Constantinople: A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453/Chapter 1
CONSTANTINOPLE.
CHAPTER I.
BYZANTIUM.—EARLY HISTORY.
EW ROME, or the city of Constantine, was known as Byzantium for a period of almost a thousand years. It was a Greek colony, and was in fact one of the most advanced outposts of Greek civilization. The neighbouring region was wild and barbarous. The waters of the Euxine had been the terror of Greek mariners, and were long regarded by them with that vague superstitious awe, out of which is sure to spring a plentiful crop of myth and legend. The sea itself was spoken of as the "Inhospitable,"[1] a name subsequently exchanged for the more pleasing appellation with which we are familiar, and which promises a gracious reception to the stranger who shall venture on its waters. Greek emigrants had found homes along the shores of the Propontis, and from thence would often pass through the famous strait into the greater sea beyond, which now, losing some of its fearfulness and mystery, would seem worthy of a better and kindlier name. But the old memories still clung to it, and the fleet of the Argonauts, and their perilous passage through the "clashing" or "wandering" islets, as they were called, at the entrance into its waters, and Jason and Medea, and the Golden Fleece, and the weird land of Colchis, must have been present to the mind of every Greek and Roman voyager on the Euxine. A region with more fascinations, both for traveller and historical student, whether in the modern or ancient world, it is difficult to imagine. Whatever interest it may have had in the past, it is assuredly not likely to lose in our own day, and it may in the present generation become the scene of events which, for good or for evil, will immensely affect the destinies of mankind.
It was in the seventh century B.C., probably about 658 B.C., that the city on the Bosporus was originally founded. It was thus younger than Rome by about a century. The Greek genius for colonization was particularly active at this time, and the Thracian Chersonese, or the peninsula of Gallipoli, had already attracted a swarm of settlers, a large proportion of whom had come from Athens. Megara, one of the less politically famous Greek states, but rich and prosperous, was beginning to push out its colonies northwards to the shores of the Propontis, and a site so pre-eminently eligible as that of Byzantium could hardly be overlooked. Chalcedon, on the opposite coast of Bithynia, had already been occupied by emigrants from Megara. But these emigrants had, unluckily for themselves, not shown the usual discernment of Greek colonists; they had, in fact, been so stupid as "to have seen the better, and yet to have chosen the worse." So they were called, by way of jest, the "blind men," the name having, according to Herodotus, been given them by the Persian satrap Megabazus when he was once on a visit to Byzantium, and noted the marvellous advantages of the site. The joke, says the historian, was one of "immortal memory," and the name stuck ever afterwards to the unfortunate citizens of Chalcedon. When the next set of colonists started from Megara for the coasts of Thrace, and asked the oracle of the Pythian Apollo where they should seek their new home, they were directed to a spot opposite the "blind men's" country. On seeing Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, they at once took the hint, and forthwith crossed to the European shore, and there settled themselves on a site which could not fail to promise a brilliant future for their city.
