The lost city that replaced Rome as the capital of the empire for 70 years (and is not in Italy)

Forty days of celebrations, with their pertinent nights, preceded in the year 330 DC the inauguration of the new capital of the Roman Empire. At the first morning, Emperor Constantine attended a Mass in the church of Santa Irene to consecrate his brand new metropolis in the heat of the Christian Cross; A break with the polytheism of the old ‘Urbs Aeterna’. It is said that the cars day was a Monday, that day in which good purposes are usually started. From then on, the distant and exotic Constantinople, located three thousand kilometers from the heart of Italy, became the center of the world for 65 years. And all this, to the detriment of the glorious Rome.

That condition extended to 395 of the year in which, after the death of Emperor Theodosius and afflicted with a serious illness, the vast territory of the legions was distributed between their two children: Honorio and Arcadio. That definitive division in two empires, that of the East and that of the West, left Constantinople as the capital of the first and allowed the ‘eternal city’ to recover its old condition. Although not its past greatness; That was already an impossible task. In fact, the one that had been the most glorious city in Italy and the Old Continent was crushed in 476 d. C. By a barbarian leader called ODOACRO that deposed the last mandamás, Romulo augústuloand the kingdom of Italy is founded on its ashes.

Cosmopolitan city

But the road until this city emerged as the visible head of the empire of the legions was long. As explained by the doctor in ancient history Eva Tobalina in her essay ‘The roads of silk: the history of the encounter between the East and West’, the past of Byzantium dates back to the seventh century A..c., When the Hellenous settlers founded the city with true sagacity. “It rose at the end of a triangular peninsula formed by the Marmara Sea, the Bosphorus Strait and the Golden Horn, which also had fresh water supply thanks to the Lico River,” explains the expert. From that privileged enclave the narrows that communicated the Black Sea with the Aegean were dominated.

To top it off, and as was the case to the Iberian Peninsula, Byzantium was at a crossroads of roads that, Tobalina adds, “it went from north to south between the steppes and the Mediterranean, but also west to this between Europe and Asia.” Some advantages that the old Rome suffered, go. Therefore, this city had been transformed, a thousand years later, at the beginning of the third century DC, in a kind of communications node, in an economic center and, ultimately, in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. His privileged location, his cultural wealth and his buoyant economy made the rest.

Byzantium was linked to Rome since the second century AC However, it was more than a thousand years later when it began to be seen with eyes of desire by each other. At that time, the Empire was mired in a political chaos encouraged by its extreme extension. Those territories were impossible to administer by a single person and, to alleviate this problem, Diocletian established in 248 d. C. A Tetrarchy. From that moment on, the ‘imperium’ became governed by two older emperors (Augusto) who had subordinates and successors known as Césares. The system soon demonstrated its failures and caused the war for the unique power between two blocks: that of Constantine and that of Majencio.

It was in 324, twelve years after Majencio was defeated in the Battle of the Milvio Bridgewhen Constantine declared himself a single emperor in Rome. And it was also when he began to look for the ideal place to light a city that promoted the Balkan region and became the economic center of the Eastern Mediterranean. “I knew that the Eastern provinces, less punished by barbaric invasions and economic crisis, acquired a growing prominence, and also that the Empire had begun to tilt to the east,” explains the expert in her essay. The gerifalte shuffled several locations, from Troy to Thessaloniki, but, in the end, the chosen one was Byzantium.

New Rome is born

The exact date on which the works began to convert Binzacio into the ‘Nueva Roma’, but everything indicates that it was around 324. What is known is that the works were colossal. “The city was designed to spread over seven hills and divided into fourteen regions, as well as the old capital,” adds the author. It was not random; From the beginning, the emperor sought to forge a city that was a mirror of the ‘Urbs Aeterna’. “He surrounded himself with walls and housed in his heart a forum surrounded by triumphal arches and chaired by a huge column adorned with a statue of Constantine that he remembered vaguely to which Trajan or Marco Aurelio had raised in Italy,” explains Tobalina.

To say that they were similar is to fall short. Constantine established that bread would be free – or a ridiculous price – for citizens, something that already happened in Rome. He even raised a ‘thousandion’, an arc that was at a crossroads and from which all the roads of the empire left. The construction was similar to the ‘Miliarium aureum’ of Italy. The racecourse, whose dimensions were equivalent to those of the Maximum circus, He was adorned with rich sculptures attributed to the great Greek sculptor Lisipo. And, in case there was any questions about his special affection for this enclave, the mandamás made a gigantic palatial complex in the area and chose the region as a place of burial.

As Edward Gibbon explains in his books, one of the historians of the former most recognized Rome since the eighteenth century, Constantine “granted to the newborn city the dictation of Colonia, the first and most favored daughter of ancient Rome.” In her words, “this venerated mother always preserved her legal and recognized supremacy, as due to her old age, her lordship and the memory of her primitive greatness.” In turn, a enthallated edict in a marble column granted the dictation of “second or new city” to Constantinople. This was for six and a half decades, and does not strange, because it had better communications and a safer location in the face of possible barbarian invasions than its older sister. Unfortunately, it has been a time that has fallen into oblivion.