CITY OF CONSTANTINE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16586, 19 November 1921, Page 8

CITY OF CONSTANTINE .

WHEN GREEKS RULED IN CONSTANTINOPLE. THE COMING OF THE TURK. Two tliou&aoid six hundred years ago a small party of Greeks landed from their galleys on the European shore of what we now call the Bosphorus and laid the foundations of the city of Byzantium (writes “Pom” in ‘‘John o’ London’s .Weekly’"). One thousand years later Constantine the Great, Emperor of Pome, and unchallenged master of the Roman world, rebuilt the city, and made it his Tm perial capital. And Byzantium became Constantinople. In the later phase of its history, the Roman* Empire ever tended to become less and less Roman in character. The later Emperors were rarely Italians. Constantine himself was born on the banks of the Danube, and be never regarded Italy as the most important part of bis dominions. THE GATEWAY. Rome was an inconvenient capital, too far from the frontiers, separated from the rest of the Empire by the Alps, handicapped by- the want of goad harbours.. Byzantium, on. the other hand, was the gateway between the eastern and the western world, unrivalled in its position, convenient as the jumping-off place in possible contests, either with the Persians to the east or with the Barbarians to the north. Constantine completed his new city in the year 330, and Constantinople remained the capital of the Empire until the year 1453. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. The bitter controversies and persecutions occasioned by the amazing heresies. that troubled tlie early Church vastly’- affected both the internal and the external history of the Eastern Empire. The story of these heresres has been told with almost gloating pleasure by Gibbon, bub despite the ineptitude of many of its rulers, and despite the religious eccentricities from which it suffered, there is much that is splendid in the story of the Eastern Em pi lie. Constantine died in the year 337. During the next hundred years tho Goths and the Germans were successfully dealt with and driven outside the borders of the Empire. In the ■Bixth century Justinian gave the Empire its laws. By tho beginning of the seventh century Latin had ceased to be the Imperial language and Greek had become almost the only tongue hoard in the streets of Constantinople. This was the zenith of the Empire. Its dominions included the whole of Syria, Asia Minor, a large part of Northern Africa, the island of Sicily, and the Balkan P'efnngula nortfyvnard': to tlie banks of the Danube, and the Emperor exercised at least a nominal sway in Italy. The birth of Mohammed heralded the end, though the Empire existed for eight hundred years after tho death of tho prophet. In the early wars against the Saracens, the Greeks first lost Jerusalem and, a few years later, Northern Africa. But in the year 718 the Saracens were heavily defeated in an attempt to take Constantinople by the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, and Europe was saved from the Crescent. In the year 800. Italy definitely threw off the nominal rule of the Emperors of Constantinople and in the year 878 the Empire lost Sicily to the Saracens. There are still numerevidences of the Byzantine occupation left in the island, notably in the decorations of the wonderful cathedral of Monte Reale, just outside Palermo. THE TURKS’ THREAT. In the eleventh century the Turks swallowed up the Arabs, smashed the Persians, and threatened Europe and before the end of the century ’ they had inflicted more than one serious de rr e i? the ar “ ies of the Empire. The Crusades, intended to rescue the Holy I laces from the infidels, brought not peace but the sword to the Christian emperora of the East. The -wily and entirely unscrupulous Emperor Alexius endeavoured, not without success, to use the religious enthusiasm of the First Crusade for his own aggrandizement but the relations between the emporora and the Norman adventurers, who were the oamp followers of the Crusades, were always strained, and the antagonism led to the siege of tho city bv the Normans at the beginning of the thirteenth century and its capture and partial destracton. INTO THE MELTING-POT. Mr Oman tells us:— Down to 1204 Constantinople still contained the monuments of ancient Greek art in enormous numbers. In spite of the wear and tear of 900 years, her squares and palaces were still crowded with tho art treasures that Constantine and his sons had stored up. Nicetas, who was an eye-witness of all, has left us the list of the chief statues that suffered. The Heracles of Lysippus, the great Hera of Samos, the brass figures which Augustus set up after Actimn, the ancient Roman bronze of the Wolf with Romulus and Remus, Paris with the Golden Apple. Helen of Troy, and dozens more all went into the melting-pot to be recast into wretched copper monev. The monuments of Christian art fared no better : the tombs of the emperors were carefully stripped of everything m metal, the altars and screens of the churches scraped to the stone. Everything was left hare and desolate. Thus Christian destroyed Christian. The rise of Venice as a seaport had largely killed the trade of Constantinople. The incapacity of the later emperors, the sloth of the nntive population, and the pressure of the Turk prepared the inevitable end. Tho city, which had been won back from the Normans and again occupied by Greek emperors, was captured at Inst by theTurks in the year 1453. The Sultan rode into the eastern door of the great cathedral of St Sophia and a Moslem Mullah proclaimed from the pulpit that Allah is Allah and Mohammed is His propl l e i .