due to vegetation are found chiefly in the abundance of plane, pine, chestnut, and other trees, but more especially of the cypress. Earthquakes are a permanent source of annoyance, and have sometimes been very destructive. Such in brief are the geographical features of this region, which the caprice of a prince, in a higher degree, perhaps, than its natural endowments, appointed to contain the metropolis of the East.
When Constantine determined to supplant the ancient capital on the Tiber by building a new city in a place of his own choice,[1] he does not appear to have been more acute in discerning the advantages of Byzantium than were the first colonists from Megara. It is said that Thessalonica first fixed his attention; it is certain that he began to build in the Troad, near the site of Homeric Ilios; and it is even suggested that when he shifted his ground from thence he
- [Footnote:
[Greek: ypsêlôn oreôn koryphas kai prôonas akroys,
kai pedia lôteynta kai andrôn piona erga,
kai teph alos poliês kechytai limesin te kai aktais,
kyma de min prosplazon eryketai alla te panta
eilyatai kathyperth ot epibrisê Dios ymbras.]
Iliad, xii, 279, [Greek: k.t.l.]
]
- ↑ His reasons for this step can only be surmised. A political motive is scarcely suggested. A second capital cannot have been required to maintain what Rome had conquered, and was soon made an excuse for dissolving the unity of the Empire. His nascent zeal for Christianity, by which he incurred unpopularity at pagan Rome, has been supposed to have prejudiced him against the old capital, and moved him to build another in which the new religion should reign supreme, but these opinions emanate only from writers actuated more or less by bigotry. Although he virtually presided at the Council of Nice and accepted baptism on his death-bed, that he was ever a Christian by conviction is altogether doubtful. For a résumé see Boissier, Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1886; also Burchardt's Constantine.
