Page:The International - Volume 3.djvu/17

THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 7

sion and directed the line. As he continued to go forward, his marvelling followers sug- gested that he had already exceeded the most ample measure of a great city. But the end was not yet. * Ishallstill advance,” was the reply, *till he, the invisible guide who marches before me, thinks proper to stop.” In haste to remove his capital from Nicomedia, Constantine urged with all pos- sible speed the building of the walls, which

grow, that within less than a century after the death of its founder, the allotted space of ground was found insufficient to contain the buildings that crowded the walls, scarcely allowing room for the intervals of narrowest streets, or the surging popula- tion that claimed its protection. The boundaries must again be enlarged, as the people refused to take up their residence outside the walls, exposed to the constant incursions of foes.

PORTA AUREA (GOLDEN OF YEDI KOULE were to extend from Unkapan Kapusi on the Golden Horn to Psamatia, the quarter now given over to the non-Mussulman sub- jects of the Porte. Brick work, blocks of granite, segments of broken columns and pieces of sculptured marble taken from the old walls, were used in its construction: while under Constantine’s personal super- vision a multitude of artificers and laborers pushed the work with such incessant toil that a few years witnessed its completion. So rapidly, however, did the great capital

Go gle The work of enlargement fell upon Theo- dosius 11, who added about one-third more to the area of the city, strengthened and extended the seaward and harbor walls, and built a new line of landward fortifications, from Marmora to the Golden Horn. This line of walls, like its predecessors, was laid out in the form of a triangle, the great en- trance gate being at the point of the triangle, where it would be easy for the besieged to cover an attacking foe, and at the same time command a view of the walls on either side.