From Byzantium to Constantinople

Abstract

From Byzantium to Constantinople is an exploration of the generally accepted truth that the great city founded by Constantine on the shores of the Bosporus as a second Rome and new capital of the Roman empire was built upon the Graeco-Roman city that preceded it, but there is still room for discussion as to exactly how this transition was accomplished. This book argues that Classical Byzantium was a more significant and powerful city than is often appreciated, and that the monumental developments of the Roman empire, and especially of the Severan period, provided the context from which the Constantinian and later city developed. The main source of the enquiry (among others) is the early fifth-century text known as Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae, which both provides a conspectus of the city as it stood at the time of writing, and an insight into the urban developments of the earlier period, both Greek (the city was an early colonial foundation of Megara) and Roman. A translation and thematic commentary of this text provides the central theme of the enquiry, which at the same time endeavours to understand the process of urban development in the context of the historical events of the period. Attention is given to the topographical character of the city and to its regional development, to its social and cultural institutions and population, and to the role of the church, which is seen to be a more measured and slower development than one would gather from the intensity of Constantine’s and his successors’ personal commitment to Christianity.