The Harbour of Kaisarius and the Neorion at the Heptascalon.

Before concluding this account of the city harbours on the Sea of Marmora, a point of some importance remains to be settled.

Byzantine historians speak of the Harbour of Kaisarius, and of the Neorion at the Heptascalon, on the southern shore of the city. Now, as traces of an additional harbour to those already mentioned, on this side of the city, may be disputed, the question presents itself: Have the Harbour of Kaisarius and the Neorion at the Heptascalon disappeared, or were they one or other of the harbours already identified?

The Harbour of Kaisarius (Λιμὴν τοῦ Καισαρείου) is mentioned for the first time in the Acts of the Fifth General Council of Constantinople, [1136] held in 553, under Justinian the Great. Near it, we are there informed, stood the Residence of Germanus: “In domo Germani, prope portum Cæsarii.” The harbour is mentioned for the last time by Cedrenus, [1137] in what is manifestly a quotation from Theophanes. [1138] Beside it stood a district, [1139] and a palace, [1140] known respectively as the District and the Palace of Kaisarius (ἐν τοῖς Καισαρείου: κυράτωρ τῶν Καισαρείου); the latter being probably the residence of Germanus above mentioned.

After whom the harbour was named is uncertain. Du Cange [1141] suggests three persons from whom the designation may have been derived: Kaisarius, Prefect of the City under Valentinian; Kaisarius, Prætorian Prefect under Theodosius I.; and Kaisarius, a personage of some note in the reign of Leo I. If the choice lies between these persons, the preference must be given to the last; for the Notitia, which describes the city in the reign of Theodosius II., makes no mention of this harbour. In all probability, therefore, the Harbour of Kaisarius was constructed towards the close of the fifth century.

That it stood on the Sea of Marmora is evident; first, from its association with the Harbours of Julian and of Hormisdas, as one of the points at which the tyrant Phocas placed troops to prevent the landing of Heraclius on the southern side of the city; [1142] and secondly, from the fact that it was there that Constantine Pogonatus, in 673, placed his ships, armed with the newly invented tubes for squirting Greek fire, to await the Saracen fleet coming up against the city from the Ægean. [1143]

Passing next to the Neorion at the Heptascalon, we find that the term “Heptascalon” is employed by Byzantine writers only in two connections: first, and then generally in the corrupt form Πασχάλῳ or Πασκάλῳ, it serves to mark the site of a church dedicated to St. Acacius; the earliest writer who uses it for that purpose being Constantine Porphyrogenitus, [1144] in his biography of Basil I., by whom the church was restored: secondly, Cantacuzene [1145] employs the phrase to indicate the situation of the harbour now under discussion.

In 1351 Cantacuzene [1146] found the harbour in a very unsatisfactory condition. Owing to the sand which had accumulated in it for many years, it could hardly float a ship laden with cargo; and accordingly, in pursuance of his policy to develop the naval resources of the Empire, he caused the harbour to be dredged at much labour and expense, to the great convenience of public business. So extensive was the work of restoration that in one passage the harbour is styled the New Neorion. [1147]

Du Cange, [1148] misled by the fact that a Church of St. Acacius was found in the Tenth Region—one of the Regions on the northern side of the city—has classed the Neorion at the Heptascalon among the harbours on the Golden Horn. But to identify a site in Byzantine Constantinople by means of a church alone is a precarious proceeding, for churches of the same dedication were to be found in different quarters of the city. This, Du Cange [1149] himself admits, was possible in the case before us; since, besides the Church of St. Acacius at the Heptascalon, writers speak of a Church of St. Acacius ad Caream (Ἐν τῇ Καρύᾳ), and the identity of the two sanctuaries cannot be assumed. But the existence of a second church dedicated to St. Acacius is not a mere possibility. According to Antony of Novgorod, [1150] there was a church of that dedication also on the southern side of the city, not far from the Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. The Neorion at the Heptascalon may, therefore, have been on the Sea of Marmora.

And that it was there, as a matter of fact, is evident from the statements made regarding that harbour by Cantacuzene and Nicephorus Gregoras, in their account of the naval engagement fought in the Bosporus in 1351, between a Genoese fleet on the one hand, and the Greeks, supported by Venetian and Spanish ships, on the other.

