Istanbul

by David Jacobs

  Exhilarated by their victories over the Persians, Sparta’s allies (mostly cities and provinces in Peloponnesus and some in Attica) had been prepared to take their chances with Sparta in the years after the wars. But Pausanias, who almost had started a new war, was a Spartan. It did not matter that Sparta was not part of the conspiracy. Sparta had prosecuted Pausanias two times without convicting him and had allowed him to return to Byzantium to conspire again. Sparta’s inability to acquire incriminating evidence, its hesitancy to remove Pausanias from power, and its ultimate admission that he had been plotting all along did not improve its image among its allies. During and after the affair, the less powerful city-states and regions found themselves drawn closer to Athens, Sparta’s rival in Attica. The episode gave the formation of the Athenian confederacy its greatest boost.

  Those who now lived in Byzantium included old residents returned from Thracian-looted Mesembria, members of Pausanias’s fleet, adventurers, fortune-hunters, and disillusioned expatriates who settled Greek colony-cities. But these settlers had a greater determination to make Byzantium survive than earlier settlers.

  In 470 B.C., the year of Pausanias’s death, Byzantium became an independent city-state affiliated with the Athenian League of city-states. A political party that favored an alliance with Sparta remained active in city government, but the pro-Athens party continued to have power. When the Athenians lost in a Sicilian war in 413 B.C., however, the Byzantines began to consider the possibility of a change. In 411 B.C., a famine overcame Thrace; Athens was too busy with its far-ranging wars to help, and the pro-Spartan party returned to power. Byzantium was important to Athens. The tolls from Bosporus navigation provided an important source of revenue for Athens, and residents of Athens depended on wheat imported from the Ukraine by way of the Straits. So in 408 B.C., Athens sent the warrior Alcibiades, a student and friend of Socrates, to recapture control of the city.

  Alcibiades’s arrival in Byzantium largely undid the progress of the previous sixty years. Brutal battles erupted in the marketplace between the pro-Sparta and pro-Athens factions, and Alcibiades, with his reputation for firmness and brutality, had difficulty restoring peace to the city. He finally did so by promising to retain the city’s independent status and to pardon all citizens who had opposed his arrival.

  In 407 B.C., Alcibiades fell out of favor with the Athenian leadership when opponents defeated one of his officers in an important battle far away from Byzantium. A year later, he wisely entered voluntary exile from the Greek community. As soon as he left Byzantium, Spartan troops entered, and the same street fights and dissension followed.

  In 400 B.C., with the city controlled by the Spartans, an army of Greek mercenaries arrived after a long journey from Mesopotamia. They had lost all of their generals in battle, and the soldiers themselves had elected Xenophon, another of Socrates’s students, as their new leader. The men followed Xenophon as he led them overland along the Tigris, across Armenia, and down along the Black Sea coast to Byzantium, where Anaxibius, the resident Spartan general, welcomed them.

  Anaxibius was glad to see the mercenaries and offered them further mercenary service with his troops. Most of the men enthusiastically accepted because they needed the money. Anaxibius sent them on several missions but did not pay them. When Xenophon and some of the men asked about their pay, the admiral told them to cross the Bosporus and collect their money and goods at Chalcedon, where he maintained a fortress.

  As soon as all the men left the walled city, Anaxibius closed and bolted the gates. The furious mercenaries turned on the city and began a sustained siege. The admiral had underestimated the skills and determination of these professional fighters. Meanwhile, the citizens of Byzantium began to retreat to the harbor because they believed that the mercenaries would capture the city. As they opened the gates, the mercenaries stormed through and began destroying and looting. They might have leveled the whole city if Xenophon had not stopped his men. He talked with Anaxibius and secured the pay they had earned. Most of the troops departed then, leaving Byzantium intact. About 400 troops remained. Perhaps they had decided to settle there; perhaps they didn't know where else to go. Unfortunately, Xenophon was among those who left. No sooner had he gone than Admiral Anaxibius arrested the 400 and sold them all as slaves.

