed works of art
and historical monuments brought from other parts of
the ancient Graeco-Roman world. At the vast hippodrome one could see, for example, the bronze monument
dedicated at Delphi by the victors of Plataiai in 479 B.C.;
its spiral stem is still there, standing on the line of the
spina of the race course. At the NE end of the hippodrome, near where the fountain of Wilhelm II stands
today, the carceres or starting stalls were surmounted
by a bronze quadriga, supposedly wrought by Lysippos,
whose horses now decorate the facade of San Marco
in Venice. Round about, and in the Augusteon, the new
forum, and the Baths of Zeuxippos, there were scores of
such trophies, giving to the new city the quality of a
museum, of being the steward of the past.
After Constantine's death in 337, work on the new city
slowed down. Valens (364-78) added an aqueduct, a
grand nymphaeum, baths, and apparently a cistern. The
aqueduct, along with the Theodosian walls the most visible of the Roman urban constructions, still stands in a
section between two of the hills of central Istanbul; this
great arcade is almost 1 km long. Theodosius I (379-95)
and his family returned to the policies of Constantine. In
the 390s a new forum, the Forum Tauri, was built about
700 m W of Constantine's, along the line of the Mese or
High Street leading W from the Augusteon (today the
Divan Yolu and its extensions). Supported along its S
edge by vaulted substructures, the vast Forum Tauri may
have been inspired by the Forum of Trajan in Rome;
details are lacking. The Forum Tauri contained a huge
sculptured column of the Trajanic type of which only
bits and precious drawings remain. There was also an
elaborate monumental gateway, perhaps in the form of
a tetrapylon, of which fragments have been excavated
and restored on the Ordu Caddesi in the vicinity of the
modern university. Probably the best known of Theodoslus monuments in Constantinople is the obelisk he
caused to be placed upon the spina of the hippodrome
in the traditional manner. The shaft proper is from
Heliopolis in Egypt and dates from the 18th dynasty. It
stands on a tall square marble base, the four faces of
which are carved in relief. In the bottom zones the circus
games are shown, together with a scene of the triumphant
raising of the obelisk. Above, at larger scale, the court
is shown at the circus. Between are dancers, organ players, and a dense crowd of spectators. This is almost
a definitive monument of late antique art, where the
qualities of frontality and diagrammatic hierarchy are
softened in a style that has not forgotten the humanism
and classicism of the Graeco-Roman past.
Arcadius (395-408) added still another forum (in the
XII Region, towards the S or Marmara limit of Constantine's land wall). Again the details are unknown, but the
mutilated base of Arcadius' column there still exists,
together with drawings and comments made by intrepid
observers after the Conquest. It was Theodosius II (408-50) who gave Constantinople its most stupendous surviving monument, the great land walls of 413 and 447. They
were built ca. 1.5 km W of Constantine's walls and nearly doubled the enclosed area of the city. Subjected to
numerous earthquakes, to dilapidation, much repair, and
understandable neglect, they still stand, traversing some
7 km from the upper reaches of the Golden Horn to the
Marmara shore. In the first campaign the prefect
Anthemius built the main wall and its massive towers;
in the second the Praetorian Prefect Constantine built the
outer, lower walls with their towers, and the ditch or
moat. Altogether some 400 towers were constructed (including those of the sea walls). In the late 430s a stout
single wall was run around the sea perimeter of the city
(lengthy stretches are still visible); these Theodosian
fortifications traverse in all almost 20 km.
The main curtain of the great land wall is between 3
and 4 m thick at the base and it rises to an average
height of 13 m. Its 96 towers, of varying shapes, are
from 16 to 20 m high. To the W of this main construction were the successively lower walls and the moat, the
whole system averaging nearly 70 m in width. There
were a number of posterns and ten major gates, the most
celebrated and elaborate of the latter being the Porta
Aurea, quite well preserved today. This, the chief ceremonial entrance to the city, is towards the S extremity
of the land walls, about 500 m from the Marmara shore.
The unsculptured column of the emperor Marcian
(450-57), standing in the center of old Istanbul, and the
lost column of Justinian (527-65) that stood in the
Augusteon, continued the imperial traditions. But the
many churches, palaces, mosaics, and individual works
of art of post-Theodosian date that are still to be seen in
Istanbul (or are known through the writers referred to
above) lie outside the scope of this article. The Museum
of Antiquities, inside the Serai walls, is exceptionally rich
in pre-Classical, Greek, and Roman art and finds, not
only from Byzantium-Constantinople but from other sites
in Turkey as well. In the courts of the Serai there are
major architectural elements of the late antique period,
and other fragments of the past are scattered around old
Istanbul, often lodged in structures of later date. Also, a
number of portable works were removed to Venice in the
13th c.
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De topographia Constantinopoleos libri iv (1561; also 1632; Eng. tr. J. Ball, 1729);
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Constantinopolis christiana . . .
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312-1453 (1972)
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MPI.
[For catalogues of the Museum of Antiquities in Istanbul, see
EAA 2 (1959) 918.]
W. L. MACDONALD