It is hardly necessary that we should dwell on what has been so repeatedly described, and is now so generally well known, as the singularly convenient situation of Constantinople. It was all that could be desired, both politically and commercially. On the land side the place was easy of defence, and when the new settlers had thrown up some walls and fortifications, they were tolerably safe against the attacks of the barbarous Thracian tribes. Its commercial advantages could hardly be overrated. In quite early days there was a good trade in corn with the countries bordering on the Euxine, and a large revenue could well be raised by the Byzantines out of dues levied on the corn ships. Another great source of wealth was in their fisheries. Huge shoals of fish used to pour down from the Euxine into the Bosporus, and then, for some reason or other, decidedly preferred the European to the Asiatic shore. A multitude of the poorer citizens, so we are told by Aristotle, gained a livelihood as fishermen. Riches, in fact, flowed into the city from all sides, and the deep and splendid harbour to the north was known to Pliny and the ancients, as it is to us, as the Golden Horn, the aptest phrase in the ancient mind for wealth and plenty. The Byzantines, too, had the good luck to have good wine within easy reach, as well as good fish. From Maronea on the Ægean and its neighbourhood came plentiful supplies of a wine so exquisite as to be the talk of the world, and so potent as to give the foreign merchant, after a dinner with his Byzantine friends and customers, little chance of returning sober to his ship. Homer makes Ulysses speak with rapture of its divine bouquet. Byzantium was indeed in air respects a highly favoured city, and life there must have been eminently enjoyable. We fear that they abused their privileges. At any rate, it was whispered that, in later days, they indulged themselves in strange and even shameful irregularities. But this, it seems, was not till democracy had been thoroughly established among them. It is fair to say that one of the writers who speaks unkindly of them was generally reputed to be too harsh and censorious. According to one statement, they came at last wholly to forget the commonest proprieties, and a Byzantine citizen was so immoderately jovial, that he made it a practice himself to live in a public-house, and to let his own residence to some wealthy stranger. Even in the extremity of a siege they could not throw off their careless ways, and the story was told that, in the time of Philip of Macedon, the officers could only keep them to their duty on the ramparts by transferring thither the public-houses and taverns. The very idea of discipline and law seems to have vanished so utterly that one of their mob orators, when he was asked in some case what the law prescribed, was able to reply, "Whatever I please."
Of the history of the city before the fifth century B.C. we know nothing. By that time it is certain that it was prosperous and moderately powerful. Linking, as it did, two continents and their civilizations, being the key of the Ægean and Euxine, and having the singular advantages of which we have spoken, it could not possibly fail to figure in Greek history, and to attract the notice of Persia, as soon as war with Greece had been resolved on. For a long period after its foundation it was quite able to hold its own against its neighbours, and it even appears to have reduced some of them to tributaries. This was its position in the sixth century B.C., at the close of which Dareius Hystaspes made his famous expedition from Asia into Europe. One of his satraps, Otanes, won several considerable conquests on the Propontis and the Bosporus, and among them the cities of Byzantium and Chalcedon. These Greek colonies remained under the power of Persia till that great Ionian revolt, early in the fifth century B.C., which led to the desperate struggle between Greece and Persia, and from which may be said to date Greek fame and grandeur. Byzantium joined the revolt, but its people were soon frightened into submission to the Persians by the approach of a vast Phœnician fleet, and, along with a host of fugitives from their neighbours of Chalcedon, who shared their panic, they sailed away northward into the Euxine, and settled themselves on its western shores at Mesembria, under the extremity of the Haemus range. Their own fair city, with many others in those part, was burnt to the ground, according to Herodotus, and we hear nothing more about it till the contest between the East and the West was decided by the victory of Plataea, in 479 B.C. The Spartan, Pausanias, who on that memorable day had commanded the Greek army, recovered the place from a Persian garrison for its old inhabitants, and, as he must have wished to restore them something better than a heap of ruins, he came to be spoken of as its founder. The fortunes of the city were now once more identified with those of the Greek world. It was at first its lot to become one of the maritime dependencies of Athens, which, soon after the war with Persia, occupied with colonists the fruitful lands of the Thracian Chersonese, and pushed her fleets through the Hellespont into the Propontis and Euxine. It was to be expected that Byzantium would fall under the control of such a power, and its possession was of course financially very valuable to Athens. Trading vessels from the Euxine would thus be made to swell the Athenian revenue. But when Athens lost both a fleet and an army in the disastrous expedition to Sicily, her loosely compacted empire received a fatal shock, and the revolt of Abydos on the Hellespont in 411 B.C. soon led to the loss of Byzantium and Chalcedon. The star of Sparta was now in the ascendant, and the Byzantines were ready to welcome a Spartan admiral, who was preparing to cut off the Athenian corn supplies from the Euxine. Athens would have been brought to the verge of ruin had he been thoroughly successful, but Sparta was never able to rival her effectually in the headship of allied maritime dependencies. Fortunately, too, she had among her citizens one who was equal to the crisis, and who, at least on this occasion, deserved well of her.
