Constantinople: A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453/Chapter 2

by William Jackson Brodribb and Walter Besant

 

CHAPTER II.

BYZANTIUM UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

NDER the Emperors of Rome, Byzantium, as far as we know, enjoyed quiet and prosperity. Its citizens, we may assume, were no longer annoyed by their barbarous neighbours, but were, no doubt, able to trade and make money to their hearts' content. For such people the rule of Rome over the world, with the peace and order it established, was a decided advantage. The city must have had many attractions for a rich and cultivated Roman visitor. Its old historical associations were striking, and it was still one of the centres of Greek art and civilization. The student, the antiquarian, the lover of art, and the lover, too, of pleasure and of luxury, would, if circumstances allowed, be sure once in a lifetime to visit such a city. Among those who did so were a very famous Roman couple, whose names are still deservedly familiar to us. These were the great general Germanicus and his noble and high-minded wife Agrippina. Germanicus, in addition to his military ability, was a man of real culture, and he seems to have been keenly eager to explore all the more remarkable parts of the vast Roman empire, those especially in which he might find relics of the religions and civilizations of bygone days. After having fought for Rome in the swamps and forests of Germany, and avenged the slaughtered legions of Varus, he was able to obey an impulse he had long felt, and in the year 18 A.D., the fifth of the reign of Tiberius, he turned his steps eastward, and visited those famous cities, Perinthus and Byzantium. Thence he passed over the strait to the plains of Troy, to see, as Tacitus says,^[1] "the birthplace and cradle of the Roman people." It is to be noted that the historian speaks of these two cities as if they were almost included in the Roman province known as Asia, which embraced, of course, only a small portion of what we call Asia Minor. Both cities were under Rome's tutelage, and so, too, was Thrace, or the modern Roumelia. But the country was not as yet actually a province. It was ruled by native kings, the nominees of Rome, as the Herods of Judæa were. Occasionally the country, as might be expected from the turbulent character of the inhabitants, gave trouble; but it was not able to recover its independence. Twice during the reign of Tiberius the Thracian tribes became restive, and dared to defy the power of Rome. They had, it seems, to furnish levies for the Roman armies, and of this they became impatient. Tacitus does not dignify the affair with the name of a war; he calls it merely "a movement." In each case it was soon and easily crushed. The fighting was, it seems, confined to the inland regions, and Byzantium was in no way affected by it. From this date (A.D. 26) we hear nothing about the city or about the country for a considerable time. Claudius, according to one account, made it from a dependency into a province; but Suetonius, the biographer of the twelve Cæsars, says^[2] that this was done in Vespasian's reign from 70 A.D. to 79. He mentions both Byzantium and Thrace as having then been formally constituted into provinces. The city, we should suppose, could not itself have been a separate province; it was probably included either in Thrace or in Asia. Its general condition would remain practically unchanged, and it no doubt continued to enjoy many special privileges.

We now lose sight of Byzantium for a long period. Not till the close of the second century does it again appear in history. The empire was then distracted by civil war. The emperor was himself usually a creature of the soldiery. In 193 A.D., Didius Julianus purchased the rule of the Roman world, by offering to the soldiers of the prætorian guard a higher bounty than his competitor. The wretched man was deserted by them in a few days, and executed by the senate's order. By a decree of the same body, Septimus Severus was called to the empire. The choice, on the whole, was a good one; Severus had shown ability as the governor of one of the divisions of Gaul, and he now held a foremost position, being commander of the legions in Illyria and Pannonia. The army at once accepted him as an emperor. On reaching Rome he made the prætorian soldiers know that he was their master, and by the terror of some of his own picked troops he drove them to a distance of a hundred miles from the city. His character is a singular study. With much practical good sense and skill in administration was blended a strong vein of superstition, and he is said to have taken a profound interest in magic and astrology. His wife, Julia Domna, whom he had married from Syria, was a very remarkable lady, superstitious, clever, and literary. She was, though this may be scandal, morally weak, and it is very possible that her alleged leaning towards Christianity may have been nothing better than a fondness for Eastern ceremonies and rituals. It seems that she had considerable influence over her husband. Severus, it is said, looked rather kindly on Christianity. The truth is, that by this time the Christian Church was a powerful force in the world, and could not be ignored, though it was not ripe for distinct political recognition. In the eastern half of the empire it had undoubtedly produced effects which had all the promise of permanence. This, with other influences, tended to that separation of the Eastern from the Western world, which was ultimately accomplished. The time seemed to be approaching when the former would wish to be independent of Rome, and would claim a centre of its own.

