The Foundation of Byzantium, 658 B.C.E.

Probably every ancient history buff knows the famous story about the founding of Byzantium in 658 B.C.E. – that when Byzas of Megara, the leader of the colonists, consulted the Delphic Oracle about an appropriate site for a colony along the route leading towards the Black Sea, he was advised to settle opposite the land of the blind men – which he subsequently deduced to be a reference to the citizens of Chalcedon, who had selected a far less defensible and advantageous site when they established their own city seventeen years earlier.

It's a great story – but it actually proves to date to a relatively late and not especially reliable source (Philostratus, a sophist who resided in Byzantium). Herodotus supplies a different and more plausible attribution for this famous evaluation of Byzantium's superb location. He credits it to a Persian general of King Darius's named Megabazus, who visited Byzantium during an inspection tour in the last quarter of the sixth century B.C.E. [O]n hearing that Chalcedon was settled seventeen years earlier than that city, he said the men of Chalcedon must have been blind at the time; for if they had any eyes, they would never have chosen an inferior site when a much finer one lay ready to hand. Herodotus, The Histories, Book IV, ch. 145.

The advantages of the site were many. The city's acropolis occupied the end of a trapezoidal-shaped promontory that curved north into the Bosphorus. It was readily defensible, being protected on one side by the Bosphorus, on a second by the Golden Horn, while the hill of its acropolis overlooked the remaining approaches by land. The Golden Horn provided a secure anchorage for ships and also supplied substantial quantities of fish, for the point now known as Sarai Point served to divert many of the tunny swimming south from the Black Sea with the current of the Bosphorus into the city's natural harbor. Moreover, there were two fine smaller natural harbors, the Prosphorion and the Neorion, scooped into the shoreline on the southern side of the Golden Horn just below the acropolis hill.

The Early History of Byzantium

The colonists who settled at Chalcedon may not have been blind to the advantages of Byzantium's site; it may have been, rather, that the warlike Thracians already occupied it, and that they were not numerous enough to drive them from their settlement atop the acropolis hill. When the Megarians who accompanied Byzas occupied the site, they likely had to first fight the Thracians for it. An early Byzantine source, Dionysus Byzantinus, wrote that in his time there still survived an altar of Athena Ecbasia – of the landing – on the hill overlooking Sarai Point where the colonists fought as for their own land. Afterwards, they reduced some of the surrounding Thracian peoples to a serf-like status similar to that of the helots at Sparta. They were known as prounikoi, bearers of burdens .

John Freely, a travel writer who has authored two books on Istanbul, writes of the city's early years:

Byzantium, along with all other Greek colonies, was a polis, or city-state, its government usually democratic, thought at times it was controlled by oligarchies and sometimes by tyrants. The Byzantines had the usual Council and People's Assembly of the Greek polis, with officials called polemarchs, or generals. They worshipped the Olympian gods of Greece, and ancient sources mention temples in Byzantium dedicated to more than a dozen of these deities, as well as shrines of the Anatolian goddess Cybele and the Egyptian god Serapis. At some of their religious festivals the most notable event was a torch-race, in which naked youths ran from the Promentorium Bosphorium [Sarai Point] up the acropolis to light a sacrificial fire there.

The city came under the dominance of the Persians soon after Cyrus the Great defeated King Croesus of Lydia in 546 B.C.E. When King Darius marched from Susa to the plains of southern Russia in 513 B.C.E., he crossed the Bosphorus on a bridge of boats near where the fortresses of Anadolu Hisar and Rumeli Hisar now stand. Afterwards, he commemorated his expedition by erecting two marble columns at the site of his bridge, one recording the names of the nations that had participated in Assyrian characters, and the other recording them in Greek. After Darius was dead and gone, the pragmatic Byzantines removed the two columns and used them to build the altar of Artemis the Protectress in one of the most important temples on their acropolis. Herodotus, The Histories, Book IV, ch. 89-90. It was perhaps the first example of what would become a long Byzantine tradition of reuse of columns originally dedicated to another purpose; the columns that were used to line the nave of Haghia Sophia in the sixth century were similarly borrowed from the Temple of Diana/Artemis at Ephesus.

During later Greek and Roman times, the city was renowned mainly for the drunkenness of its merchants and the wealth and luxury enjoyed by its inhabitants. Women seem to have enjoyed unusually high status in the city; it was the home of a celebrated epic poetess named Moero, while an ancient grave stele has been found that commemorates a women physician. By the fourth century B.C.E., the polises of Byzantium and Chalcedon shared a common government, which doubtless served their common interest in taxing the mercantile traffic that moved up and down the Bosphorus.