  During most of the fourth century B.C., Byzantium enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity and a substantial degree of independence from Spartan or Athenian control. To guarantee that independence, citizens had to defend against the invading armies of Philip II of Macedon in 340 B.C. Led by a soldier-scholar named Leon, a student of Plato, the people endured the persistent siege and sent a message to Athens, asking for help. The Athenians did send help but did not try to claim control of Byzantium as a reward for saving it because they thought the Byzantines deserved most of the credit for repelling the Macedonians. The grateful Byzantines awarded special privileges to Athens, including some toll-free shipping through the Bosporus, on which they erected three statues showing the people of Byzantium crowning the people of Athens.

  This was only a symbolic gesture. The Byzantines knew that, through their victory over the Macedonians, they had finally achieved the dignity and respect they had long wanted. Word of the defensive battle spread throughout the world. Philip II went on to capture most of the Greek world but never again attempted to seize Byzantium.

  Byzantium’s good times were brief. In the third century B.C., the native Thracians began threatening once again with help from another people, whom the Greeks called Red Thracians. They were actually the redheaded Celts, a nomadic barbarian people, who moved into Thrace and somehow managed to live in harmony with the Thracians. The Thracians and Celts did not destroy Byzantium, but their constant attacks wearied and weakened the people at a time when they should have been getting stronger.

  Around 280 B.C., Celtic bands sweeping across Thrace demanded unusually high payment from the Byzantines, and the city had to increase the toll charges for passage through the Bosporus. The Rhodians, whose briefly flourishing trade took them through the strait often, objected to this increased toll and in 219 B.C. went to war with Byzantium.

  Instead of attacking Byzantium, Rhodes and its ally, Bithynia, took control of the Dardanelles and prevented all ships from reaching the Bosporus. Thus, the Byzantines had to remove the high tolls, although the damage to the city’s prosperity and independence couldn’t be reversed. Rhodes remained in command of the Dardanelles, and the Celts increased their demands on the Byzantine treasury.

  Throughout the first century A.D., the nearly bankrupt city repeatedly needed to ask the Romans - who had replaced the Greeks as rulers of the ancient world - for help in defending itself and settling disputes with its neighbors. Each time the Romans responded, Byzantium had to give up some of its privileges in return. For example, the Romans did not have to pay for use of any of the city’s facilities. Gradually, Byzantium lost its independence and became completely dependent upon Rome.

  In A.D. 73, the Roman Emperor Vespasian noted with contempt that the inhabitants of Byzantium had “forgotten to be free.” He officially removed Byzantium’s independent status, declared it a Roman city, and assigned it to the province of Bithynia. There is no record of Byzantine resistance to the declaration.

  A far worse fate befell the city in A.D. 196. Earlier in the decade, Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger had bitterly contested control of the Roman Empire. Neutrality was impossible in this struggle, and although the people of Byzantium tried their best to remain uninvolved, they favored Niger. In A.D. 193, Niger wanted to use Byzantium as his headquarters. If the Byzantines refused him, it would appear they were siding with Severus; if they allowed Niger to enter the city, it was clear they were siding with him. With no middle road possible, the Byzantines admitted Niger.

  When Severus won the struggle to control the Roman Empire, he immediately decided to demonstrate how firm an emperor he would be. As an example, he chose to teach Byzantium a lesson for suppor
ting Niger. Byzantium did not give up without a struggle and held out against the siege of Septimius Severus for three years. No ships came into its harbors; they could open no gates to allow people to go out for food.

  In the summer of A.D. 196, the Romans finally entered Byzantium through a small breach in the wall that they had worked hard to create over a long period of time. The Romans executed all local officials and soldiers immediately and sold the citizens into slavery. Severus later relented, renamed the city Augusta Antonia, and instituted a new building program. But the city on the Golden Horn was now little more than a Roman outpost. The Romans paid little attention to the Thracian scavengers who stole through the city streets. The architecture in the city now reflected Roman influence, and the people used Roman coins as currency.

