Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/109

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abeyance,^[1] finance disorganized,^[2] and political independence forfeit to the leading power of the moment, whether Greek or Persian.

Such was the community whose possession of a matchless site decided Constantine to select them as the nucleus of population for his new Rome, the meditated capital of the East. And, in order to fill with life and movement the streets newly laid out, he engrafted on this doubtful stock a multitude of servile and penurious immigrants, whom he allured from their native haunts by the promise of free residence and rations.^[3] Nevertheless a metropolis constituted from such elements was scarcely below the level of the times, and was destined to prove a successful rival of the degenerate Rome which Constantine aspired to supplant.

The impressions of life and colour which affect a stranger on entering a new city arise in great part from the costume of its inhabitants. At Constantinople there prevails in this

[Footnote: Fragm. Hist. Graec., i, pp. 287, 336; ii, p. 154; iv, p. 377. Having

obtained an ascendancy over the frugal and industrious Chalcedonians they are said to have corrupted them by their vices; cf. Müller's Dorians, ii, pp. 177, 418, etc.]

↑ Sextus Empir., Adversus Rhetor., 39. A demagogue, being asked what laws were in force, replied, "Anything I like"—a frivolous or a pregnant answer?
↑ Aristotle in the doubtful Economica (ii, 4) describes some of their makeshifts to maintain the exchequer. According to Cicero (De Prov. Consular.) the city was full of art treasures, an evidence, perhaps, of wasteful extravagance.
↑ See p. 17. His daily grant of 80,000 measures of wheat, together with the other allowances, to those who were served at the Steps, would seem to indicate as many families, but there is no doubt that the distribution was at first indiscriminate, and many were supplied who could afford to keep up considerable establishments. Constantius reduced the amount by one half; Socrates, ii, 13; Sozomen, iii, 7. Heraclius abolished the free doles altogether; Chron. Paschal., an. 618.

[1] Sextus Empir., Adversus Rhetor., 39. A demagogue, being asked what laws were in force, replied, "Anything I like"—a frivolous or a pregnant answer?

[2] Aristotle in the doubtful Economica (ii, 4) describes some of their makeshifts to maintain the exchequer. According to Cicero (De Prov. Consular.) the city was full of art treasures, an evidence, perhaps, of wasteful extravagance.

[3] See p. 17. His daily grant of 80,000 measures of wheat, together with the other allowances, to those who were served at the Steps, would seem to indicate as many families, but there is no doubt that the distribution was at first indiscriminate, and many were supplied who could afford to keep up considerable establishments. Constantius reduced the amount by one half; Socrates, ii, 13; Sozomen, iii, 7. Heraclius abolished the free doles altogether; Chron. Paschal., an. 618.

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