The Physical Layout of the Greco-Roman City

Adjoining the Temple of Aphrodite was a sanctuary devoted to Poseidon, which the early Byzantine source known as Dionysius Byzantius describes as an ancient one and quite plain. Nearby were additional temples dedicated to Artemis, Apollo, Zeus, and Demeter and Persephone, which seemed to have bordered an open square or stood on various side streets nearby. The Temple of Demeter and Persephone contained a picture gallery. These temples all occupied the crown of the First Hill, and thus probably stood in what is today the park of the Topkapi Sarai, east of the Church of St. Irene and in the outer or First Court of the Topkapi Palace complex. Dionysius Byzantinus, who visited the city as a tourist during the early Byzantine epoch, also wrote of seeing a curious temple dedicated to Ge' Onesidora (The Fruitful One), which consisted simply of an unroofed space surrounded by a wall of polished stone. Dionysius Byzantinus also reported that he was shown the still-bare sites where once had stood temples dedicated to Hera and to Pluto, the former having been destroyed by Darius the Great, and the latter by Philip of Macedon. In addition to the theatre that Severus built into the eastern slope of the acropolis, which would have looked out over the Bosphorus and the ships making their way from the Sea of Marmara towards the Golden Horn, the Emperor Severus built a Kynegion (apparently an ampitheatre or other enclosure) for the exhibition of wild animals.

In the northern part of the gardens surrounding the Topkapi Palace stands one of the few surviving Roman monuments in the city: the honorific column bearing the inscription Fortunae Reduci ob devictos Gothos ( To Fortune, which returns by reason of the defeat of the Goths ). It commemorates a triumph of the short-lived Emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270 C.E.). There is some suggestion that this column stood on the site where the founders of Byzantium had erected an altar to Athena Ecbasia ( of the landing ) in commemoration of their defeat of the Thracian tribes that had opposed their landing. A stadium was also constructed on the northern side of the acropolis; one of its stones, marked with archaic Greek letters, is said to still survive, built into the first tower in the land wall of the Topkapi Sarai south of the Saouk Tchesme Kapoussi.

Coin Portrait of the Emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270 C.E.)

Continuing west along the shore of the Golden Horn, there were two convenient harbors scooped into the shoreline. The first became the port of the Prosphorion, and served as the principal harbor of the archaic and classical city. Later, when Severus expanded the area encompassed by the walls, another harbor was developed in a bay further west that was known as the Neorion. On flat ground nearby there was a field for military exercises called the Strategion; the main public prison also stood near here, as did a shrine of Achilles and Ajax. An aqueduct originally built by the Emperor Hadrian entered the city from the west, bringing fresh water from sources further out in the Thracian countryside. There were also granaries built between the Prosphorion and the Strategion.

The walls that for so long successfully defied the army of Septimius Severus ran south from the Prosphorion harbor, probably along a course relatively close to that now occupied by the outer walls of the Topkapi Sarai. The walls of ancient Byzantium were faced with squared blocks of hard stone, bound together by metal clamps. One especially tall and powerful tower was known as the Tower of Hercules. These walls may have originally been built by the Spartan Regent Pausanias after he expelled the Persians from Byzantium following his victory at Plataea in 479 B.C.E.

The new walls erected by the Emperor Severus after he repented of his decision to strip Byzantium of its defenses ran significantly farther west. Zosimus tells us that the principal gate in the Severan wall stood at the end of a line of porticoes that he erected for the embellishment of the city. Constantine subsequently placed the oval forum known by his name (and still marked today by the weathered, damaged honorific pillar the Turks know as the Cemberlitas or Burnt Column ) on the site.

The Severan walls then ran south to swing around the end of the vast Hippodrome that he intended to be the finest of his gifts to the city. Because there was insufficient level ground within the city walls to lay out the vast arena Severus contemplated, arches sixty feet high (recalling those which extended the Palatine Hill to house the Baths of Severus) had to be built to support the semicircular southern end, or sphendome. The Hippodrome was still unfinished -- the southern walls had been raised and the first marble benches put in -- when the Emperor had to leave to deal with a revolt in Britain, and the great circus was not ultimately completed until Constantine determined to make the city his capital almost a century-and-a-quarter later. Portions of the walls of the semicircular southern end or sphendome still survive, albeit largely obscured by houses or buried by the ground. This is the only survival from the new city that Severus built.

