- scription. Many cities of the Empire, notably Rome, Athens,
Ephesus, and Antioch, were stripped of some of their most precious objects of art for the embellishment of the new capital.[1] Wherever statues, sculptured columns, or metal castings were to be found, there the agents of Constantine were busily engaged in arranging for their transfer to the Bosphorus. Resolved that no fanatic spirit should mar the cosmopolitan expectation of his capital the princely architect subdued his Christian zeal, and three temples[2] to mythological divinities arose in regular conformity with pagan custom. Thus the "Fortune of the City" took her place as the goddess Anthusa[3] in a handsome fane, and adherents of the old religion could not declare that the ambitious foundation was begun under unfavourable auspices. In another temple a statue of Rhea, or Cybele, was erected in an abnormal posture, deprived of her lions and with her hands raised as if in the act of praying over the city. On this travesty of the mother of the Olympians, we may conjecture, was founded the belief which prevailed in a later age that the capital at its birth had been dedicated to the Virgin.[4] That a city permanently distinguished by the presence of an Imperial court should remain deficient in population is opposed to common experience of the laws which govern the evolution of a metropolis. But
- ↑ Anon. (Banduri) and Codinus passim; Eusebius, Vit. Constant., iii, 54, etc.; Jerome, Chron., viii, p. 678 (Migne).
- ↑ Zosimus, ii, 31.
- ↑ Or Florentia (blooming). Jn. Malala, xiii, p. 320, etc. Everything was done in imitation of Rome, which, as John Lydus tells us (De Mens., iv, 50), had three names, mystic, sacerdotal, and political—Amor, Flora, Rome.
- ↑ Cedrenus, i, p. 495; Zonaras, xiii, 3. Eusebius knows nothing of it. See Ducange's collection of authorities (CP. Christ., i, p. 24), all late, e.g., Phrantzes, iii, 6.
