The View from the Bridge - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 6

was to write in later times: “Though I am a Hellene by speech yet I
would never say that I was a Hellene, for I do not believe as Hellenes
believed. I should like to take my name from my faith, and if anyone
asks me what I am, I answer, 'A Christian'. Though my father dwelt
in hessaly I do not call myself a Thessalian, but a Byzantine, for I
am of Byzantium.”
A new epoch in the city's history began during the reign of
Justinian the Great, who succeeded to the throne in the year 527.
Five years after his accession Justinian was very nearly overthrown by
an insurrection of the factions in the Hippodrome, the famous Nika
Revolt, which was finally crushed only after widespread destruction
and terrible loss of life. Immediately after the suppression of the revolt
Justinian set out to rebuild the city on an even grander scale than
before. When he had finished his reconstruction apparently within
just a few years, the city of Constantinople was the greatest and most
magnificent metropolis on earth, an imperial capital beginning the
first of its golden ages. The crowning glory of Justinian's new city was
the resurrected church of Haghia Sophia, whose venerable form can
still be seen on the acropolis, a symbol of the ancient city of which it
was so long the heart.
During the course of Justinian's reign his generals succeeded in
reconquering many of the lost dominions of the Roman Empire, and
by the time he died in 565 the borders of Byzantium stretched from
the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules. But the golden age did not
last long, for within a half-century after the death of Justinian his
empire had fallen apart, assaulted from without by the Lombards,
Slavs, Avars and Persians, ravaged from within by anarchy, plague
and social unrest. The Empire was saved from total destruction by
the Emperor Heraclius, who ruled from 610 till 641. In a series of
brilliant campaigns, Heraclius defeated the Persians, the Avars and
the Slavs, and succeeded in regaining much of the territory which
had been lost in the previous half-century. Shortly after the death
of Heraclius, however, much of the eastern part of the Byzantine
Empire was overrun by the Arabs, who on several occasions in the
seventh and eighth centuries besieged Constantinople itself. But
Byzantium held of the Arab advance and prevented them from