At the northern end of the Hippodrome stood a large public square known as the Tetrastoon ( four stoas ). It was surrounded by porticoes; the Baths of Zeuxippus, the largest in the ancient city, stood on its south side, richly adorned with statuary and mosaic.

Outside the walls were various hamlets and religious shrines dotting the rolling hills. Sycae, which occupied the site of modern Galata, was famous in ancient times for its figs, and there was likewise another settlement already atop the hill of Blachernae.

This map located at Paul Halsall’s Byzantine Studies website may be of some assistance in visualizing where these features stood.

Cassius Dio Describes the Walls of the Pre-Severan City

The historian Cassius Dio, a Senator and high official during the reigns of a number of early third-century emperors, wrote a history of the period from the time of Augustus down to 235 C.E. He saw the walls of Byzantium both before and after the great siege by Septimius Severus, and he left this recollection of them in his history:

"I was one that viewed the walls after they had fallen, and a person would have judged that they had been taken by some other people than the Romans. I had also seen them standing and had heard them 'speak.' There were seven towers extending from the Thracian Gates to the sea. If a man approached any of these but the first, it was silent; but if he shouted a few words at that one, or threw a stone at it, it not only echoed and spoke itself, but caused the second to do the same thing. In this way the sound passed through them all alike, and they did not interrupt one another, but all in their proper turn, one receiving the impulse from the one before it, took up the echo and the voice and sent it on."

Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 75, ch. 14.

The Great Siege, 193-196 C.E.

In 193 C.E., the senatorial Emperor Pertinax, the successor of Commodus, was murdered by the Praetorian Guard, which in one of the most shameful and bizarre episodes of Roman history then proceeded to auction off the Empire to the highest bidder, which proved to be a wealthy merchant named Didus Julianus. Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger, the commander of the army in Pannonia (Hungary) and the Governor of Syria respectively, were then acclaimed Emperor. Severus reached Rome first and executed Julianus, then marched east against Niger. Severus won victories at Cyzicus and in Bithynia, after which Niger retired towards his original power base in Antioch. The city of Byzantium still remained faithful to his cause, however, and endured a siege of three years' duration that continued long after Niger himself was conclusively defeated and afterwards slain in a final battle near Issus. Cassius Dio provides a vivid and detailed description of this epic and terrible siege:

"The Byzantines performed many remarkable deeds both during the life and after the death of Niger. This city is favorably situated with reference both to the continents and to the city that lies between them, and is strongly intrenched by the nature of its position as well as by that of the Bosphorus. The town sits on high ground extending into the sea. The latter, rushing down from the Pontus with the speed of a mountain torrent, assails the headland and in part is diverted to the right, forming there the bay and the harbors. But the greater part of the water passes on with great energy past the city itself towards the Propontis. Moreover, the place had walls that were very strong. Their face was constructed of thick squared stones, fastened together by bronze plates, and the inner side of it had been strengthened with mounds and buildings so that the whole top of it formed a circuit betraying no flaws and easy to guard. Many large towers occupied an exposed position outside it, with windows set close together on every side so that those assaulting the fortification in a circle would be cut off between them. Being built at a short distance from the wall and not in a regular line, but one here and one there over a rather crooked route, they were sure to command both sides of any attacking party. Of the entire circuit the part on the land side reached a great height so as to repel any who came that way: the portion next to the sea was lower. There, the rocks on which it had been reared and the dangerous character of the Bosphorus were effective allies. The harbors within the wall had both been closed with chains and their breakwaters carried towers projecting far out on each side, making approach impossible for the enemy. And, in fine, the Bosphorus was of the greatest aid to the citizens. It was inevitable that once any person became entangled in its current he should willy-nilly be cast up on the land. This was a feature quite satisfactory to friends, but impossible for foes to deal with.

It was thus that Byzantium had been fortified. The engines, besides, the whole length of the wall, were of the most varied description. In one place they threw rocks and wooden beams upon parties approaching and in another they discharged stones and missiles and spears against such as stood at a distance. Hence over a considerable extent of territory no one could draw near them without danger. Still others had hooks, which they would let down suddenly and shortly after draw up boats and machines. Priscus, a fellow-citizen of mine, had designed most of them, and this fact both caused him to incur the death penalty and saved his life. For Severus, on learning his proficiency, prevented his being executed. Subsequently he employed him on various missions, among others at the siege of Hatra, and his contrivances were the only ones not burned by the barbarians. He also furnished the Byzantines with five hundred boats, mostly of one bank [of oars], but some of two banks, and equipped with beaks. A few of them were provided with rudders at both ends, stern and prow, and had a double quota of pilots and sailors in order that they might both attack and retire without turning around and damage their opponents while sailing back as well as while sailing forward.

