next commenced operations at Chalcedon.[1] By 328,[2] however, he had come to a final decision, and Byzantium was exalted to be the actual rival of Rome. This event, occurring at so advanced a date and under the eye of civilization, yet became a source of legend, so as to excel even in that respect the original foundation by Byzas. The oracles had long been lapsing into silence,[3] but their place had been gradually usurped by Christian visions, and every zealot who thought upon the subject conceived of Constantine as acting under a special inspiration from the Deity. More than a score of writers in verse and prose have described the circumstances under which he received the divine injunctions, and some have presented to us in detail the person and words of the beatific visitant.[4] On the faith of an ecclesiastical historian[5] we are asked to believe that an angelic guide even directed the Emperor as he marked out the boundaries of
- ↑ For the founding of Constantinople see Gyllius (De Topogr. CP., i, 3), but especially Ducange (CP. Christiana, i, p. 23 et seq.), who has brought together a large number of passages from early and late writers. According to a nameless author (Muller, Frag. Hist., iv, p. 199), Constantine was at one time in the habit of exclaiming: "My Rome is Sardica." He was born and bred in the East, and hence all his tastes would naturally lead him to settle on that side of the Empire.
- ↑ It may have been earlier. Petavius (in Ducange) fixes this date, Baronius makes it 325 (c. 95).
- ↑ Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. He explains it by the death of the daemons who managed them. These semi-divinities, though long-lived, were not immortal.
- ↑ See Ducange, loc. cit., p. 24.
- ↑ Philostorgius, ii, 9. Copied or repeated with embellishment, but not corroborated, by later writers, as Nicephorus Cal., viii, 4; Anon. (Banduri), p. 15; Codinus, p. 75. Eusebius is silent where we should expect him to be explicit. The allusion in Cod. Theod., XIII, v, 7, seems to be merely a pious expression.
