BYZANTIUM, CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD

They found that it was true indeed.

On that hot July day when the crusaders and Venetians at last forced their way with young Alexius into Constantinople, it was neither as rich nor as powerful as it had been when the earlier Alexius let the leaders of the First Crusade cool their heels outside its gates more than a hundred years before.

But if you wanted to find a more fabulous city, you would have had to go all the way across Asia to distant Cathay. There, of course, was Khansa (modern Hangchow), which was so enormous that it took one medieval traveler three days merely to cross from one side of it to the other. There, too, was Khan Baliq (modern Peking) where “twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round” just to make a playground for the Chinese Son of Heaven, or emperor. But since Marco Polo would not even be born for another fifty years, most of the crusaders knew very little about Cathay, that is, if they had even heard of it at all!

Their idea of a big city was London with its gloomy smoke-blackened houses, and in those days London was really a little town. Even Westminster Abbey was a mile in the country and surrounded by green fields. Or Paris with its streets so narrow that you could hardly see the sky between overhanging gables, and with the great Cathedral of Notre Dame not yet finished. Paris hardly extended a mile in any direction. Or Bruges with its bent and wizened wool merchants and the damp smell of its canals. Even Rome, the most famous city in the West, could not have had much more than 30,000 inhabitants. Most of these were ruffians and bandits who robbed pilgrims, fought each other, and even battled the Pope from castles made of marble stolen from the ancient monuments.

But Constantinople, at the crossroads of the world, gleamed in the sun and was proud and mighty. Even then it had a population of at least 800,000. Possibly a million people lived there.

They were of every kind and race, for like modern New York, the Byzantine city was a melting pot.

Swarthy Armenians looking for the fortune that had enabled more than one of their number to mount the Byzantine throne.

Intellectual Greek scholars moving toward the lecture room with a precious copy of Plato or Aristotle under their arms.

Blond-haired Anglo-Saxons, described by one who saw them to be “tall as palm trees.” Ever since William the Conqueror had ruled in England, they had come in growing numbers to join the famous Varangians, or imperial bodyguard.

Russian traders bursting out of their own Saint Mamas quarter in the city to drink the unfamiliar Greek wine which made them quarrel and brawl.

Strikingly handsome Asbagians from Colchis, the land of the legendary Golden Fleece, and probably of rich placer gold mines almost like the ones in California.

Jewish merchants from the Pera quarter, on the other side of the Golden Horn. They were not allowed to live in the city itself which they had to reach by water, and they were often oppressed and persecuted; but they were rich, benevolent, and pious.

Unwashed, but shaven Bulgarians, who wore an iron chain for a belt.

Wild, half-Mongol Patzinaks, and somewhat more civilized Khazars from the Ukraine and the Caucasus.

Dark-eyed Asiatics with pointed beards and black hair, and usually wearing turbans, who had come by camel caravan from Syria or even Baghdad.

Iranians. Spaniards. Copts from ancient Egypt. Ethiopians from fabled Axum. Franks and Lombards. In the old days, there might also have been Indians and men from China, but no longer. Bankers and sea captains from Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa. The latter in particular looked about them nervously. They could not help wondering what their fate would be now that their archenemy and rival, Venice, had taken over.

Finally, there were the Byzantines themselves. Proud and haughty noblemen with strange titles you could hardly pronounce. These noblemen moved through the streets arrogantly and did not seem to know that their great days were over. Sometimes a slave walked beside them, carrying a bright-colored umbrella or parasol. Lovely ladies, beautifully dressed, jeweled and painted, and probably with a smile for the tall, fair-haired northerners. Byzantine families, the wife on a donkey, the husband and children on foot. Fierce-eyed monks, of whom there were more than 30,000, and priests who swarmed everywhere, led by their hegumens and archimandrites. And, of course, the famous Byzantine peddlers with their purposely ragged clothes, gesticulating hands, and whining cries. The place was still a happy hunting ground for hucksters.