Many, therefore, were the exploits and sufferings of the Byzantines, since for the entire space of three years they were besieged by the armaments of practically the whole world. A few of their experiences will be mentioned that seem almost marvelous. They captured, by making an opportune attack, some boats that sailed by and captured also some of the triremes that were in their opponents' roadstead. This they did by having divers cut their anchors underwater, after which they drove nails into the ship's bottom and with cords attached thereto and running from friendly territory they would draw the vessel towards them. Hence one might see the ships approaching shore by themselves, with no oarsman nor wind to urge them forward. There were cases in which merchants purposely allowed themselves to be captured by the Byzantines, though pretending unwillingness, and after selling their wares for a huge price, made their escape by sea.

When all supplies in the town had been exhausted and the people had been set fairly in a strait with regard both to their situation and the expectations that might be founded upon it, at first, although beset by great difficulties (because they were cut off from all outside resources), they nevertheless continued to resist; and to make ships they used lumber taken from the houses and braided ropes of the hair of their women. Whenever any troops assaulted the wall, they would hurl upon them stones from the theatres, bronze horses, and whole statues of bronze. When even their normal food supply began to fail them, they proceeded to soak and eat hides. Then these, too, were used up, and the majority, having waited for rough water and a squall so that no one might man a ship to oppose them, sailed out with the determination either to perish or to secure provender. They assailed the countryside without warning and plundered every quarter indiscriminately. Those left behind committed a monstrous deed; for when they grew very faint, they turned against and devoured one another.

This was the condition of the men in the city. The rest, when they had laden their boats with more than the latter could bear, set sail after waiting this time also for a great storm. They did not succeed, however, in making any use of it. The Romans, noticing that their vessels were overheavy and depressed almost to the water's edge, put out against them. They assailed the company, which was scattered about as wind and flood choose to dispose them, and really engaged in nothing like a naval contest but crushed the enemy's boats mercilessly, striking many with their boat hooks, ripping up many with their beaks, and actually capsizing some by their mere onset. The victims were unable to do anything, however much they might have wished it; and when they attempted to flee in any direction either they would be sunk by the force of the wind, which encountered them with the utmost violence, or else they would be overtaken by the enemy and destroyed.

The inhabitants of Byzantium, as they watched this, for a time called unceasingly upon the gods and kept uttering now one shout and now another at the various events, according as each one was affected by the spectacle or the disaster enacted before his eyes. But when they saw their friends perishing all together, the united throng sent up a chorus of groans and wailings, and thereafter they mourned for the rest of the day and the whole night. The entire number of wrecks proved so great that some drifted upon the islands and the Asiatic coast, and the defeat became known by these relics before it was reported.

The next day, the Byzantines had the horror increased even above what it had been. For, when the surf had subsided, the whole sea in the vicinity of Byzantium was covered with corpses and wrecks with blood, and many of the remains were cast up on shore, with the result that the catastrophe, now seen in its details, appeared even worse than when in process of consummation.

The Byzantines straightaway, though against their will, surrendered their city. The Romans executed all the soldiers and magistrates except the boxer who had greatly aided the Byzantines and injured the Romans. He perished also, for in order to make the soldiers angry enough to destroy him he immediately hit one with his fist and with a leap gave another a violent kick.

Severus was so pleased at the capture of Byzantium that to his soldiers in Mesopotamia (where he was at this time) he said unreservedly, 'We have taken Byzantium, too ' He deprived the city of its independence and of its civil rank, and made it tributary, confiscating the property of the citizens. He granted the town and its territory to the Perinthians, and the latter, treating it after the manner of a village, committed innumerable outrages. So far he seemed in a way to be justified in what he did. His demolition of the walls of the city grieved the inhabitants no more than did the loss of that reputation which the appearance of the walls had caused them to enjoy; and incidentally, he had abolished a strong Roman outpost and base of operations against the barbarians from the Pontus and Asia.

Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 75, chs. 10-14.

