The View from the Bridge - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 4

the city walls, massacred the soldiers and officials who had opposed
him, and left the town a smouldering ruin. A few years afterwards,
however, Septimius realized the imprudence of leaving so strategic a
site undefended and then rebuilt the city and its walls. The walls of
Septimius Severus are thought to have begun at the Golden Horn
a short distance downstream from the present site of the Galata
Bridge, and to have ended at the Marmara somewhere near where
the lighthouse now stands. The area thus enclosed was more than
double that of the ancient town of Byzantium, which had comprised
little more than the acropolis itself.
At the beginning of the fourth century A.D. Byzantium was
profoundly afected by the climactic events then taking place in the
Roman Empire. After the retirement of the Emperor Diocletian in
the year 305, his successors in the Tetrarchy, the two co-emperors and
their Caesars, fought bitterly with one another for the control of the
Empire. This struggle was eventually won by Constantine, Emperor
of the West, who in the year 324 finally defeated Licinius, Emperor
of the East. The last battle took place in the hills above Chrysopolis,
just across the Bosphorus from Byzantium. On the following day, 18
September in the year A.D. 324, Byzantium surrendered and opened
its gates to Constantine, now sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
During the first two years after his victory Constantine conceived
the grand scheme which would afect world history for the next
millennium: the re-establishment of the Roman Empire with
Byzantium as its capital. After he made his decision Constantine set
out to rebuild and enlarge and adorn the old town to suit its imperial
role. Work began on 4 November in the year 326, when the Emperor
personally traced out the limits of the new city. The defence walls
with which Constantine enclosed the city on the landward side began
at a point on the Golden Horn somewhat upstream from the present
Atatiirk Bridge, and extended to the Sea of Marmara in a great circular
arc, ending in the bay of Samatya. Constantine's city was thus more
than five times as large as the town of Septimius Severus, and it was
to be infinitely more grand.
The imperial building programme proceeded rapidly, and in less
than four years the new capital was completed. On 11 May in the year