This was the clever and energetic Alcibiades, a man whom we cannot help admiring, though on the whole his career disappoints us. He might, we feel, have done so much more for Athens than he did, and perhaps have even saved her from her great reverse at Syracuse. He now acted promptly. First, he seized Chrysopolis, the modern Scutari, the port of Chalcedon. Shortly afterwards, in 408 B.C., he attempted to win back Chalcedon itself for the Athenians. The place was held, by a Spartan garrison, supported by the Persian satrap Pharnabazus. Alcibiades, it seems, had at his disposal a small force of Athenian citizens, and with this he blockaded the place by drawing a wall from the Bosporus to the Propontis. This cut off all communication on the land side, and the Persian satrap was foiled in an attempt to relieve the city, though at the same moment a sortie was led by the Spartan officer within the walls. The end of the matter was that Chalcedon surrendered and again consented to become an Athenian dependency, and to pay both the same tribute for the future as in the past, and to make good to Athens all arrears which had accumulated since the revolt.
Previous to the surrender, Alcibiades began preparations for the more serious and important task of the capture of Byzantium. For this his present resources were not adequate, and he thought it prudent to strengthen himself with an increase of funds and of military force. His first step was to attack Selymbria, on the northern shores of the Propontis, and about fifty miles to the west of Byzantium. It, too, had been a colony from Megara, and it had no doubt passed, along with Byzantium, into the power of Athens. It would have been sure to take part in the revolt of that city from Athens. Alcibiades contrived to secure possession of it by means, it is said, of the treacherous connivance of some of its citizens. Now he was able to get a supply of money, and thus to levy an army from the neighbouring Thracians, always a warlike people, and very formidable when properly led. As soon as the terms of submission had been fixed for Chalcedon, he resolved to attempt the recovery of Byzantium. He advanced on it by land from Selymbria, and began the siege of the city, the first of much importance, in a long series of memorable attacks. The place could be reduced only by regular military operations, and in these, when applied to fortified positions, the Greeks were never very skilful. The siege of a city was certain to be tedious. It was as difficult and hazardous to attempt to carry a strong fortress by assault as it is in these days of breech-loading rifles. Battering engines and the missiles which they hurled could do but little against a resolute and disciplined garrison. On this occasion the defence was under the direction of a Spartan commander, Clearchus, at the head of some Spartan troops, and it seems to have been conducted with a spirit and obstinacy equal to that with which Osman Pasha held his lines at Plevna. All the attacks of the besieging army were successfully repelled, as might have been expected, by Spartan skill and valour. It became evident that the work which the Athenian general had undertaken would be slow and arduous, and that the only mode of accomplishing it would be by means of a close and strict blockade. The Byzantines were cut off from the sea by the enemy's fleet. If they could be closed in on land, their surrender must be only a question of time. So Alcibiades simply converted the siege into a blockade, and waited patiently the pressure of famine which sooner or later would drive the populous city to desperation. As it was, the Byzantines bore their misery till they could bear it no longer. It seems that the Spartan commander did not care much for their sufferings, but coolly saw the unhappy people die in the streets, as long as he could feed his own soldiers. He was a man with all the Spartan hardness and tenacity, and he may have been as much a hero as Leonidas, though, as he failed, he has not won for himself equal glory. He kept the provision stores under lock and key, and persisted in the defence till he felt that if he was to hold Byzantium for Sparta, he must seek succour from without. There was the Persian satrap, Pharnabazus, somewhere in the neighbourhood, and from him he might hope for help. Pharnabazus, he knew, had something of a fleet, and with this it might be possible to menace some of the possessions of Athens, and thereby loosen the grip of the besiegers on Byzantium. After an interval of a few months Clearchus managed to steal out of the city with this view, and impressed on two of his officers that they were to do their best for the defence till aid should arrive. His idea seems to have been that the Byzantines would, with due encouragement, suffer for their own sakes to the last extremity rather than surrender themselves to Athens, from which they could hardly expect very lenient terms. He was, however, deceived. The Byzantines, accustomed no doubt to good living, would not endure further privations. They knew, too, that their neighbours of Chalcedon had after their capitulation secured for themselves a fairly favourable position, and were henceforth to be simply what they had been before, a tributary dependency of Athens. And so perhaps they counted on similar treatment for themselves. Athens, too, it is to be noted, had a repute for kindness and generosity in the Greek world, which Sparta never possessed. We may also take it for granted that there was a party