1
CONSTANTINOPLE AND
THE EASTERN EMPIRE
The city of ConstantinopleOn the death of Theodosius I in AD 395, Constantinople had been an imperial
seat for over sixty years, since the refoundation of the classical city of Byzan-
tium as Constantinople (‘the city of Constantine’) by Constantine.^1 Although
it is common to refer to it as the eastern capital, this is not strictly correct:
Constantine founded it along the lines of existing tetrarchic capitals such as
Nicomedia, Serdica and Trier, and although he resided there for most of the
time from its dedication in 330 to his death in 337, he seemed to envisage a
return after his death to an empire partitioned geographically between several
Augusti.^2 It was not a novelty in itself when on the death of Theodosius I the
empire was ‘divided’ between his two sons Honorius and Arcadius. What was
different now was the fact that the two halves of the empire began to grow
further and further apart.
Constantinople was the scene of some bitter disputes among Christians in
the late fourth century, but it was still not yet a fully Christian city. Eusebius,
writing of Constantine’s foundation in sweepingly panegyrical terms, would
have us believe that all traces of paganism were eliminated. However, this
would have been impossible to achieve in practice, short of deporting the
existing population, and indeed, the later pagan historian Zosimus tells us that
Constantine founded two new pagan temples.^3 According to the fifth-century
ecclesiastical historian Sozomen, the new city was given a senate and senate
house, with classical statuary,^4 and it had a Basilica and a Capitol. Presumably
the latter was at first a temple like the Capitol in Rome, but teaching went on
there in the fifth century as the seat of the so-called ‘University’, and by then
it was surmounted by a cross.^5 Constantine adorned his city with many clas-
sical statues, taken, Eusebius assures us, from pagan temples and put there
as objects of derision, but more likely because they were expected as part of
the adornment of a grand and monumental late antique urban centre.^6 Many
were crowded onto the spina in the middle of Hippodrome, others placed in
the public squares.^7 It was Constantine’s son Constantius II (337–61) rather
than Constantine himself who was mainly responsible for the first church
of St Sophia (burnt down in the Nika riot of 532 and replaced by Justinian
with the present building: Chapter 5), and also for the church of the Holy