  Even though its physical expanse was huge, the Roman Empire was not healthy at the beginning of the third century. There was much internal divisiveness and turmoil; corruption, apathy, and complacency were rampant. Frequent changes in rulers had produced erratic shifts from the benevolent to the tyrannical.

  There was no real rule regulating the succession of emperors. In the half-century before A.D. 284, twenty emperors came and went, with two and one-half years as the average length of their reign. Usually, an emperor attained the throne by causing a rebellion that had military support. Under these circumstances, the Roman Senate was powerless, and the support of the people within the empire steadily dwindled.

  In A.D. 284, Diocletian became emperor. He was a government official whose father had been a freed slave and who was known more for his administrative abilities than for his military skills. Unlike his predecessors, he was more interested in reorganizing the administrative structure to make the empire manageable than in simply achieving great personal power. He created a system called the tetrarchy in which he divided administration of the realm into eastern and western halves, each with its separate ruler (augustus) and vice-ruler (caesar), who would take over upon the retirement of the augustus. The advantage of this arrangement was that it prepared the way for a continuous turnover of leaders without the turmoil that usually accompanied a change of leadership. It also allowed the rulers to divide chores between two men (the augustus might concentrate on administrative matters, the caesar on military) while maintaining a clear hierarchy and succession.

  To demonstrate the sincerity of his reforms, Diocletian gave up control of one-half of the Roman Empire. He chose to rule over the eastern half and established his capital at Nicomedia in Anatolia. He appointed a warrior named Galerius to be his caesar. For the western half, he designated Maximian augustus and Constantius caesar. In order to guarantee the smooth transition of governments for the future, Diocletian and Maximian agreed to give up their power at the end of twenty years.

  The tetrarchy worked only as long as Diocletian and Maximian ruled. Not long after they resigned in the year 305, a power struggle began that lasted six years. Of the many Romans competing for power, the sons of Constantius and Maximian - Constantine and Maxentius – were victorious and in A.D. 312 faced each other in a battle that would turn the tide of history and affect the evolution of the Christian religion.

  Maxentius held Rome, and Constantine was strongest in Gaul and the southern Alps. After a series of victories in the northern Italian peninsula, Constantine headed for the capital of the Western Empire.

  The story is told that as Constantine approached Rome to meet the stronger forces of Maxentius, a vision in the noonday sky startled him. He saw a glowing cross, and below it were the words, “By this conquer.” Inspired and determined, Constantine boldly charged into the enormous army of Maxentius on the banks of the Tiber. On the river itself, more of Maxentius’s troops were on a bridge of boats. Constantine’s Gallic army swept right and left, shoving aside the defenders. With his own small band of officers, Constantine rode onto the bridge of boats, whose captains panicked and scattered. Driven off the Milvian bridge, Maxentius drowned, and the rest of his army surrendered quickly. Constantine absorbed most of the soldiers into his forces. With his new, huge army, the augustus was virtually all-powerful. Declaring his ally Licinius augustus of the East made it so, although it was known that Constantine was the Roman emperor.

  In A.D. 314, war broke out between Constantine and Licinius, and Constantine won, thus adding Illyricum and Greece to his half of the empire. He allowed Licinius to remain augustus of the East. (Constantine’s sister Constantia had married Licinius in A.D. 313.) Nine peaceful years followed this war. But in A.D. 323, tensions once again increased. Licinius began excluding Christians from his court, a mistake that eventually cost him his life.

  Prejudice against Christianity was nothing new in the Roman world. The young religion had been a thorn in the side of imperial Rome since its inception. It was one of the internal challenges to which the government had failed to respond successfully. Indeed, the reforms of Diocletian might have gone even further if he had not wasted so much time and energy trying to eliminate the Christians from his realm.

  Constantine’s conversion changed everything, but the details of the conversion are elusive. It is possible that Constantine actually did think that he had seen a glowing cross in the sky. Some historians have pointed out that he had always been a competent but conservative general and his assault on the huge forces before Rome was not a normal tactic for him. They claim that something extraordinary must have inspired him, and the attack was daring enough (or lucky enough) to have succeeded.

