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The Tetrastoon was enlarged and embellished, receiving in its new character the name “Augustaion,” in honour of Constantine’s mother Helena, who bore the title Augusta, and whose statue, set upon a porphyry column, adorned the square.^[125]

The Hippodrome was now completed,^[126] to become “the axis of the Byzantine world,” and there, in addition to other monuments, the Serpent Column from Delphi was placed. The adjoining Thermæ of Zeuxippus were improved.^[127] An Imperial Palace,^[128] with its main entrance on the southern side of the Augustaion, was built to the east of the Hippodrome, where it stood related to the race-course very much as the Palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine was related to the Circus Maximus. There, at the same time, it commanded the beautiful view presented by the Sea of Marmora, the Prince’s Islands, the hilly Asiatic coast, and the snow-capped Bythinian Olympus. Eusebius, who saw the palace in its glory, describes it as “most magnificent;”^[129] while Zosimus speaks of it as scarcely inferior to the Imperial Residence in Rome.^[130]