The Oxford History of Byzantium

by Cyril Mango

  Remains of the Forum of Theodosius I. The historiated column was pulled down in c.1500. Its spiral reliefs were broken up and built into the foundations of the Bayezid Bath, where some fragments may still be seen, like this group of Roman soldiers. The Forum had two monumental arches supported by clusters of four columns, bizarrely carved to resemble trimmed tree-trunks or possibly wooden clubs. The twin pedestals of one arch may still be seen.

  Right: A somewhat fantastic view of the Hippodrome drawn in c.1480. On the right is Justinian’s monumental column minus its statue. The church (centre foreground) is probably the Nea Ekklesia of Basil I (ad 880).

  Below: Constantine’s porphyry column as delineated in 1574 and as it looked in the 1950’s. Constantine’s statue as well as the capital were blown down in 1106 and replaced by a drum of masonry in the reign of Manuel I (1143–80). The stonework that conceals the pedestal and lowest drum of porphyry dates from 1779.

  Why did Constantine choose the site of Byzantium for his new capital? Was it simply to commemorate his victory over Licinius at Chrysopolis (directly across the Bosphorus) in 324? Or was he swayed by its natural advantages, which so impress the visitor even today? The area of the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) had indeed assumed growing importance in the third century, as emperors were obliged to cope both with a resurgent Persia on the borders of Syria and the barbarians north of the Danube. As the gateway to the Black Sea, Byzantium provided an excellent base of operations against the northern barbarians, who at the time were mainly the Goths. What Constantine did not foresee, but became evident after the disaster at Adrianople (378) was that once the barbarians had crossed the Danube, there was no natural barrier that would stop them from advancing on Constantinople. The vulnerability of Constantinople to attack from its European hinterland became a permanent feature of Byzantine history, whether the enemy were the Goths, the Huns, the Avars, the Bulgars, or the Pechenegs. The same scenario was repeated as the Ottoman empire declined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  To guard Constantinople from attack truly gigantic works of fortification had to be undertaken. The triple Theodosian land walls (inner wall, outer wall, and moat) were built in 404–13 and continued to protect the city until 1453 —eloquent testimony to the superiority of Roman engineering and the absence of technological advance until the invention of the cannon. But even that was not considered sufficient: a forward line of defence—the so-called Long or Anastasian walls—was constructed from the Black Sea to the Propontis along a length of 45 km, 65 km west of Constantinople. Some remains of them are still standing, but they did not prove particularly effective in the long run because of the difficulty of manning them adequately.

  Left: The Theodosian land walls, seen here before their recent restoration, consisted of an inner wall 11 m high with square or octagonal towers, a lower outer wall, and a moat.

  Below: The Theodosian Gold Gate is built entirely of marble and had three arched openings flanked by massive square pylons. It was decorated with many statues, including a quadriga drawn by elephants. After 1453 the gate was incorporated into the star-shaped castle of the Seven Towers, which contained the treasury of Mehmed II.

  Coupled with the problem of defence, another serious consideration was the scarcity of water for drinking and bathing, which has plagued Constantinople from the time of Constantine until the present day. To remedy this deficiency, an enormous network of aqueducts extending some 200 km to the west was constructed in the fourth century and remained permanently vulnerable to enemy attack, hence the provision of storage on a vast scale within the city. Of the scanty remains of Byzantine Constantinople, none is more striking than the proliferation of cisterns—three huge open-air ones that had a combined capacity of nearly 1 million cubic metres and the scores of covered ones like Justinian’s Cisterna Basilica or that of the Thousand and One Columns, as it is called by the Turks.

  The most spectacular of the underground cisterns of Constantinople is Justinian’s Cisterna Basilica. It measures 138 × 65 m and was originally supported on 336 columns.

  Two extant statue bases erected in the Hippodrome in honour of the charioteer Porphyrius in the early sixth century carry epigrams that have been copied into the Palatine Anthology. Here Porphyrius, brandishing a crown, is seated in his chariot of four horses. The style of the reliefs is pretty deplorable.

  Aerial view of Istanbul looking towards the Acropolis point. The mosque of Sultan Ahmed (centre) occupies a good part of Constantine’s palace. In the lower left corner is the curved end of the Hippodrome.

  The peripatetic phase of Roman government, instituted under the Tetrarchy, ended in 380 when Theodosius I made his entrance into Constantinople. From then on emperors dwelt there more or less permanently as did the central ministers of the state with their staffs of bureaucrats. The provision of an adequate infrastructure in terms of defence, water supply, harbour installations, and storage of foodstuffs was completed by AD 500. In the absence of any population figures it is impossible to tell how big the city had grown. By the end of the fourth century it was said to have been bigger than Antioch, the latter having a population of c.200,000. It may have expanded to about 500,000 by the early years of Justinian’s reign before contracting by at least a quarter as a result of the plague of 542. Thereafter things went downhill, with a low point of perhaps some 40,000 in the mid-eighth century. A slow recovery is discernible in c.AD 800, continuing until the twelfth century. Komnenian Constantinople was the biggest city of Christendom, but we have no means of estimating its population: Villehardouin’s figure of 400,000 is certainly a gross exaggeration. Latin rule and Palaiologan misery reduced it again to some 50,000.