“The city guarded by God”—the name given by the Byzantines to Constantinople—was big enough to hold all of them and splendid enough to make them glad that it could.

A medieval traveler said that the circumference of its walls was eighteen miles, and although he was probably just as good at telling tall stories as present-day travelers are, he may have been right. At least if you included such flourishing suburbs as Galata (once called Sycae, or Figtrees) and Scutari (formerly Chrysopolis, or Gold City). Galata (like Pera) and Scutari were separated from Constantinople by the Golden Horn and the Bosporus, respectively, which were narrow bodies of water, not as wide as the Hudson River or the East River at New York City.

Constantinople itself was large enough. Like old Rome, New Rome (for that was its official name; Constantinople, or Constantine’s City, was only a nickname which had stuck) sprawled over seven rolling hills and down to every body of water it could find.

THE GREAT PALACE IN CONSTANTINOPLE

That was what a visitor remembered most about Constantinople: One was never far from the water. It was shaped like a hitchhiker’s thumb pointed toward the shore of Asia Minor, and it was bounded by sea on every side except where the thumb joined the hand. On the north was the famous Golden Horn—an arm of the Bosporus—which is still a wonderful harbor. It is so deep that ships can moor with their prows against the warehouses ashore and still be comfortably afloat. On the north and northeast was the narrow Bosporus with its twisting channel and its dangerous currents. Jason and his Argonauts had supposedly sailed through the Bosporus. On the southeast and south was the Sea of Marmara. On the Marmara shore there were many small man-made harbors, at least one of which was reserved for the emperor. Through the Sea of Marmara, one could reach to the Dardanelles, the Aegean Sea, and finally the Mediterranean; and then on to Egypt, the Red Sea, and India in one direction, and to Spain and even England in the other.

Guarded by these seas and by the great walls which protected it from the west, some of which still stand, was an Arabian Nights’ fantasy of lovely vales and gardens, glittering roofs and towers, and, of course, resplendent buildings that were beyond anything that the adventurers from the cold and foggy north could even imagine.

Among the crusaders was another knight who could write as well as fight. His name was Robert of Clari.

“I do not think,” said Robert, “that in the forty richest cities of the world there is as much treasure. In fact, the Greeks said that two-thirds of all the wealth there is, is in Constantinople. The rest is scattered elsewhere.”

Then he went into details.

Most glittering of all, he noted, was the Palace of Bukoleon. “Within it,” he said, “there were fully five hundred halls, all connected with one another and all made with gold mosaic. In it, there were fully thirty chapels. One of them was called the Holy Chapel, which was so rich and noble that there was not a hinge or band or any part such as is usually made of iron that was not all of silver. And there was no column that was not of jasper or of porphyry or some other precious stone.”

The Palace of Bukoleon had got its name from a statue showing a fight between a bull and a lion. It had been the Great, or Sacred, Palace of the earlier emperors. It covered 25 or 30 acres and was really a collection of buildings, for a Byzantine palace was never a single edifice.

There were too many buildings in the Great Palace to tell you about all of them. Among them was the Daphne Palace. It was the oldest one, having been built by Constantine the Great when he founded the city. There was the Building of the Nineteen Beds where the emperor could hold a state dinner for 218 important people. Another building was the Chalké where the emperor received his parade troops. It was 650 feet long, and in the old days it was guarded by Khazars with drawn bows. It got its name because its roof was a huge sheet of polished copper. A fourth building was the Magnaura, or Fresh Breeze, Palace where the empress went in stately procession to take her ceremonial baths.

It was at the Magnaura Palace that an Italian visitor discovered what the Byzantines would do to impress strangers. Liutprand, the bishop of Cremona, was led before the emperor, whom he found seated upon a golden throne. There he was told to bow himself three times, each time with his face to the ground.

He did so; then he looked up. No emperor.