Severus, then, had been proclaimed emperor, but he had formidable rivals. Albinus in Gaul and Niger in Syria were at the head of armies which were prepared to support them. Over both Severus was decisively victorious. It is only his war with Niger which concerns us. Gibbon has noted an important difference between the civil wars of this period and those of modern Europe. The last have been long and protracted, fought out with all the obstinacy which naturally accompanies the vindication of some great and important principle. The cause of religion or of freedom has been usually involved in them. Not so with these wars of the Roman empire. They were fought not between nations and peoples, but merely between generals and soldiers. As Gibbon says, "The Romans, after the fall of the republic, combated only for the choice of masters." In such struggles, the provinces, and mankind generally, were but uninterested spectators, and cared very little for the result. Hence these wars, unlike those of modern days, were very brief, and one or two battles decided them. The successes of Severus were rapid and complete. Having crossed the Hellespont into Asia with part of his army, he utterly defeated Niger near Issus, where more than five centuries before Alexander had won his second great victory over Dareius. But his work was not yet done. Niger was a man who inspired respect and might be thought worthy of empire. There were those who still clung to him. One city was faithful to his cause, and put forth all its powers of resistance. It was Byzantium. The city may have felt that it had a right to become the head of an Eastern empire.

It seems that the Byzantines may not unreasonably have been confident in their ability to sustain a siege. Their fortifications were the admiration of the world, and their strong and lofty walls, we are told, were so skilfully built and cemented that they presented the appearance of one vast continuous block of stone. Visitors to the city in after days hardly knew whether to wonder most at the art and finish displayed in their origin and construction, or at the destructive power of the besieging army of Severus. The Byzantines, too, were well furnished with every appliance which science could contrive for the purposes of defence. They had engines, it is said, which could lift ships out of the water; and, what was far better, they had an engineer officer of the first capacity to organise the defence. The man's name was Priscus, and so much did he impress Severus by his singular skill and tenacity, that the emperor subsequently took him into his service and availed himself of his talents. The city had also a numerous and well-appointed fleet. Three hundred vessels of every variety, well piloted and manned, some armed with particularly formidable beaks, were at the disposal of the Byzantines.

For the unusually long period of three years they defended themselves; and their brave persistency amid the sufferings which so prolonged a struggle necessarily involved, shows plainly enough that in great emergencies these citizens, who had the character of being mere lovers of ease and comfort, could rise to a high degree of patriotism and loyalty. Severus, it seems, though he did not personally conduct the siege, had staked everything on success, and be the cost what it might, he must capture Byzantium to secure his power in the East. He had one decided advantage. Already by his victories over Niger he had made himself completely master of the resources of all the neighbouring districts, and was thus able to keep his army well supplied. If, therefore, he could beat the Byzantines on the sea, he was sure of final success. He must, however, have had to pay dearly for it. Of his ships, he lost a great number by the sudden and skilful attacks of the besieged, whose practised divers contrived to attach ropes to them under water, and to haul them in as prizes to the city's harbour. When their own vessels needed repair, they did not spare the timbers of their houses, and even the ladies willingly parted with their hair, as those of Carthage are said to have done, for the manufacture of cables. When their walls were threatened with assault, they drove back the enemy with stones dragged out of the public buildings, and even hurled on them statues of bronze, whole and entire. It must indeed have been a bad time for those treasures of art in which Byzantium was so rich. The citizens had clearly made up their minds to spare neither themselves nor their most precious possessions, but to fight on to the dreadful end. It was some time before they were distressed by scarcity. At last they were reduced to chewing leathern hides soaked in water, and finally, it is said, to the dire and horrible extremity in which the weak become literally the prey of the strong. Some attempted an escape from these horrors, and taking advantage of a violent storm, ventured into their boats, resolved to perish or to get supplies of food. But the enemy pounced with his galleys on the unhappy vessels, which were dangerously overcrowded, and, instead of anything like an engagement, there was a mere work of destruction and massacre. The poor creatures were slain or drowned to a man. The dreadful sight was witnessed from the city, and all that day and all the following night were heard piercing cries of grief from the citizens, every one of whom had doubtless seen with his own eyes the miserable death of kinsfolk and friends. Bloodstained fragments of the wrecked vessels were carried to the shores of Asia, and testified to the calamity and to the approaching fall of Byzantium, before the news had been conveyed by word of mouth. On the day after, the waters of the harbour were literally strewn with corpses, which were every moment washed on the beach, forcing on the Byzantines a yet more vivid realization, if possible, of the awful catastrophe. It was now high time for them to surrender. The remainder of the citizens were spared, but the soldiers and the magistrates were put to death. "So we have taken Byzantium," said Severus, who was with his army in Mesopotamia. He was not a generous conqueror on this occasion. He deprived the city of its municipal liberties and its political position, confiscated the property of its citizens, giving all this, along with its adjacent territory, to the people of its old neighbour, Perinthus. These, it appears, showed little pity for their friends and allies of past days, but treated them as despicable villagers, and put on them every sort of indignity. But what most grieved the Byzantines was the destruction of their noble walls, which had long been their pride and glory. Severus had them demolished as far as was possible with such a substantial structure. Thereby he destroyed one of Rome's great safeguards against the barbarian tribes of Asia and Pontus. Against these Byzantium was both a defence and a place of refuge. This fact is noted by the historian^[3] who has described the siege and fall of the city, and it seems to have much impressed him. "I have seen," he says, "those walls in their ruined state, captured and destroyed, one would have thought, by others than Romans; and I had gazed on them when they were still standing." It was a cruel and disastrous work which the besiegers had wrought on the fair city.