in the city which sincerely regretted the revolt, and was really anxious to have the old connection with the foremost state of Greece restored. The result of all this was that Alcibiades was ultimately successful. There was not, indeed, a regular and unanimous surrender, but some Byzantine citizens—traitors they do not deserve to to be called—admitted the Athenians one night into what was known as the Thracian quarter of the city. The Spartan officers whom Clearchus had entrusted with the defence, remained at their posts, faithful to the orders of their superior, but they were easily overpowered, and were forced into submission. Their lives were spared, and they were sent as prisoners to Athens. Those who had trusted to Athenian clemency were not doomed to disappointment. The Byzantines obtained for themselves the same terms as the citizens of Chalcedon had done. Once more, after a siege of nearly a year, in the winter of 408 B.C., Byzantium returned to its former political condition, and it was one of the most honourable achievements of Alcibiades to have recovered for Athens, as a tributary ally, this most important city.
With the downfall of Athens in 405 B.C., at the fatal battle in the Hellespont, which deprived her of her entire fleet, Byzantium was again for a brief space under Spartan sway, and occupied by a Spartan garrison. But a few years afterwards we find it restored to its old alliance, which on the whole, no doubt, best suited its democratic leanings. We may be tolerably sure that it was a city, the population of which would have been always impatient of the oligarchical government which Sparta favoured. Athens, in fact, was its natural ally, and though soon afterwards, with a somewhat unworthy fickleness, it threw off the alliance and aspired to complete independence, it never became thoroughly hostile in its sentiments to the Athenian people. It is easy to understand that there must always have been a certain sympathy between the two cities, which in many respects resembled each other. Commerce must have done much to draw them together, and to create ties of friendship. There were, doubtless, close intimacies between many Athenian and Byzantine citizens. Still, Byzantium, in the year 356 B.C., joined in a hostile movement against Athens, which caused that state extreme perplexity and serious loss. This was the Social War, as it is called, or the revolt of the allies of Athens. The blow was one from which Athens never really recovered, and which left her too weak to carry on with needful vigour the struggle against Philip of Macedon. Byzantium was thus the means of inflicting a grievous hurt on the one state of Greece which had very soon to fight single-handed for Greek freedom against a semi-barbarous power. This the people of Athens felt very bitterly, though they generously forgave it. It was not long before Byzantium itself was threatened by the formidable king of Macedon, the common enemy of Greece, and was only too glad to receive aid from a quarter whence it had hardly a right to expect it. The city now held an important political position, not unlike, though far less commanding, than that of Athens in past days. It was not only independent, but was also the head of a small confederacy, consisting of the Greek colonies in Thrace and on the shores of the Propontis. Among these were Selymbria and Perinthus, both of which were unsuccessfully attacked by Philip about 340 B.C. The king of Macedon understood how to besiege a city better than any man of his time. The affair was with him a thoroughly scientific operation, and as he had introduced a new system of tactics into warfare generally, so, too, he employed new and more effective machinery in sieges. Selymbria and Perinthus were both important towns; the latter was particularly flourishing, and it is said that it had rivalled, if it had not surpassed, Byzantium, in wealth and population. It was admirably situated for commerce in peace and for defence in war; built, as it was, on a peninsula, with a very narrow neck, down the slope of a steep hill, so as to resemble an amphitheatre. The hill faced landwards, and ended in precipitous cliffs which utterly defied the approach of a fleet. The place, too, was strongly fortified. It would have been a great thing for Philip to have possessed himself of it, and he spared no skill or labour in making the attempt. He attacked it by land and sea, and the siege was a very memorable one. In fact, it marked an epoch in the history of sieges, and it was conducted in a novel fashion and with many new appliances. The citizens made a brave defence, but it would hardly have been successful, had they not been well backed up by their neighbours of Byzantium and the Persian satraps of the adjacent districts, whom the court of Persia, already apprehensive of mischief from the restless ambition of Philip, had directed to help the Greek city to their uttermost. By their means Perinthus was well supplied with stores of all kinds, and with everything which could enable it to confront the peril, and in addition it had the services of an Athenian officer with a body of mercenary troops. Philip battered down the first line of defence, but only to find himself repelled by a far stronger barrier built up out of the houses on the lower part of the slope. Similar barriers might be indefinitely multiplied, and, though Philip was the last man in the world to allow himself to be beaten, he gave up the attempt as hopeless, after a siege of about three months.
