Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/679

 first expedition of the Russians against Constantinople took place; followed by a second in 904; a third in 941; and a fourth in 1043. In 1203 the Latins first besieged and conquered, and in 1204 took by storm and pillaged the imperial city: A.D. 1261 forms a new aera for Constantinople, in consequence of its recovery by the Greeks. In 1422 Constantinople was besieged by Amurath II., but the Byzantine empire was respited for a space of thirty years till it fell, in 1453, before the conquering sword of Mohammed II.

It would be interesting to trace the domestic character and training of the citizens which hastened the ruin of the Eastern empire. The writers of Byzantine history do not furnish many distinct statements, but hints and allusions are to be found in the rebukes of the pulpit orator, or from the petty prohibitions of the imperial code. On this subject much valuable information maybe obtained in Montfaucon (Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. vol. xiii. p. 474; Miller, De Genio, Moribus, et Luxu Aevi Theodosiani; Milman, Hist. of Christianity; and the Quarterly Review, vol. 78. p. 346). While the life of the upper classes was characterised by the pomp and prodigality of civilisation without any of its ennobling or humanizing influences, the lower ranks were inordinately devoted to amusement. The athletic games of ancient Greece had given way to the vulgar exhibitions of juggling, rope-dancing, and tumbling. The drama was supplanted by mimes and pantomimes; and though no gladiator was butchered to make a holiday for the populace of Constantinople, it would seem that the interest which was concentred upon the chariot races and the Circus was a compensation for the excitement of those games which were forbidden by the new religion. The passion and animosity which sprung from the struggle of the Blue and Green factions was as furious and as bitter as any that has arisen among contending parties, where the most sacred rights of liberty or faith were at stake.

In the new capital of Constantine, emancipated from the restraint of Pagan associations and art, the Byzantine builders founded an architecture peculiarly their own. Of this the cupola was the great characteristic, to which every other feature was subordinate. In consequence of this principle, that which at Athens was straight, angular, and square, became in Constantinople curved and rounded, concave within, and convex without. Thus the old architecture of Greece owed its destruction to the same nation from which it had taken its first birth. (Comp. Hope, Architecture, p. 121; Freeman, Hist. of Architecture, p. 164; Couchaud, Choix d'Eglises Bysantines en Grèce.)

In describing the buildings of the city, it is more convenient to follow the historical succession than to take the topographical arrangement. For, it must be recollected, how little now remains. Where they first arose there they also fell. Constantinople, ravaged by earthquakes, fires, the internal strife, and the foreign foe, when the last of the Constantines lost his empire and life, possessed perhaps not one edifice which the first Constantine or even Justinian had seen; especially, too, as the fury of the Latin crusaders destroyed every work of art that had escaped former disasters. A plan of the city, as it existed in the reign of Arcadius, divided into its 14 regions, is given on the next page, by whichthe position of the different buildings may be clearly seen.

At the siege of Byzantium, Constantine had pitched his tent upon the second hill; to commemorate his success, he chose this site for the principal forum (Zosim. ii. 31, 35), which appears to have been of an elliptical form. The two opposite entrances formed triumphal arches; the porticoes, which enclosed it on every side, were filled with statues of the tutelar deities of Greece.

At each end were two shrines, one of which held the statue of Cybele, which was said to have been placed by the Argonauts upon Mt. Dindymus, but deprived of her lions and of her hands from the attitude of command distorted into that of a suppliant for the city; in the other was the Fortune of Byzantium (Euseb. Vit. Const. iii. 54; Sozomen. H. E. ii. 5). The centre of the forum was occupied by a lofty pillar, which, formed of marble and porphyry, rose to the height of 120 feet. On this column Constantine, with singular shamelessness, placed his own statue with the attributes of Christ and Apollo, and substituted the nails of the Passion for the rays of the Sun; Constantine was replaced by Julian, Julian by Theodosius. In A.D. 1412 the keystone was loosened by an earthquake. The statue fell under Alexius Comnenus, and was replaced by the Cross. The Palladium was said to be buried under the pillar. (Von Hammer, Constantinopel und die Bosporus, vol. i. p. 162.) Besides the principal forum was a second one, which has been sometimes confounded with the other; it was square, with porticoes surrounding it, consisting of two ranks of columns; in this the Augusteum, or court of the palace, stood the Golden Miliarium, which, though it served the same purpose as its namesake at Rome, did not resemble it in appearance, as this was an elevated arcade, embellished with statues.

The Circus or Hippodrome was a stately building. The space between the two metae or goals was filled with statues and obelisks. The Turks retain the translated name of the horse-course (Atmeidan), but the ancient splendour of the place has disappeared; it is no longer a circus, but an oblong open space, about 300 paces long by 150 wide. (Hobhouse, Albania, vol. ii. p. 950.) At the upper end is a granite obelisk of rather mean proportions, and covered with hieroglyphics of poor workmanship. It is called after Theodosius, but was probably moved by that emperor, after it had been erected by Constantine, to some other part of the city. An epigram on the pedestal records the success of Proclus, praefect of the city, under Theodosius the Great, in setting the obelisk upright. (Anthol. Graec. iv. 17.) Near this stands the wreathed column of bronze, which, according to legend, bore the golden tripod of Delphi, and was shattered by the iron mace of Mohammed II. Clarke (Trav. vol. ii. p. 58) treated the latter circumstance as a fiction of Thévenot; be the former true or not, the relic is now a poor mutilated thing, with one end in the ground, above which it does not rise more than 7 feet, and the end open and filled with rubbish. Fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, several triumphal arches, and eight public baths are assigned to the founder of the city. Constantine, and in this his example was followed by his successors, imitated Ancient Rome in the construction of sewers. Two large subterranean cisterns or reservoirs of water, constructed by the Greek emperors in case of a siege, still remain; one called by the Turks the