After an interval of about a century, we again come to a period which Gibbon describes as one of civil war and confusion. Diocletian's well-meant attempt to organize the administration of an empire, which new forces beyond all human control were more and more tending to dissolve, ended, at the beginning of the fourth century, in the simultaneous rule, or rather misrule, of six emperors. The Goths meanwhile had been menacing the Roman frontiers, and the Euxine, the Bosporus, and the Ægean had felt the presence of their multitudinous war-ships. The Emperor Decius with his whole army had perished by their hands somewhere near the Balkan range in 251 A.D. Soon afterwards they plundered some of the chief cities in the north-west of Asia Minor, and even sacked Chalcedon. The Byzantines must have trembled, although by this time their fortifications may well have been strongly rebuilt. For awhile the barbarians, after having threatened Byzantium and advanced as far as Thessalonica, were decisively checked by the Emperor Claudius II., who earned the surname of Gothicus by well-nigh destroying the whole invading host at Nissa on the borders of Servia and Bulgaria, the birthplace probably of the Emperor Constantine. Within, however, three years of this great triumph, which was won in 269 B.C., and achieved, it seems, with Byzantine aid, we find that Claudius's successor, Aurelian, was glad to give up Dacia to the Goths altogether, and to curtail the empire in this direction within the boundary of the Danube. They appear to have been unusually quiet for some years, till they saw their advantage in the troublous period between Diocletian's death and Constantine's final establishment in 324 A.D. as the sole ruler of the world. They crossed the Danube, their lately assigned limit, into Illyricum; but Constantine, who had himself the charge of the province, drove them back beyond the river, and made them sue humbly for peace. One condition, it is said, was that they should furnish the Roman armies with troops to the number of 40,000. Dacia, too, and much more territory, according to Eusebius, was wrested from them, but Eusebius, we must remember, is a persistent panegyrist of Constantine. Not much, probably, that could be called effectual re-conquest, was really accomplished by his arms.

The miserable period of civil strife may be said to have lasted sixteen years, from 308 B.C. to 324 B.C. Constantine's ultimate success may be fairly described as providential, and it was perhaps deserved. One of his rivals, Maxentius, his victory over whom in 312 is commemorated in the tasteless sculpture of the arch of Constantine, was by all accounts a brutal and licentious man, utterly unworthy of empire. The other, also his brother-in-law, Licinius, by birth a Dacian peasant, was indeed an able soldier, but had all the cruelty and treachery of an Eastern despot. The struggle between them was not decided by a single battle, or indeed very speedily. After the fall of Maxentius, the world was divided between the two, Constantine being supreme in the west, Licinius in the east. Both had great fleets and armies, and the war was on a scale equal to that which had ended more than three centuries before in the victory of Augustus at Actium. It was really decided, though not at once terminated, by a battle at Adrianople in 323 B.C. Licinius was driven out of a fortified position, and his army was routed with frightful slaughter. He fell back on Byzantium, the siege of which it was now necessary for Constantine to undertake.

