Читать книгу Byzantine Constantinople, the walls of the city and adjoining historical sites онлайн

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One is, indeed, strongly tempted to reject the whole account of this wall as legendary, or as a conjecture based upon the idea that the Arch of Urbicius and the Arch of the Milion represented gates in an old line of bulwarks. But, on the other hand, it is more than probable that Byzantium was not as large, originally, as it became during its most flourishing days, and accordingly the two arches above mentioned may have marked the course of the first walls built beyond the bounds of the Acropolis.

We pass next to the third line of walls which guarded the city, the walls which made Byzantium one of the great fortresses of the ancient world. These fortifications described a circuit of thirty-five stadia,^[13] which would bring within the compass of the city most of the territory occupied by the first two hills of the promontory. Along the Golden Horn, the line of the walls extended from the head of the promontory to the western side of the bay that fronts the valley between the Second and Third Hills, the valley of the Grand Bazaar. Three ports, more or less artificial,^[14] were found in that bay for the accommodation of the shipping that frequented the busy mart of commerce, one of them being, unquestionably, at the Neorion.^[15]