  Yet it is also true that Constantine had sound, political reasons for converting to Christianity. In some quarters, the religion already had achieved a degree of respectability, and almost everywhere people acknowledged that it was a growing force in the world. There were several “official” - or tolerated - religions in the empire, and Constantine might have thought that this list should have included Christianity. Because the Christians had generated such fierce and long-time hatred within the government, however, the augustus may have concluded that his ministers would not tolerate a simple proclamation of its acceptability. It would not have been out of character for him to have devised a very personal, unchallengeable way to introduce Christianity into the scheme of Roman life, particularly if he found most of its theology to be attractive.

  Whatever the case, Constantine adopted the cross as a standard, made Christianity an officially tolerated religion of the empire, and became a Christian himself. When Licinius began his exclusions in A.D. 321, Constantine expressed disapproval but did nothing more. After a year or so, the Roman emperor became more forceful in his request to stop the persecutions, but Licinius only increased his arrests. In A.D. 323, Licinius’s unceasing defiance finally made Constantine react.

  Constantine drove Licinius’s armies from Adrianople, Chrysopolis, Byzantium, and finally from his capital, Nicomedia. The war lasted only about three months. Constantine did not execute Licinius because Constantia begged for his life, but he banished him to Thessalonica. In A.D. 324, after Constantine heard rumors that the exiled Licinius was meeting with barbarians and providing them with information regarding the best way to invade the empire, he ordered his execution.

  Now Roman emperor in name as well as function, Constantine came to a major decision as a result of the war of 323. He would move his capital to the East.

  Rome and the West were pagan places. Constantine wanted not only a newly defined empire, but a Christian empire as well. With the East’s longer tradition of monotheism, mysticism, and absolutism, Constantine felt that area would be more receptive to the idea.

  When he had led his armies against Licinius, the beauty and potential strength of the poor little city of Byzantium had impressed Constantine. He had been thinking about choosing either Serdica or Troy as a site for his new capital, but now Byzantium became a likely candidate, even though it was in bad shape. Swarms of Goths had pounded the city almost to rubble. But Constantine was not looking for a city that was already beautiful. He was looking for a site on which to buil
d a beautiful city - the capital of a new Christian empire, his city.

  The emperor returned to Byzantium in A.D. 324 and set a stone in place. He declared that this would be the place for Christianity’s own city, the capital of its own empire. He named it Nea Roma, but most would call it Constantinople, the city of Constantine.

  According to legend, Constantine personally chose the location of the huge wall that would protect his new capital. One day in A.D. 324, he stood on the south Thracian shore, about two miles west of the peninsula’s tip. Dramatically, he lifted his spear, extended it ahead of him, and began to pace slowly inland, tracing a wide arc well beyond the existing boundaries of the city. It is said that the wide sweep of his path alarmed his aides, who finally inquired: “How much farther, Sire?” Constantine’s reply was: “Until he who walks before me stops walking.”

  Workers built a wall along the curved path that Constantine had traced. It enclosed five of the seven hills at the end of Thrace, and it defined a city four or five times larger than Byzantium. Within the walls, Constantine ordered workers to build a number of splendid churches, public buildings, houses, and a fine palace for himself. Constantine died in A.D. 337, when only the barest outlines of the great city that Constantinople would become had taken shape. Even though his reign of Constantinople was brief, historians credit him with laying the critical groundwork for establishing a city, an empire, and a civilization.

  Even so, Western Christians sometimes underrate the significance of the Eastern Christian world. Western civilization evolved from several sources and might have lost some of its vital elements if Constantine had not established his empire in the East. Most Westerners freely acknowledge that their cultural ancestors were the Greeks and Romans of antiquity. They also think of themselves as descendants of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians who suffered slavery and sometimes died after oppressors fed them to the lions. But few recall that they are also the offspring of the barbarian hordes that wandered through Europe 2,000 years ago and invaded Rome soon after Constantine’s departure.