The defences of the city had, it appears, been thoroughly restored, and were strong enough to keep an assailant at bay. But the chief difficulty of the besieging army at first was in supplying themselves with provisions. The city was perfectly safe from any such danger as long as Licinius commanded the Hellespont with his fleet. It was not easy to see how his ships were to be driven from the narrow strait, but it was evident that the attempt must be made if the siege was to be brought to a successful issue. To carry the place by a sudden assault on the land side, in the face of a numerous garrison, was, it may be assumed, beyond 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 crossed over to Chalcedon, whither, as we have seen, the admiral of his fleet had fled a short time before.

Thus the famous city, almost ten centuries after its foundation fell into the hands of Constantine, who was now sole emperor of the Roman world. His success was soon rendered complete by the defeat of Licinius at Scutari, who, with a hastily levied army, attempted a feeble resistance. The conqueror promised to spare his life after his surrender, which was abject and contemptible, and quite unworthy of one who had aspired to empire. But neither did Constantine show much nobleness of character. It is to be feared, though history is rather obscure, that he broke his promise, and, without any adequate justification, had his late rival put to death at Thessalonica, whither he had been permitted to retire. Of course there was a story that he had planned a conspiracy. Licinius, perhaps, hardly deserves our pity, but when we remember that he was the husband of Constantine's sister, and that she had pleaded for his life, we feel that his end, though unhappily by no means without precedent, is something of a blot on the fame of the first Christian emperor.

A great revolution which was to have enduring effects had been accomplished. The fragments of the empire were again united under one head; the seat of government was to be transferred from the city on the Tiber to that on the Bosporus, and Christianity was to be the established religion, we may say, of the world. As always happens, there had been a long, gradual preparation for the change, but still it is no wonder that the man by whom it was directly consummated should have been styled "the Great." Yet we almost grudge Constantine the epithet. He was undoubtedly a good soldier and able administrator, and he must have had patience and energy, both praiseworthy qualities. He had some enlightened ideas of legislation, and seems on the whole to have aimed at the general good of mankind, as far as he understood it. He may, too, have been far-seeing, though we question whether he had quite enough depth and solidity of character to be so. Gibbon's estimate of him is not particularly flattering, and for this there may have been special and obvious reasons; but we do not think that it is singularly unfair. He is, in short, one of those men whom, though they have accomplished great and even worthy things, it is barely possible to admire. His wars with Maxentius and Licinius may be favourably regarded, and their result was satisfactory, inasmuch as they saved the world from rulers infinitely worse than himself But there are passages in his history which suggest that he was really capable of cold-blooded cruelty, and was not, like Alexander, the mere victim of an occasional violent and savage impulse. He was, it seems, of a calculating turn of mind, without much generosity, and by no means always swayed by very high motives. It would, however, be grossly unjust to brand him as a thoroughly selfish man and a conscious hypocrite. With much worldly sagacity he combined, like Severus, strange superstitious sentiments, which to us are indeed perplexing, and are yet not absolutely unintelligible, when we call to mind some of the grotesque vagaries of our own enlightened age. There may very possibly have been better feelings in him which inclined him towards Christianity, and we can quite believe that he thought he was putting himself on what was deservedly the winning side. But how far his Christianity was thoroughly genuine it is hard to say. He may have thought that it was on the whole good for the world, and that the time was ripe for a change, but he had scarcely strong enough convictions, we should suppose, to make him feel the immense moral worth and permanent value of the new religion. He has, perhaps, been sometimes judged by too high a standard because he professed Christianity and presided at the general Council of Nice. In many of his notions it is certain that he was thoroughly pagan, though he did what he could outwardly to discourage paganism. To call him a saint looks almost like a wilful untruth. To call him "great" makes us prefer to think of what he did rather than of what he was. The year 324 B.C., however, in which Byzantium became the seat of empire, and was henceforth to be known as the city of Constantine, was assuredly a great epoch in the world's history.