  Justinian’s ostentatious and over-ambitious building programme, of which the cathedral of St Sophia is the supreme creation, brings to a close what may be called the Roman phase of Constantinople. Building activity practically stopped in about AD 600, being confined to the strengthening of fortifications, repair of earthquake damage, and a partial patching up of the damaged system of aqueducts. Dark Age Constantinople was a ruin—its urban space invaded by orchards and cemeteries, its old public buildings abandoned or converted to artisanal activity.

  Bird’s-eye view of Constantinople in c.1480. The original, perhaps by the painter Gentile Bellini, is lost. Of several published versions, this one by the Venetian engraver Andrea Vavassore is the earliest. It has been built up from a number of partial views, and some, though not all of the detail in authentic.

  When building resumes from about AD 800 onwards, it follows a different pattern from that of Late Antiquity in that it neglects all civic amenities, such as squares, markets, baths, and fountains—indeed, anything that may be described as a monument. Only two major projects can be identified: an extensive reconstruction of the maritime defences by the emperor Theophilos in the 830 s and the reconditioning of some thirty parish churches that had fallen into disrepair by Basil I. Emperors of the ninth and following centuries spent considerable sums on their own palaces and somewhat less on hospices and other welfare establishments, but if there is one trend that overshadowed all others and continued until the Turkish conquest, it was the setting up of family monasteries—essentially private foundations that split up the urban space into a multiplicity of walled cells, each endowed with commercial properties and estates in the provinces.

  At the same time Constantinople was becoming more cosmopolitan following the establishment and growth from the tenth century onwards of Italian trading colonies. The merchants in question—mostly Venetians, Amalfitans, Pisans, and, lastly, Genoese—came to number a few thousand in the Komnenian period and were segregated in certain delimited neighbourhoods along the coast of the Golden Horn, but by the very nature of their business came into close contact with the natives. The Genoese colony of Galata (or Pera), set up in 1303, was a separate self-governing town. It retained its walls until 1864 and is still dominated by its massive Genoese tower.

  2

  Life in C
ity and Country

  CLIVE FOSS

  Cities were the cornerstone of the Roman empire. They were centres of population, trade, manufacturing, and all forms of culture, as well as the basic building blocks of the administration. Virtually the entire empire was divided into the territories of cities, which maintained order locally and collected taxes. These tasks fell on the willing shoulders of a landowning aristocracy, whose members competed for the high municipal offices that would bring them distinction. As magistrates or members of the council that ran the city, they provided the public works and services characteristic of Roman urban life. In return for benefactions or constructions paid from their own pockets, they received honorific inscriptions or statues in a system that essentially put the burden of maintaining civic life on those who could best afford it. Cities also had endowments from legacies or investments, and managed the substantial funds that belonged to the local temples. The cities needed a great deal of money, since they had to maintain streets, markets, and other amenities, notably (and most expensive) the public baths. This voluntary and co-operative system functioned well for two hundred years, but began to break down in the crisis of the third century, when political chaos, invasions, civil war, and enormous financial demands put intolerable burdens on the local administrators and caused the former surplus of candidates for high office to dry up.

  Late Antiquity maintained many elements of the Roman system, but with changes that gradually became more profound. First, the newly Christian government confiscated the property of the temples, then the endowments of the cities (though the latter were partially remitted). Local treasuries became notably poorer, but the same obligations still existed and people had to be found to meet them. The government typically resorted to compulsion. Councillors were obliged to pay in adequate sums when they assumed office to ensure continuation of public services, and the council as a whole had to make up any deficit in the tax collections. Members of the classes that normally provided the councillors, therefore, made every effort to evade their burdensome obligations. A favourite method was to gain some high rank, especially that of senator, that brought immunity from local burdens. Others joined the clergy, but that escape was soon closed. As a result, the poorer or weaker members of the local aristocracies were left to shoulder a burden that soon became unbearable. Consequently, the central government came to take an ever more active role. Its officials tended to take control, and the provincial governors constantly intervened. Eventually, by the sixth century, a regular system developed in which the governor, bishop, and great landowners took over the municipal administrations.