By a clever device, the latter had been lifted to the ceiling, and now clad in entirely new clothes, he looked down upon the bishop. In the meantime, gilded mechanical birds began to sing, and gilded bronze lions beat the ground with their tails and roared terribly with open mouth and quivering tongues.

Part of the palace group, too, was the renowned church of Santa Sophia. It was known as the Great Church, and although it was not as big as Saint Peter’s in Rome, it was one of the largest sacred buildings ever made by man. Even today, with most of its mosaics covered with whitewash—this was done by the Turks—it is like nothing else in the world. To Robert of Clari, its great height, equivalent to a modern eighteen-story building, its many chapels, its lacelike balconies, and its beautifully carved pillars made it like the work of an enchanter. Its dome was so vast that the architects had to try twice before they could make one that would not fall down. When they did, it was so graceful that it seemed to be floating on air.

Byzantium city

But what impressed Robert of Clari most of all was its more-than-Oriental splendor. The principal altar was beyond price, he said. The altar table was 14 feet long. It was made of gold and precious stones crushed up together. Above it was a solid silver canopy held up by solid silver columns. The whole ceiling was overlaid with pure gold. Robert did not even speak of the mosaics which we now know were as fine as any ever made, but he did say that there were more than 200 chandeliers. Each of these had twenty-five or more lamps, and was hung from a silver chain as thick as a man’s arm.

Last but not least of the palace buildings was the Hippodrome, or Circus. This was a tremendous stadium about 2,000 feet long and 600 feet wide. On three sides of it were thirty or forty rows of seats, and at the north end was the Cathisma, or balcony, where the emperor and empress sat in state. It must have held 100,000 people.

In the days of old the Hippodrome was the center of almost every kind of citizen activity. Here were held wildly exciting chariot races during which the Green and Blue factions (they were like the Democrats and Republicans in the United States) forgot their politics to bet on their favorites, and were ready to fly at each other with stones or swords if the wrong one got ahead. Here there were wild beast fights, bearbaiting, acrobatic feats, performances by clowns, jugglers, trained dogs, and even a trained, gilded crocodile. But not fights by gladiators, for the Christian Byzantines did not think it was right for one man to kill another in the name of sport.

Here, too, the emperor-elect stood to hear the crowds proclaim him, and it was here that more than once he had to face the people and promise to obey his own laws. Some very bloody riots, called the Nika revolt, started at the Hippodrome, and it was there that they were put down with a loss of 30,000 lives.

But Robert of Clari did not limit his sightseeing to the Great Palace and its grounds. He went everywhere. He visited the new Palace of Blachernae by the Golden Horn and saw that it was almost as splendid as the Bukoleon, even though it had only twenty chapels and two or three hundred chambers! He stood at the Golden Gate with its two life-sized elephants made of copper. This gate was only opened when the emperor, called the Augustus, returned from a victory. Then he was taken through it seated on a golden throne on a golden four-wheeled chariot. The clergy scattered incense, and the crowd shouted, “Life eternal to our holy Augustus!”

Robert also saw the Gate of the Golden Mantle with its shining globe which was supposed to protect the city from being destroyed by lightning. A statue on the globe proclaimed in large letters: “Anyone who lives in Constantinople a year can be rich enough to afford a golden mantle like the one I wear.”

He saw the great monument to Justinian. It towered into the air, and on top of it was a bronze statue of this mighty emperor. He was on horseback and wore a headdress very much like that of an Aztec chieftain.

He also saw the holy relics with which the city was filled—two pieces of the true cross, the head of the lance that pierced Christ’s side, two of the nails used in the Crucifixion, a vial containing the Saviour’s blood, the tunic that He wore on the first Good Friday, the crown of thorns itself, and the famous “handkerchief of Edessa” on which His portrait had been imprinted by a miracle.

Last of all, Robert of Clari gawked at the two columns each of which prophesied the city’s doom. “Even our coming was predicted,” he said.

But no one in Constantinople understood what the ships and soldiers on the columns meant until the crusaders were actually there. Then the frightened people realized that short-haired warriors with iron swords would come from the West to conquer them. By that time, it was too late.

