Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/483

APPENDIX II 437 Bostan the ships would have drifted toward the Bosporus and not backwards to Zeitin Bournou. (3) Because Pusculus says that the townsfolk crowded to the Hippodrome to see the fight, and they would not have done so (because buildings intercepted the view) if the fight had been at the mouth of the Golden Horn. The Hippodrome is four miles as the crow flies from the sea opposite Zeitin Bournou, and the spectators would not have crowded to such a place when they could have seen so much better from a hill behind Psamatia and elsewhere. If, however, the fight, or any part of it, took place opposite Seraglio Point, spectators on the Sphendone of the Hippodrome would have had an excellent view of the ships as they approached and as they passed, and of an attack made in the Bosporus before the ships passed the Acropolis. I have tested this on several occasions. (4) Because Phrantzes says the fight took place about a stone's- throw from the land where the sultan was and that he and his friends watched it from the walls, 1 and that the only place where these two requirements can be satisfied is Zeitin Bournou. The mouth of the Horn satisfies both requirements equally well. Dr. Paspates observes that ships coming to Constantinople with a south wind do not keep near the walls, but keep well out ; and the remark is just. They take this course to avoid the eddy current, which if they kept near the walls would be against them. If the ships were about a stone's-throw distant from the land, they would not only be out of their usual course but taking another where their progress would be hindered. (5) Because Ducas (who was not a witness of what he relates) says that the Turkish fleet set out to wait for the fleet off the harbour of the Golden Gate. 2 There probably never was a harbour of the Aurea Porta. Paspates says there was a scala near the Golden Gate, whic indeed is shown in Bondelmonte's map, but the ships could not discharge at an open scala in the Marmora with a south wind blowing, even if there had been depth enough of water where it existed, which, at the present day at least, there is not. The statement of Ducas is improbable, because, as the object of the ships was to get past the boom from St. Eugenius to Galata, the ships with the wind which was blowing would have simply passed the fleet or gone triumphantly through them, if they had been waiting off the Golden Gate, and have made for Seraglio Point and the harbour. 1 248-9. 2 e/c rod ifx4uos tt}s xpvo"ns iruTs iicrds.