  Officially, the local governments were run by the council and people, but the people had only an insignificant role to play in the autocratic system of Late Antiquity. Their formal role had long since disappeared (no elections were held), but they could make their opinions felt in very direct ways, peaceful or violent. Assembled in the theatre, the people could cheer or boo the governor or other officials. The cheering usually took the form of ritualized acclamations led by organized claques. The central government took note of these public reactions, which could play a role in the promotion or failure of high officials. Less formally, the people could and often would riot for or against an individual or policy. In the Christian empire, these often involved the partisans of the circus factions (the over-enthusiastic supporters of teams of chariot racers) or heresies who would demonstrate vociferously, and sometimes cause considerable damage, in support of their side. Local bishops could be a focus of disturbance, and even ecumenical councils were not immune. At the other extreme were the local landed aristocracies whose members, whatever office they held, exercised considerable influence on civic life and on the empire as a whole through their extensive networks of connections. These were often the people who had escaped municipal obligations and thus had wealth and leisure. Still pagan in the fourth century, most had converted to Christianity by the fifth.

  Council and people alike lived in cities that preserved a basic Roman image and structure. Cities had a core of monumental public buildings— most of them dating to the first centuries of the empire—connected by paved streets and adorned with paintings, mosaics, statues, and monuments. If a Roman from the time of Hadrian could have seen a late antique city, it would have looked familiar, but with some notable differences, that mark the late antique city as the product of both continuity and change. These concern the city walls, new religious buildings, expanding small-scale commercial activity, and a new aesthetic that placed less emphasis on classical regularity.

  Roman cities had normally been open; their defences were the legions of the frontier. In the crisis of the third century when no place was safe, cities began to be fortified, surrounded by high walls with towers and elaborate gates, taking on an appearance that was to be characteristic of urban life until modern times. Some of these were makeshift structures, slapped together from whatever materials were at hand. They normally incorporated the entire ancient urban area, often following an irregular trace to accommodate existing buildings or incorporate especially substantial ones into their circuit. Some, like the walls of Nicaea, were carefully designed along the most modern lines and so well built that they functioned for over a thousand years. Characteristically, when Diocletian established his new capital at Nicomedia, and Constantine his at Constantinople, powerful walls were considered a necessary element. The walls not only served for protection, but sharply segregated city and country and allowed greater control over the population by restricting entry and exit to a few well-defined points.

  The rise of Christianity and its adoption by emperors brought another fundamental change. Ancient cities had been distinguished by their temples, some of them world-famous. They owned huge tracts of land and vast wealth. Their funds were confiscated early in the fourth century, and their structures soon succumbed. As the pagan cult was suppressed, its temples were largely abandoned or put to new uses. Those outside the city became quarries for stone, while those in the centre were often converted into churches. In some places, though, the pagan cult proved surprisingly resistant: the great temples of Athens, for example, were not converted to Christian use till the end of the period. Concurrently, the cities were adorned with churches, often displaying a magnificence appropriate to a triumphant religion. Although the majority were of the basilical plan, there was a striking variety of style throughout the eastern empire. Many churches grew up on early cult sites in cemeteries at the edge of the city, but soon most city centres also featured large churches, whether newly built or converted from pagan structures. This was especially the case of provincial capitals where the metropolitan bishop necessarily needed a large and impressive cathedral.

  Cities of the East, the products of Greek or Hellenistic civilization, normally had a market place in the centre. It often served also as seat of the local administration, with civic buildings around the open market square. Market places continued to function, but were increasingly supplemented by rows of shops built along the major streets. Typically, the streets were lined with roofed colonnades for protection from the elements, paved with mosaics or cut marble. These opened to small shops which offered a great variety of products and normally consisted of two stories; the retail or manufacturing space below, and the residence of shopkeeper or artisan above. As commercial activity increased, the shops often expanded out into the street, a nuisance frequently denounced in imperial legislation. On a smaller scale, wooden booths or stalls would be set up on the pavement or between the columns that lined the streets. As time went on, the life of the street and market merged to produce something like an oriental bazaar.

  An entrance into a large walled space in the centre of Edessa, a provincial capital in Mesopotamia. The space, today the courtyard of the main mosque, may have been the principal market of the city. Fifth/sixth century.

  Finally, the cities took on a new appearance as builders made increasing use of reused materials. Unlike the Romans who built as far as possib
le of solid stone or concrete, late antique builders employed rubble or stones abstracted from disused or ruined buildings (the wars of the third century and the demise of paganism produced them in abundance) and stuck them together with mortar. They often used courses of brick to level the material. This produced a rough, heterogeneous surface that needed to be covered. Layers of plaster disguised the new material and even imitated the old by being incised with rectangular lines to resemble ashlar masonry. More often, they were painted in bright colours and geometric patterns. Combined with the mosaics that lined the pavements these produced a bright and gaudy appearance that might have seemed alien to a classical Roman. Colonnades added to the effect, by employing marble columns of different colours, often of varying height, and levelled by higher or lower bases. Irregularity and colour came to mark the cities.