Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City Read Free

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    Despite their spirited fight against King Philip, the Byzantines had enough good sense not to resist his son, Alexander the Great. Soon after Alexander’s victory at the battle of the Granicus in 334 B.C. Byzantium capitulated and opened its gates to the Macedonians. Later, after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., Byzantium was involved in the collapse and dismemberment of his empire and the subsequent eastward expansion of Rome. In the year 179 B.C. the city was captured by the combined forces of Rhodes, Pergamum and Bithynia. A century later Byzantium was a pawn in the struggle between Rome and Mithridates, King of Pontus. After the final victory of Rome, Byzantium became its client state, and thereafter enjoyed nearly three centuries of quiet prosperity under the mantle of the Pax Romana. But eventually, in the closing years of the second century A.D., Byzantium was swept up once again in the tides of history. At that time Byzantium found itself on the losing side in a civil war and was besieged by the Emperor Septimius Severus. After finally taking Byzantium in the year 196 A.D., the Emperor tore down the city walls, massacred the soldiers and officials who had opposed him, and left the town a smouldering ruin. A few years afterwards, however, Septimius realized the imprudence of leaving so strategic a site undefended and then rebuilt the city and its walls. The walls of Septimius Severus are thought to have begun at the Golden Horn a short distance downstream from the present site of the Galata Bridge, and to have ended at the Marmara somewhere near where the lighthouse now stands. The area thus enclosed was more than double that of the ancient town of Byzantium, which had comprised little more than the acropolis itself.
    At the beginning of the fourth century A.D. Byzantium was profoundly affected by the climactic events then taking place in the Roman Empire. After the retirement of the Emperor Diocletian in the year 305, his successors in the Tetrarchy, the two co-emperors and their Caesars, fought bitterly with one another for the control of the Empire. This struggle was eventually won by Constantine, Emperor of the West, who in the year 324 finally defeated Licinius, Emperor of the East. The last battle took place in the hills above Chrysopolis, just across the Bosphorus from Byzantium. On the following day, 18 September in the year A.D. 324, Byzantium surrendered and opened its gates to Constantine, now sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
    During the first two years after his victory Constantine conceived the grand scheme which would affect world history for the next millennium: the re-establishment of the Roman Empire with Byzantium as its capital. After he made his decision Constantine set out to rebuild and enlarge and adorn the old town to suit its imperial role. Work began on 4 November in the year 326, when the Emperor personally traced out the limits of the new city. The defence walls with which Constantine enclosed the city on the landward side began at a point on the Golden Horn somewhat upstream from the present Atatiirk Bridge, and extended to the Sea of Marmara in a great circular arc, ending in the bay of Samatya. Constantine’s city was thus more than five times as large as the town of Septimius Severus, and it was to be infinitely more grand.
    The imperial building programme proceeded rapidly, and in less than four years the new capital was completed. On 11 May in the year A.D. 330, in a ceremony in the Hippodrome, Constantine dedicated the city of New Rome, soon after to be called Constantinople. Three years thence the old town of Byzantine would have been 1,000 years old.
    During the century following the reign of Constantine the city grew rapidly and soon expanded beyond the limits set by its founder. In the first half of the fifth century, during the reign of Theodosius II, a new and much stronger line of defence-walls was built nearly a mile farther out into Thrace, replacing the older walls