Upon coming up from the Ægean to take part in the war, the Venetians and the Spaniards, says the former historian, [1151] anchored off the Prince’s Island, to rest their crews after the hardships of the winter. There they remained three days. Then, quitting their moorings, the two allies made for the Neorion at the Heptascalon, or, as it is also styled, the Neorion of the Byzantines (τὸ Βυζαντίων νεώριον), [1152] to join the Imperial fleet which was stationed there, all ready for action, and awaiting their arrival. Meanwhile, the Genoese admiral, with seventy ships, had taken up his position at Chalcedon (Kadikeui), to watch and oppose the movements of the allied squadrons. The wind was blowing a gale from the south, and though the Venetians and Spaniards had started for the Heptascalon very early in the morning, it was with the utmost difficulty, and late in the afternoon, that they succeeded in crossing from the island to the city. Even at the last moment they narrowly escaped destruction, by being dashed to pieces against the boulders scattered along the foot of the walls as a breakwater.

The Byzantine admiral, encouraged by the arrival of his allies, then sallied forth from the Heptascalon, and led the way towards the Genoese ships at Chalcedon. The latter, finding it impossible to make head against the wind, retired towards Galata, and skilfully entrenched themselves among the shoals and rocks off Beshiktash, preferring to be attacked in that advantageous situation. [1153] The allies came on, and a desperate conflict, partly on the water, partly on the rocks, ensued, until night parted the combatants without a decisive victory on either side.

With this narrative of Cantacuzene in view, no one familiar with the vicinity of Constantinople can doubt for a moment that the Neorion at the Heptascalon was upon the Sea of Marmora. The single circumstance that the walls in the neighbourhood of the harbour were protected by boulders placed in the sea as a breakwater is alone sufficient to prove the fact; for only the walls bordering the Sea of Marmora were defended in that manner. Equally conclusive is the circumstance that the Venetian and Spanish ships found it difficult to make the harbour from the Prince’s Island with a strong south wind on their left. Such a wind would drive them towards the Bosporus with a violence that would render it almost impossible for them to put into any port on the Marmora shore of the city. Nor is it less decisive to find, as the historian’s account makes perfectly clear, that the harbour was so situated; that the approach to it, and possible shipwrecks at its entrance, could be observed by the Genoese admiral stationed off Chalcedon; that an enemy at Chalcedon found it hard to advance towards the Heptascalon in a strong south wind; and that vessels proceeding from the harbour to Galata could, on the way, touch at Chalcedon. These facts hold true only of a harbour on the Sea of Marmora.

This conclusion, based on the narrative of Cantacuzene, is corroborated by the indications which Nicephorus Gregoras [1154] furnishes regarding the site of the Neorion. The events which transpired, according to the former historian, at the Neorion at the Heptascalon, or the Neorion of the Byzantines, took place, according to the latter, in the Harbour of the Byzantines, or, more definitely, “the Harbour of the Byzantines facing the east” (τοῦ τῶν Βυζαντίων λιμένος, τοῦ πρὸς ἒω βλέποντος). [1155] That the expression “facing the east” denoted the shore of the city facing the Sea of Marmora and the Asiatic coast is manifest, from the use which Nicephorus Gregoras makes of that expression in other passages of his work. The Golden Gate, which stands near the Sea of Marmora, on what would generally be described as the southern shore of the city, stood, according to him, near the city’s eastern shore. [1156] Again, the gale from the south, which damaged the city fortifications along the Sea of Marmora in the year 1341, assailed, he says, the eastern walls of the capital. [1157] This way of speaking, if not strictly accurate, is justified by the fact that extensive portions of the city beside the Sea of Marmora face east or south-east.

Nor is this all. The harbour in question, adds Nicephorus Gregoras, [1158] stood where the walls of the city were protected by boulders; ships issuing from it, in a south wind, could readily make the Bosporus; [1159] while ships proceeding from the Bosporus to the harbour passed Chalcedon on the left, and could be watched from Chalcedon, upon their arrival at their destination. [1160]

Such facts, we repeat, hold good only of a harbour situated on the shore of the city beside the Sea of Marmora.

It being thus proved that the Harbour of Kaisarius and the Neorion at the Heptascalon were situated on the Marmora side of the city, we return to the question, whether they have disappeared, or were different names for one or other of the harbours already identified.