His next step was one which it is not easy to understand. Having failed at Perinthus, he marched to Byzantium, and this he did with only a portion of his army, the remainder being left at Perinthus, that he might not seem to own himself altogether foiled. But how could he hope, under the circumstances, to succeed in the capturing such a city as Byzantium? He could do nothing by sea, as the Byzantine fleet was greatly superior to his own. And on the land side the fortifications at this time appear to have been singularly complete. The assailant would have to break through a double wall so formidable that Pausanias speaks of it as one of the strongest he had seen after the famous walls of Messene. Philip must have known that he had a very poor prospect of success, unless there might be a faction within which would favour his designs. A story was told, that after the siege had been raised, he wrote a letter to the Byzantines to the effect that, had he chosen to avail himself of a treacherous offer on the part of one of their distinguished citizens, he might have entered their city. He even mentioned the citizen by name, and the man, it is said, killed himself rather than fall a victim to the popular fury. Philip's statement, if really made by him, was probably a cruel slander. Leon, the citizen to whom he attributed the base intention, seems to have been a man of honour and patriotism. Still we may fairly assume that the sagacious king would never have ventured on so very difficult an enterprise, had he not believed that he saw grounds for hoping something from disunion among the Byzantines. Almost the normal state of a Greek city was one of division and faction. At Byzantium there would be sure to be many who feared and hated Athens, and would be ready to submit to anything rather than again pass under her power. Philip might well think that it might be possible for him to appeal successfully to such persons, and that through them the city might be cajoled into an alliance with himself against Athens. It must have been with some such idea that he made his attempt on Byzantium. But the Byzantines, much to their credit, declined to become his tools, and preferred to stand by the common cause of Greece. The siege they now sustained is an honourable passage in the history of their city.
Great indeed was their peril. Philip, with his powerful and well-trained army, with a fleet too strong to be despised, though no doubt inferior to their own, which almost rivalled that of Athens; above all, with his well-known persistent energy and amazing fertility in resources, was an enemy whom the very strongest city would have good reason to fear. Byzantium was certainly strong and skilfully fortified, but it had wisely and generously given liberal aid to its sister and neighbour Perinthus, and now, as the result, its garrison was not by any means adequate to man its walls on the required scale. It needed trained soldiers to resist such a foe as Philip, and could hardly entrust its defence to volunteer citizens. The average Byzantine had not the moral stamina to take his turn at military duty in the trenches or on the walls. He could not, at a moment's notice, break off the even tenour of his pleasant and luxurious life. While trying to be a soldier, he must be allowed to live in his usual merry, self-indulgent fashion. So if he could not go to his wineshop, he would have his wineshop extemporized for him on the ramparts, or wherever duty might call him. It was, it must be confessed, rather inglorious; and yet through the whole of this terrible crisis these Byzantines acquitted themselves with credit, and really seem to have deserved the succour which at last saved them. The siege lasted about six months. Philip had in his service a particularly clever engineer, Polyidus by name, who was versed in all the then known arts of besieging cities, and who doubtless added many ingenious expedients evolved out of his own wit and genius. New kinds of engines were used, as at Perinthus, and an endless series of underground passages were cut under the walls, to give the assailants a chance of suddenly appearing within the lines of defence. Nor was this all. Across the Golden Horn Philip threw a bridge, and he blocked up the harbour with huge masses of stone, to keep off the approach of the Byzantine ships. On one occasion he was all but successful. It was a dark, wet night, and by means of their subterranean passages the Macedonian troops had contrived to steal within the fortified lines. Luckily, at the right moment, the dogs barked; the Byzantines awoke and were at their posts, and drove back the enemy into his mines. It is said that Heaven specially favoured them, and that a sudden radiance in the form of a crescent streamed across the sky, and showed them all things clearly. The light may have been that of the Aurora Borealis. So striking was the incident that in after times it was thought worthy of being commemorated on the coins of the city, and the crescent represented on them has been supposed (though the idea probably cannot be sustained) to have suggested their famous symbol to the Turks. The Byzantines were as pertinacious in defence as their enemy was in attack, and when his engines shattered their walls and towers, they repaired the breaches with the tombstones from their burial-places. Their ships, too won a decisive victory over his fleet in the Bosporus. Well indeed did they fight, we may say for Greece as well as for themselves, against the might of Macedon.
