Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/56

 Constantine's power. All that he could do was to wait patiently till his engines had battered down a considerable portion of the fortifications, and meanwhile his soldiers would starve, unless he could get command of the sea. So the officers of his fleet had peremptory orders to force the passage of the Hellespont. At this crisis his eldest son Crispus, whose death twenty years after on a charge of treason has usually been considered one of the blackest stains on Constantine's memory, won a great name for himself, and ensured his father's ultimate triumph. After a few days' hard fighting, he at last dislodged the enemy, and drove him, with the loss of a number of his vessels, from the Hellespont into the Propontis, and thence to the Asiatic shore. There the admiral of Licinius found refuge for a while at Chalcedon.

Constantine's army was now relieved from all danger of famine. It was able to prosecute the siege vigorously, and this it seems to have done with every sort of appliance then known to military art. The science of besieging had made but little, if any, progress since the first century, and Byzantium was probably assailed on this occasion by the same methods and with engines of the same construction as had been employed by Titus in the siege of Jerusalem. Earthworks were thrown up equal in height to the city walls, and on these were planted towers, from which stones and other missiles were hurled on the garrison. Licinius does not seem to have shown any remarkable tenacity in the defence. The city surrendered in the same year, and he himself