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There is reason to think that the gate styled Porta Melantiados (Μελαντιάδος)[311] and Pylè Melandesia (Μελανδησία),[312] should be identified with the Gate of the Pegè. Hitherto, indeed, the Porta Melantiados has been identified with the next public gate, Yeni Mevlevi Haneh Kapoussi;[313] but that view runs counter to the fact that the Porta Melantiados stood in the Deuteron,[314] whereas the next public gate was, we shall find, in the quarter of the city called, after the Third Military Gate, the Triton (τὸ Τρίτον).[315] Unless, therefore, the Porta Melantiados is identified with the Gate of the Pegè, it cannot be identified with any other entrance in the Theodosian Walls.
The Gate of the Pegè.
That the Gate of the Pegè had originally another name is certain, since the Holy Spring did not come into repute until the reign of Leo I.,[316] nearly half a century after the erection of the Wall of Anthemius. And no other name could have been so appropriate as the Porta Melantiados, for the road issuing from the gate led to Melantiada, a town near the Athyras[317] (Buyuk Tchekmedjè) on the road to Selivria. The town is mentioned in the Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus as Melantrada and Melanciada, at the distance of nineteen miles from Byzantium; and there on different occasions the Huns, the Goths,[318] and the Avars[319] halted on their march towards Constantinople.