But it is a question whether they could have successfully prolonged the struggle. There was every reason why the Greeks should come to the rescue of Byzantium, but we know how slow they were to unite even when their common safety seemed imperatively to demand it. On this great occasion the chief islands of the Ægean saw their interest and acted accordingly. A fleet from Rhodes and Cos and Chios was soon in the waters of the Bosporus. Athens, too, though she had little reason to be pleased with the Byzantines, who had deserted her confederacy and contributed mainly to its overthrow, did not forget that she was a Greek city, and ought indeed to be forgiven and saved. So, at the prompting of Demosthenes, she sent ships and soldiers and a good worthy man, the honest upright Phocion, to command them, and the Byzantines received the welcome succour with joy and gratitude. The siege was raised, and the city now, like its sister Perinthus, delivered from the terror of the restless king of Macedon, voted, in full assembly, a decree of honour and a crown of gold of unusual size and splendour to the generous people of Athens.
For some time subsequent to this memorable and successful defence of their city against the power of Macedon we hear but little of the Byzantines. On the occasion of Alexander's expedition into Thrace and his advance to the Danube, they furnished him with a flotilla for operations on that river. We may hence conclude that they had thought it best to become his allies. The city seems to have retained its independence, but it never reduced to subjection any considerable portion of the adjacent regions of Thrace or impressed its Greek civilization on that barbarous country. In fact, it lost ground, and from this time almost down to the Christian era it had to struggle hard for existence against the Thracian tribes, by whom it was harassed with a ceaseless and most troublesome warfare. The citizens could never thoroughly shake off their enemy; no sooner was one attack repelled than another worse and more alarming threatened them. Such is the picture which the historian Polybius gives us of the unhappy lot of the once prosperous Byzantines. They were doomed, he says, to suffer the punishment of Tantalus, as the produce of their rich fields, at the moment they were about to gather it, was swept off under their very eyes by a sudden incursion of barbarians. Still they had the spirit to cling to their old position of a free Greek city. But worse troubles were in store for them. A new peril hung over their city in the third century B.C. The great southward movement of the Gauls, which had well-nigh overwhelmed Rome a century before, now began to threaten Byzantium. Under the leadership of Brennus, a name common, it would seem, among Gallic chieftains, a host of these warlike barbarians had ravaged Macedonia and Thessaly about the year 279 B.C., and even penetrated to Delphi, intent on plundering the sacred treasures of its famous temple. There, however, Greek valour and discipline, though the defenders were but few, as in the days of Leonidas, hurled back the invading multitude and inflicted on them a defeat which a subsequent storm of unusual fury converted into a ruinous disaster. Those who escaped found their way to Thrace, and joined other Gauls who had deserted Brennus and chosen to follow two other chieftains, Leonorius and Lutarius, into that country. They were charmed with the neighbourhood of Byzantium, and after some decisive successes over the Thracian tribes, they settled down in those parts. The Byzantines felt themselves in imminent danger, and sought to avert it by the payment of a large tribute. On this humiliating condition their fruitful lands were to be spared by the invader. But the Gauls could not long hold their conquest. They were beaten and driven out by the native tribes. Byzantium, however, got no relief. The citizens were ground down by payments which had now to be made to their Thracian neighbours. In their distress they begged the Greeks to help them, and, to augment their heavily burdened revenue, they taxed, more rigorously perhaps than ever in the past, every ship which entered the waters of the Euxine.
