Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/333

CONSTANTINOPLE it, to be in name, as in foundation, a counterpart of the aiicieut city. But it is the founder, not the model, that is commemorated in the name Constantinople, while its designation as " New Rome " lingers nowhere but in the official language of the Orthodox Eastern Church. Its Turkish name of Istamboul, or Stamboul, is said to be a corruption of the Greek words eis TT)V Tro/W. About the end of the 18th century it was corrupted by a fanatical fancy into Islambol, or the city of Islam. Like the name, the emblem also of the city was adopted from the Greeks by the Ottomans. The crescent and star formed its device from the earliest times, and is found on Byzantine coins and on the statues of Hecate. So the body-guard of the Sultan retain insignia of the Varangian Guard of the Greek empire, of which traces seem to have been discovered in the Crimea. The sign manual of the sultans, rudely representing a left hand, originated with the action of a sultan who is said to have signed with a bloody hand a treaty with the republic of Ragusa. s ; 011 Under Constantino, who founded it on the site of Con- BYZANTIUM (q.v.), the city was more than doubled. His ne. forum was fixed on the second hill; the walls were extended till a new inclosure was made, which spanned the peninsula from about the end of the old bridge to the mouth of the River Lycus in Vlanga Bostan ; the lins of his walls was not direct, but made a compass round the Polyandrion, or Heroon. It is said that 40,000 Goths were employed in first raising and afterwards manning these works ; the seven gates separated the eight cohorts, each of 5000 men. Being Arians, the Goths were allowed no room within the city which they made safe for the Orthodox, but had assigned to them a quarter outside, which was called, either from several columns or from the one of Constantine that stood thereabout, Exokionion (the region without tha columns), and the Gothic inhabitants of the quarter were styled Exolcionitoe. So noble was this body or guild accounted among their countrymen, that many illustrious Goths were enrolled in it, with others, the kings of Italy. In the course of time, after Anastasius had drawn a longer line of defences higher up, from the neighbourhood of Lake Dercon on the Euxine to Selymbria on the Propontis, and many of the Gothic cohorts were called away to defend these fortifications, the meaning of the name was by degrees forgotten, until it was changed into Hexe-Kionia, or Hexe-Marmora (six marble columns) ; and at last this corrupt form was rendered literally by the new occupants in their tongue Alti- Mermer (six columns), which name remains to the present day. As this is a landmark showing the limit of Con stantino s walls on the south, another sign is extant bearing witness to their extent on the north. This is a mosque, once a church, which is visible from the Golden Horn. Its Turkish name, Kahireh, or Kahrieh, is thought to have been formed into a resemblance of that of the capital of Egypt from the Greek ^wpa. The monastery to which this church of tha Saviour belonged was Movy TTJ? x^P a ?> or as we say, " in the fields." This was an ancient establish ment, and its church, the oldest church in the city, datss from the 3d century. Hither were brought, and entombed in sarcophagi, the remains of St Babylas and two other martyrs who suffered under Decius in the persecution of 250 A.D. At the beginning of the 5th century the Goths, being pressed by Attila and his Huns out of their settlements below the Balkan, flocked towards Constantinople to join their countrymen there and find refuge in its suburbs. It then became necessary to entrench this extra-mural camp. Accordingly in 412, .osian under Theodosius II., the first Theodosian wall was raised by the prefect Anthemius ; and in 447 a second was added by the prefect Cyrus Constantinus, who advanced the fosse, and of the earth dug out of it formed an artificial terrace between two lines of defence. The Goths were long subjected to exclusion from the city ; Justinian exempted the Exocionites, indeed, from the penalties which he exacted from all other Arians in the empire, but required them still to meet for public worship outside tho walls. Some monuments to members of the body of Fcederati, found outside the fifth gate, and perhaps the name Cerco-porta, a memento of their round church, or one of their circular forts, may mark the residence, as they intimate the heresy, of the noble guards of the Greek emperor. Arianism had died out when this body- was reinforced by the Varangians Anglo-Danes in the llth century; accordingly, it is not surprising to recognize in a Byzantine church in a quarter called Bogdan-Serai, within the walls on the fifth hill, the church of St Nicholas and Augustine, founded by an Anglo-Saxon who fled from the Normans to take service under the Greek emperor. It is maintained that most of the numbers distinguishing the cohorts attached to the several regions arid walls remain to this day, as Deuteron, Triton, Pempton, and Hebdomon. Upon the completion of these Theodosian Ga es. walls there ensued a double arrangement of gates ; town- gates, communicating with the public roads, alternated with military gates which opened upon the terraces only. These town-gates, to the number of seven, communicated with the seven gates of Constantino s wall each by a broad street, which separated the cohorts and their quarters. These gates were opened in peace but shut in time of war, and then the bridges connecting them with the country roads and crossing the fosse in front were taken down at tho approach of the enemy. The military gates had no such bridges leading from them ; they served only to givo egress to that part of the garrison which was required to work the engines of war planted upon the ten-aces outside and below. The city gates in the Theodosian walls had for the most part the same names as the gates in the wall of Constantine which corresponded to them with this difference, that they were styled " New." Thus the gate "Roussion," so named from the "demus" of the "Reds," in the latter, answered to the "New" Roussion in the former. It is on this accouut that the existing gate is to this day called Yeni Kapu (A r eu> gate) as well as Mevlaneh Kapusi (gate of the Dervishes). The gate of Adrianople (Edreneh Kapusi) was formerly that of Polyandrion, and took its title from the corresponding gate in the wall of Constantine, called so because it stood near the Polyandrion or Heroon adjoining it, which was attached to the church of the Holy Apostles ; the site is now occupied by the mosque of Mahomet the Conqueror (Mehmedieh). The landward walls of Constantinople bear marks of the labour of many hands, and represent different and distant epochs. 1 Their construction is unique. If tho 1 At several points these walls have been repaired and restored, and display the names of "rois constructeurs " from Theodosins to John Palaeologus. They may be described roughly as four lines drawn across the promontory which they inclose for the distance of about four English miles, and knotted at each end into a citadel. The work at each extremity is more recent than what intervenes that near the Sea of Marmora is to this day almost perfect; and the Golden Gate remains with its flanking towers of marble, much as it appeared in the 5th century, and fronted by the smaller arch which has generally appropriated the name. Of the five towers at the other end near tlio Golden Horn some remains exist, viz., the tower of Anema and tlint of Isaac Angelus. On the north side the wall of Theodosius breaks off at the palace of the Hebdomon, and the continuous fosse ceases where a later line has been thrown out with massive towers this is the wall of Heraclius, supposed to have been raised to protect the imperial quarter of Blachemae, containing the palace of that name and the church of St Mary. Similarly a second wall was constructed to cover the church of St Nicolas, in the time of Leo the Armenian, whence it is called the Leontine wall. This line of defence, long

impregnable, withstood siege after siege till the new artillery made