So far as room for harbours additional to those already identified is concerned, such room could be found only in the level ground at the foot of the Third Hill, extending from the Kontoscalion at Koum Kapoussi to the Harbour of Theodosius at Vlanga, points some 910 yards apart. An additional harbour elsewhere was impossible, owing to the character of the coast. Accordingly, if the Harbour of Kaisarius and the Neorion at the Heptascalon cannot be identified with one or other of the well-known harbours on the Sea of Marmora, they must have been situated between Koum Kapoussi and Vlanga.

So far as the Harbour of Kaisarius is concerned, it could not have been another name for the Harbour of the Bucoleon, or the Harbour of Julian and Sophia, or the Harbour of the Golden Gate. For, as John of Antioch [1161] makes perfectly clear in his account of the defence of the city by Phocas against Heraclius, the Harbour of Kaisarius was situated in the same general district as the two former harbours, and to the west of them. Nor can the Harbour of Kaisarius be identified with the Harbour of Theodosius, inasmuch as the latter had been filled in and abandoned [1162] before the reigns of Phocas and Constantine IV., in the seventh century, when the Harbour of Kaisarius was still one of the principal ports on the southern coast of the city. [1163]

The Harbour of Kaisarius must, therefore, have been either the Kontoscalion, at Koum Kapoussi, or another harbour between that gate and Vlanga. To suppose that it was the Kontoscalion, under an earlier name, is possible, since the name Kontoscalion, we have seen, [1164] appears for the first time in the eleventh century. Still the circumstance that a fire which started beside the Harbour of Kaisarius extended to the Forum of the Ox (ἕως τοῦ Βοός), [1165] situated at Ak Serai far up the valley that runs northwards from Yeni Kapou, suggests a situation nearer Vlanga.

Turning, next, to the Neorion at the Heptascalon, it could, obviously, not be the Harbour of the Bucoleon, attached to the Imperial Palace; nor the Harbour of the Golden Gate, which was beyond the city limits; nor the Harbour of Theodosius, which had been filled in long before the reign of Cantacuzene, and which in 1400 and 1422, dates respectively not fifty and seventy years after that emperor’s reign, is described as a garden. [1166] The Neorion at the Heptascalon, therefore, must have been either the Harbour of Julian and Sophia, or the Kontoscalion, or an additional harbour between Koum Kapoussi and Vlanga. One objection to the first supposition is that the Harbour of Julian and Sophia was so notoriously known under its own special name, that reference to it by another designation is extremely improbable. Another objection is that the indications respecting the site of St. Acacius at the Heptascalon, however vague their character, furnish no ground for believing that the church stood in the vicinity of the Harbour of Julian and Sophia, but support, rather, the opinion that it stood in the neighbourhood of Boudroum Djamissi, in the quarter of Laleli Hamam, situated to the north-west of Koum Kapoussi. [1167]

The supposition that the Neorion at the Heptascalon was the same as the Kontoscalion is open to objections equally, if not more, serious. The identity of the two harbours is inconsistent with the fact that the two names occur in the writings of the same author, Cantacuzene, [1168] in the same section of his work, in passages not widely separated and treating of kindred matters, without the slightest hint that under the different names he refers to the same thing. The natural impression made by the use of the two names in such a way is that they denote different things. Then, there is an opposition between the respective meanings of the two names, which makes their application to the same object incompatible; a harbour distinguished by a short pier cannot also be a harbour distinguished by seven piers. In the next place, the different accounts which Cantacuzene gives of the condition of the two harbours in his reign imply that he is not speaking of the same port. He refers to the Kontoscalion, [1169] in 1348, without a note of disparagement, as a harbour in which he constructed several large triremes for the increase of his fleet; while he describes the Neorion at the Heptascalon, [1170] only three years later, as a harbour which had long been neglected, which was full of silt, and which he restored at great expense, for the public advantage, on a scale which entitled it to be styled the New Neorion. [1171]

And just as all that Cantacuzene states regarding the two harbours implies that they were different, so does the language of Nicephorus Gregoras. When the latter writer alludes to the Kontoscalion, he describes it as the harbour near the Hippodrome; [1172] when he alludes to the Neorion at the Heptascalon, he describes it as the harbour facing the east. [1173] Different marks are generally employed to distinguish different objects. [1174] This being so, the unavoidable conclusion is that the Neorion at the Heptascalon was a harbour situated between Koum Kapoussi and Yeni Kapou, the only possible situation for an additional harbour.

