Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/248

 230 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, tages of a situation, from whence a feeble colony of '__ Greeks derived the command of the sea, and the hon- ours of a flourishing and independent republic''. Description If we survey Byzantium in the extent which it ac- Unopir ^" quired with the august name of Constantinople, the figure of the imperial city may be represented under that of an unequal triangle. The obtuse point, which advances towards the east and the shores of Asia, meets and repels the waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side of the city is bounded by the har- bour ; and the southern is washed by the Propontis, or sea of Marmara. The basis of the triangle is opposed to the west, and terminates the continent of Europe. But the admirable form and division of the circum- jacent land and water cannot, without a more ample explanation, be clearly or sufficiently understood. The Bos- The winding channel through which the waters of P orus, ^Yie Euxine flow with a rapid and incessant course to- wards the Mediterranean, received the appellation of Bosphorus, a name not less celebrated in the history, than in the fables, of antiquity'^. A crowd of temples and of votive altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the vinskilfulness, the ter- rors, and the devotion of the Grecian navigators, who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the dan- gers of the inhospitable Euxine. On these banks tra- dition long preserved the memory of the palace of Phineus, infested by the obscene harpies''; and of the '' The navigator Byzas, who was styled the son of Neptune, founded the city 656 years before the christian era. His followers were drawn from Argos and Megara. Byzantium was afterwards rebuilt and fortified by the Spartan general Pausanias. See Scaliger, Animadvers. ad Euseb. p. 81 ; Uucange, Constantinopolis, 1. i. part i. c. 15, 16. With regard to thewars of the Byzantines against Philip, the Gauls, and the kings of Bithynia, we should trust none but the ancient writers who lived before the greatness of the imperial city had excited a spirit of flattery and fiction. ' The Bosphorus has been very minutely described by Dionysius of By- zantium, who lived in the time of Domitian, (Hudson, Cieograpli. Minor, tom. iii.) and by Gilles, or Gyllius, a French traveller of the sixteenth cen- tury. Tournefort (Lettre xv.) seems to have used his own eyes and the learning of Gyllius. "* There are very few conjectures so happy as that of Le Clerc, (Biblio- th^que Universelle, tom. i. p. 148.) who supposes that the harpies were only locusts. The Syriac or Phenician name of those insects, their noisy