The story of the three-year siege of Byzantium is in many respects a thoroughly strange one. The city appears to have originally cast its lot with Pescennius Niger largely by chance, and once he was slain after the battle of Issus in 194 C.E., the continued desperation of the city's resistance to Severus is difficult to understand. There could be no hope of any relief, and Severus himself was, after all, not a despised tyrant but merely another who had undertaken to avenge the murder of Pertinax and to put an end to the tyranny of the Praetorian Guard. Conversely, it is difficult to understand why Severus failed to secure Byzantium's surrender by offering it the most generous terms after his rival Niger was slain. The last two years of the siege doubtless were terribly costly to the besiegers as well as the besieged in both lives and treasure, and this expenditure appears to have been utterly unnecessary on both parts. It was as if neither side could bring itself to recognize that even the original, fairly minimal ground for their dispute had utterly disappeared once Niger was dead. This leads me to wonder whether the Byzantines may have been animated by some other cause other than that of Niger – perhaps the restoration of their city's former independence, which had existed until 120 years earlier, in 73 C.E.

The Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211 C.E.)

Zosimus on Constantine's Re-foundation of the City

Zosimus, a pagan historian probably writing in the last quarter of the fifth century and using earlier sources, describes Constantine's re-foundation of Byzantium as Nova Roma Constantinopolitana :

30. [Constantine] kept seeking after a city to counterbalance Rome in which to build his own palace. Consequently, when he was in the Troad, between [Sigeum] and ancient Ilium, he found a site suitable for establishing a city. He both laid foundations and raised a section of wall to a height such that to this day those sailing toward the Hellespont can see it. But he had a change of heart and, leaving the work unfinished, went to Byzantium.

Marveling at the site of this city, he decided to expand it as much as possible and render it suitable for an imperial residence, for the city is situated on a hill and extends over a part of the isthmus which is bounded by the so-called Horn and the Propontis. Formerly, indeed, it had a gate at the point where the porticoes built by Severus end ([for] that Emperor did lay aside his anger at the Byzantines for admitting his enemy Niger into their city). Again, a wall leading down the [acropolis] hill from the west side extended as far as Venus's temple and the sea over against Chrysopolis [i.e., met the sea at a point opposite Chrysopolis], while one from the north side of the hill in similar fashion descended to the port (which they call the Dockyard) and beyond to the sea which lies straight ahead at the mouth through which one sails out into the Euxine. This strait has a total extent out to the Euxine of about 300 furlongs [50 miles]. Such, then, was the original size of the city.

In the place where the [Thracian] gate had formerly been Constantine constructed a circular forum which he encompassed with two-storied porticoes. He built two very high arches of Proconnesian marble facing one another; through these, one may both enter the porticoes of Severus and leave the old city. Wishing to make the city much larger, he surrounded it, at a distance of fifteen furlongs [2.5 miles] beyond the old wall, with a new one that cut off the entire isthmus from sea to sea.

31. And when in this way he had encompassed a city far larger than its predecessor he constructed a palace not much smaller than the one in Rome. In addition, he decked out with every finery a hippodrome, a part of which he made a shrine to the Dioscuri; their statues even now may be seen standing in the porticoes of the hippodrome. Also, in another part of the hippodrome, he set up the tripod of the Delphic Apollo, which had on it the very image of the god. There being in Byzantium a very great forum with four porticoes [the Augustaeum], at the [east] end of one of these, to which there are not a few steps leading up, he constructed two temples and set therein cult-statues. One was of Rhea, mother of the gods, which Jason's sailing companions had once upon a time placed upon Mount Dindymus overlooking the city of Cyzicus. They say that Constantine, out of indifference to divine objects, treated this despitefully, moving the lions on either side and changing the attitude of the hands; for formerly the goddess appeared to be holding the lions, but now her gesture was changed to that of one praying, as she vigilantly looked out over the city. In the other temple he set up a statue of Fortuna Romana. Moreover, he built homes for certain Senators who had followed him from Rome. . . .

32. With no war on his hands he devoted himself to luxurious living. He distributed to the Byzantine populace maintenance which has continued in existence up to this day. Expending public money upon a great many useless structures, he built some which a bit later were demolished as being unsafe owing to hasty construction. . . .

J. Buchanan & H. Davis, trans., Zosimus: Historia Nova, the Decline of Rome (1967), Book II, 30-32

The Emperor Constantine I ( the Great ) (marble head of colossal statue originally erected in the Basilica Nova in Rome)

Readers should be careful about accepting Zosimus's comments in the last paragraph at face value. He was a convinced pagan, writing in the last quarter of the fifth century, when it was clear that the old pagan religions were finished. He hated Constantine as the original author of this great transformation.

Principal Secondary Sources:

Alexander van Milligen, Byzantine Constantinople: The Walls of the City and Adjoining Historical Sites (1899), at 1-14

John Freely, Istanbul: An Imperial City (1997), at 13-29

Pierre Gilles, The Antiquities of Constantinople (1988) at xxxvii-xlv, 1-9