Byzantine Churches in Constantinople

stands allowed the erection of fortifications, along the west, which could be held against immense armies by a comparatively small force.

As Dean Stanley, alluding to the selection of this site for the new capital of the Empire, has observed:

“Of all the events of Constantine’s life, this choice is the most convincing and enduring proof of his real genius.”

Although it does not fall within the scope of this work to discuss the topography of Byzantium before the time of Constantine, it will not be inappropriate to glance at the circuits of the fortifications which successively brought more and more of this historic promontory within their widening compass, until the stronghold of a small band of colonists from Megara became the most splendid city and the mightiest bulwark of the Roman world.

Four such circuits demand notice.

First came the fortifications which constituted the Acropolis of Byzantium.¹ They are represented by the walls, partly Byzantine and partly Turkish, which cling to the steep sides of the Seraglio plateau at the eastern extremity of the First Hill, and support the Imperial Museum, the Kiosk of Sultan Abdul Medjid, and the Imperial Kitchens.

That the Acropolis occupied this point may be inferred from the natural fitness of the rocky eminence at the head of the promontory to form the kind of stronghold around which ancient cities gathered as their nucleus. And this inference is confirmed by the allusions to the Acropolis in Xenophon’s graphic account of the visit of the Ten Thousand to Byzantium, on their return from Persia. According to the historian, when those troops, after their expulsion from the city, forced their way back through the western gates, Anaxibius, the Spartan commander of the place, found himself obliged to seek refuge in the Acropolis from the

¹ Xenophon, Anabasis, vii. c. I.