But there was much more to this Byzantine city than palaces and monuments and churches. It was a city of people as well as the city of the emperor, and it was all noise and excitement, hustle and bustle, and activity.

No part of it was busier than the long avenue that started at the Augustaion, or Emperor Square, in front of Santa Sophia, and went three or four miles to the city walls. It was called the Mesé, or Midway, and it was really like a modern midway in the variety of wares it offered.

Here, for example, under its colonnades and porticoes were the workbenches of the goldsmiths. In plain sight of everybody, they manufactured lovely gold boxes, gold jewelry, and intricate enamel. Near the goldsmiths were the money changers with their long tables or banks heaped with the coin of every nation. Next came the provision sellers, those who sold every kind of food from meat and cheese to bread and honey. The sellers of silk had their booths between the Forum of Constantine and the Taurus Forum, with its tall column and statue of Theodosius. The perfume sellers did their business in front of the Great Palace. In other places—but I could not name them all—there was a bazaar so filled with gleaming wares that it was called the house of lamps, a street of the tinsmiths and coppersmiths, a bazaar for household goods, a pig-and-sheep market, a cattle market, and, of course, a horse market.

Noisier than all the others, and more filled with bargaining in twenty Near East languages was the fish market, located on the quays by the Golden Horn.

The Mesé was a respectable place and one was safe, at least in daylight, when visiting the booths and markets; but to go anywhere else in the city was another matter. To be sure, there was nothing in the world as magnificent as the glitter and the gold of Caesar City. But outside of the native quarter in a city in Algiers or Morocco, there were no slums like the slums of Constantinople. They spread all over, covering acre after acre of ground, and they made up a miserable network of filthy side streets and dark, damp, and dirty tenements. There was absolutely no sanitation. The gutters were the only sewers. Household refuse, including spoiled meat and vegetables and ancient and decaying fish, were thrown out of slitlike windows to be trampled under foot by every passerby. In rainy weather the mud was more than ankle deep. One can imagine how it smelled.

Here lived the working population of the city—porters with calluses on their hands and padded coats, donkey drivers with shrill cries and quick, short steps like those that can be seen even today in many a city in the Balkans. Carpenters. Water carriers. Day laborers. Here too lived an even more wretched riffraff who lived off doles and charity, when they didn’t live off murder and crime. Here was the poor creature with sore eyes who sat with his wooden begging bowl in front of a church or on the sunny side of a square. Here was a one-eyed scoundrel who would cut throats for a copper obol. Yet sometimes they gathered together and formed a mob that marched to the Hippodrome and demanded a new emperor, and more than once they got what they wanted.

This was what Constantinople was like in the late Middle Ages and for 600 years before that. But it was also much more than a seething pot of emperors and rich men, poor men, beggarmen, and thieves.

It was the capital of a very famous empire which took over the eastern half of the old Roman Empire and became known as the Byzantine Empire because it stood on the site of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium. In spite of all its enemies, this empire lasted 1,123 years and eighteen days. And at a time when half a dozen other empires crumbled, including ancient Persia and ancient Rome!

THE EMPIRE UNDER JUSTINIAN 550 A.D.

Sometimes it was a very big empire indeed. Under the mighty Justinian it ruled from the Euphrates, which flows into the distant Persian Gulf, to the Straits of Gibraltar, and from the Nile in one direction and the Crimea of South Russia in the other to Switzerland. It ruled all of Italy, and all of the Balkans, and all of Asia Minor, and all North Africa.

Sometimes the empire was so small that it was little more than the city itself.

But whether it was big or little, it was almost always the most important and the strongest nation west of China. Sometimes it was the only important one!

How did it get that way?

How was it able to keep strong when so much of the rest of the world was breaking into pieces?

What did it do for the world? For it did a great deal.

Why should you and I care about Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire?

I will try to tell you.

Four people