We should feel obliged to insist upon this conclusion, even in the absence of any remains of a harbour in the situation indicated. Our task, however, is not so arduous; for manifest traces of such a harbour have been identified. In the first place, traces of a harbour in the district above mentioned came to view in 1819, and were then officially noted by so competent an authority as the Patriarch Constantius. [1175] In that year a great fire burned down a large part of the Turkish quarter near Yeni Kapou—Tulbenkdji Djamissi—and brought to light a portion of an ancient circular enclosure around that quarter. The discovery excited considerable attention, and the patriarch was specially instructed by the Turkish Government of the day to examine the wall and report the result of his investigations. Accompanied by two distinguished members of the Greek community, the prelate proceeded to the scene of the conflagration, and found a wall built of huge blocks of stone, about seven feet long, four and a half feet wide, and over a foot thick. The stones were carefully hewn and placed in three tiers; the blocks in the two lower tiers being the ordinary limestone found on the banks of the Bosporus, while the blocks in the highest row were of marble from the Island of Marmora. The territory enclosed by the wall presented the appearance of a great hollow which had been filled in, since the Turkish Conquest, and raised to afford ground for building. All that the patriarch saw convinced him that he stood upon the site of one of the ancient harbours of the city. The wall has disappeared, as the excellent building material it provided rendered natural. But other remains of a harbour at this point, the complement of those discovered by the patriarch, have been recognized, and can, to some extent, be still distinguished.

Off the shore in front of the territory enclosed by the wall described above is a mole formed with boulders (marked “Molotrümmer” on Stolpe’s map of the city), similar to the mole before the old harbour at Koum Kapoussi. At a point about half-way between Koum Kapoussi and Yeni Kapou, there is a wide gap in this mole, dividing it in two unequal parts, and forming a passage through it. The shore [1176] opposite the gap was, until the construction of a quay in 1870 for the Roumelian railroad, a sandy beach extending back to the foot of the city walls. The portion of the walls at the rear of the beach was, however, not Byzantine; but a piece of Turkish work [1177] inserted between the Byzantine walls on either hand to close an opening which gave admittance to the area occupied by the quarter of Tulbenkdji Djamissi.

Here, accordingly, we have traces of all that constitutes a harbour: its mole, its entrance, its basin and enclosure, indicating where the Neorion at the Heptascalon, which the language of Cantacuzene and Nicephorus Gregoras obliges us to distinguish from the Kontoscalion, was probably situated. At this point, it seems reasonable to think, stood also the Harbour of Kaisarius, if we may judge from the circumstance that a fire which originated at that harbour extended up the valley from Vlanga to Ak Serai. [1178]

In the opinion of the Patriarch Constantius, [1179] indeed, the harbour discovered in 1819 was the Kontoscalion. The statement of Pachymeres [1180] and Bondelmontius, [1181] that the Kontoscalion was near Vlanga, cannot, perhaps, be held to lend much countenance to this supposition, for in view of the short distance between Vlanga and Koum Kapoussi, the Kontoscalion might be thus described, although situated in front of the latter. But what presents a most serious consideration in favour of the patriarch’s opinion is the fact that the wall which he examined answered exactly to the description of the wall with which Michael Palæologus enclosed the Kontoscalion.

That emperor, according to Pachymeres, [1182] surrounded the Kontoscalion with very large stones; and closed the entrance in the stones with iron gates (Ὥστε γυρῶσαι μὲν μεγίσταις πέτραις τὸν κύκλῳ τόπον, ... πύλας δ᾽ ἐπιθεῖναι ἀραρυίας ἐκ σιδήρου τῇ ἐν ταῖς πέτραις εἰσίθμη ἔξωθεν).

No language could describe better the enclosure of large blocks discovered in 1819; while the expression “the entrance in the stones” applies admirably to the gap in the mole which protected the harbour. Nothing of the kind is found at the harbour before Koum Kapoussi, which lay within a mole and a great curve of the ordinary city walls. This, it must be admitted, is an exceedingly strong argument in support of the patriarch’s contention. On the other hand, we have seen how strong also are the arguments in favour of the view that the Kontoscalion stood at Koum Kapoussi. [1183] Perhaps the solution of the difficulty is found in the supposition that while the name Kontoscalion strictly belonged to the harbour at Koum Kapoussi, it was sometimes applied also to other harbours in the vicinity, because the name of the most important member of the group.