New complications now arose. All the mercantile world complained bitterly of the loss and inconvenience which Byzantium was inflicting on it. Rhodes was at this time the chief maritime power, and to Rhodes the aggrieved merchants carried their complaints and appealed for redress. First of all, the Rhodians sent an embassy to Byzantium, asking for some remission of the dues. This was refused, and war was then declared against the city about 220 B.C. Rhodes found a useful ally in Prusias, king of Bithynia, to whose court the great Hannibal, some years afterwards, fled as a refugee. Prusias was a powerful prince; he was strong enough to discomfit a host of Gauls which had crossed into Asia on the invitation of Attalus, king of Pergamus, and even to give efficient aid to the Macedonian Philip in his war with Rome. As Prusias was the ally of Rhodes, so was Attalus of the Byzantines. They had hopes, too, of aid from Achaeus, who ruled an extensive dominion in Asia Minor, roughly described by Polybius as the entire country west of the Taurus range. The war began unfavourably for them. Prusias took one of their most important positions, Hieron, which was at the entrance of the Bosporus, and effectually commanded it. This, it seems, they had recently had to purchase at a great cost, which however they thought was profitably incurred. They lost also a strip of territory in Asia, a part of the coast of Mysia, which they had possessed from time immemorial. Achaeus, from whom they had hoped much, disappointed them, and they were now anxious to have the war ended without further loss and disgrace. The result appears to have been attained partly through the intervention of a Gallic king, Cavarus, the ruler of those Gauls who had settled themselves for a time in Thrace, and compelled the Byzantines to pay tribute. Peace was concluded, and Byzantium was to have all that it had lost in the war restored to it, but to levy no dues for the future on ships entering the Euxine.
In Rome's wars in the East during the second and first centuries B.C., it was hardly possible for such a city to remain neutral. Its situation, in fact, precluded it from neutrality. It brought itself into direct connection with Rome by a treaty in the year 148 B.C. At that time Rome was at war with the pseudo-Philip, as he was called, who pretended to be the son of Perseus of Macedon. From that date the city professed to have been an ally of the Romans, as one of the confederate states which retained their liberties. This the Byzantines regarded as an honourable position. Long afterwards,[2] in Nero's reign, they sent envoys to Rome, asking for some remission of tribute on the ground of the services which they had rendered to many Roman generals, to Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey, among them, in Rome's eastern wars. Cicero, in one of his speeches,[3] was able to speak of Byzantium as specially loyal in its friendship to Rome. One of the heaviest charges he brings against Lucius Piso, the governor of Achaia, was that he had grievously wronged this faithful ally. The city, it seems, was still rich and flourishing, and it was, Cicero adds, known to all the world that it was crowded with statues and works of art. These the Byzantines, though they had had to bear the brunt of the Mithridatic war, had, to their great glory, says the orator, most sedulously and religiously guarded. The city had often indeed been brought low, but it is clear that it had a wonderful capacity of recovering itself A tributary of Rome, as it had formerly been of Athens, it kept its municipal freedom, and with it not merely material prosperity, but also some sense of dignity and self-respect.
- ↑ The "Axine," afterwards "Euxine" (Hospitable).
- ↑ Tacitus, Annals, xii. 62.
- ↑ Speech on the Provinces, chap. iv.