If Constantine cannot be strictly said to have founded a new city, he at least established a new capital, and inaugurated a new order of things, which in many of its features was to last for more than eleven centuries. He wished to be regarded by posterity as its founder, and in obedience to ancient custom he went through a solemn ceremonial, in which paganism and Christianity were strangely blended. In his hands he is said to have carried a golden image of the Fortune of the city—a distinct relic this of the old Roman religion—in which such a divinity was acknowledged. He was asked by some of his attendants—as moving at the head of a long procession he was marking out boundaries which seemed to denote a city of unusual dimensions—where he meant to halt, and replied, "When He who goes before me thinks fit to stop." "The incident," Gibbon remarks, "is characteristic and probably true." The city, indeed, was greatly enlarged, though not carried to its future extent, and embracing Galata or Pera. It was still confined to the region south of its harbour. New fortifications, however, were substituted for the old, and these, though not at the time completed, were designed to enclose five out of seven hills of the city. The work was well executed, as is plainly attested by existing remains, which can be traced along about four miles from the harbour to the Sea of Marmora. It was natural that Constantine should wish New Rome to be in most respects a copy of the old city. There must be a forum and a circus, and porticoes, baths, and aqueducts. Although Constantine built several Christian churches, the city must have had a thoroughly pagan aspect, as it was richly adorned with the statues of gods and goddesses from all parts of Greece and Asia. It could be said by Jerome that the dedication of Constantinople involved the stripping bare of almost every city in the world. Still, all the efforts of Constantine failed to make his city equal to Rome in size, population, and grandeur.

There are in truth limits to what the most enterprising man can accomplish; and from the beginning Constantine's work had in it many elements of weakness, which could not be avoided. The city, as he made it, was an artificial product; it did not grow slowly into greatness, as Rome had done. It thus laboured under a serious disadvantage, which affected it for evil throughout its whole history. In many respects it was a bad copy of the old city. Several of the most vicious features of Rome were reproduced in Constantinople. It was comparatively easy for Constantine to attract new citizens; any city, indeed, which is made a seat of government must become moderately populous, and even already the new capital must have been well furnished with inhabitants. We hear of the desertion of Rome by its old and noble families, which are said to have followed the emperor to the Bosporus. But these stories are mainly due to the lively Greek imagination. Rome was not quite shorn of its glory or of its population. We may assume that a number of rich idlers gladly accepted Constantine's invitation to settle in his city. Some he bribed to live there, giving them estates in the neighbouring districts of Asia Minor on condition that they were to maintain a town establishment. These people, we may be sure, had no sort of patriotism or good principle. The poor and lower class were kept, as at Rome, by what was called the emperor's bounty; that is, they lived in perpetual idleness on supplies of corn furnished by the farmers of Egypt, whose industry was thus taxed for the benefit of a demoralized populace. We can hardly wonder that Constantine should have transported this wretched practice, this panem et circenses indulgence, to his favourite city, and perhaps we cannot censure him very severely for doing so. He was only following an imperial tradition, and it would be too much to expect that he should have foreseen its pernicious and degrading consequences. Unhappily, the city population became in great part a set of mere pleasure-loving loungers, without serious thought, without sense of duty, or much care for the future. This, indeed, was a bad beginning. Gibbon notes one significant fact, which marks with fatal clearness the utter decay of all manly qualities. So unable were the emperor's degenerate subjects to endure the military profession, that they would cut off the fingers of their right hand rather than be pressed into the service of their country. The empire had to fight its battles with Goths and Germans—good soldiers indeed, but as dangerous for the Romans wholly to rely on as the Sepoys would be to us. Almost everything, under such circumstances, depended on the emperor's personal character, and if he were weak or vicious, the entire fabric of which he was the head was in imminent jeopardy. At the same time, the greatest of men could do nothing more than arrest for a time the decline of the Roman world.

There was thus but little promise of a really noble future for the Eastern empire. Its first beginnings were fraught with evil, and it must have soon perished ingloriously, had it not still retained some of those lessons of order and of freedom which Rome had taught the world. But for this it would have sunk into a mere oriental despotism, which, indeed, it often dangerously resembled. Its Christianity, too, though not of the best and highest type, must have been a source of strength to it, and have been the means of raising up a number of men whose influence for good would be widely and powerfully felt. For however much the Christian religion may by human error and perverseness become corrupted, it can never wholly lose its great moral worth, or altogether fail to ally itself with some of our better feelings and instincts. The Christianity, indeed, of the East was far too metaphysical and too much addicted to subtle discussion of dogmas; but it had, we know, some truly noble representatives, and we may well believe that there were many whom it rescued from a low and unworthy life. But it was not such a power on the side of virtue and true progress as it ultimately became in the West. To this, among other causes, we may ascribe much of the feeble and unprogressive character of the Byzantine empire, and the consequent dulness of a great portion of its history.

1. Annals, ii. 54.
2. Life of Vespasian, chap. viii.
3. Dion Cassius, in this part of his work unfortunately represented by his epitomiser, Xiphilinus.