Constantinople's origin
Constantinople's predecessor was the ancient Greek commercial colonial city of Byzantium. In the 7th century BC, ancient Greek colonizers built the city of Chalcedon on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, which connects the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea and divides Europe and Asia. A few years later, they built another city on the opposite side and named it after their leader, Byzas: Byzantium. Because of its special geographical location, Byzantium played an important role in political, economic and military aspects in the following centuries. Many famous people, such as HRODTODUS, the father of ancient Greek history, TACITUS, the historian, and TACITUS, the geographer, have described Byzantium in detail. However, during the Roman era, the development of Byzantium was greatly restricted. In 194 A.D., the Roman Emperor SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS razed the city to the ground in retaliation for its inhabitants' support of his sworn enemy, PESENNIUS, and Byzantium remained unrecovered until the early 4th century.
But at this time, the Roman Empire had just experienced the great slave revolt of the 3rd century, and the economy was almost devastated, especially in the western part of the empire, where the population was decimated, agriculture stagnated, and commerce withered. The various warlords were at war, and the power of the empire existed in name only.
The eastern part of the empire, on the other hand, was relatively stable, and its many economic components were less affected. The peasant and rural commune economies developed. And due to the East-West trade, which had developed more than a hundred years ago, became more active, forming an international commercial and trading area centered on the cities of Alexandria and Antioch. The former seat of Byzantium had a very important role to play as it controlled the convergence point of transportation between the southeast and the northwest.
Economic advantage improved the political status of the east, the late Roman emperors more and more like to live in the eastern part of the empire, DIOCKLETIAN has been living in the Bosphorus on the Asian side of the city of Nicomedia.
As the outstanding statesman of the Roman Empire Emperor CONSTANTINE THE GREAT fully realized the importance of the eastern part of the empire, and forcefully debated in many cities selected the original site of Byzantium as the site for the construction of the new capital city. In 324 A.D. Constantine the Great issued the order to build a new Rome. In 330 AD, the new capital took shape. In order to celebrate the achievements of Constantine the Great, the new capital was named Constantinople.
As the capital city, it was situated on a hill, bordered by the Sea of Marmara to the south, the Golden Horn to the north, the Bosphorus to the east, and overlooking the Thracian plain to the west, which made it easy to defend and difficult to attack, and also the junction of the military highways of Aiguille de Genève and Asia Minor. Asia Minor military highway convergence point, has a unique economic and strategic advantages.
Constantine's achievements
In 324 A.D., Constantine I issued a decree to build a new Rome. He attached great importance to it, appointing important ministers to carry out the preparatory work, and he himself took charge of surveying and circling the boundary markers of the new city. The area of the new city was more than ten times the size of the old Byzantine city. When he was laying out the site of the city, the officials in his entourage expressed great astonishment at the immense area he had laid out, and asked him in bewilderment, "How far will you go on, my liege?" Constantine replied, "I will go on until the God who guides the way before me stops." During the construction of the new Rome, he mobilized the nation's master builders and skilled craftsmen to follow the scale and architectural pattern of Rome. Vast quantities of fine materials were brought from all parts of the country, and innumerable ancient buildings, masterpieces of art, and artifacts were forcibly transported from Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Ephesus, and the peninsula of Attica to the city of Byzantium. To speed up the work, he mobilized 40,000 Gothic mercenaries specifically for the project.
The layout of the new Byzantium and its main buildings were modeled after those of Rome. The city walls were built to resemble an imperial city. The city's racing arena was identical to the Roman arena, with a track that could accommodate up to 10 cars racing side by side at the same time. To the west of the arena was the circular Constantine Square. The square was surrounded by a complex of public **** buildings dominated by the Imperial Council and the Senate. The Plaza Theodosius, built a little later, was the meeting point of a number of military avenues. The Avenida de la Merced, which runs through it to the southwest, was built entirely of marble in the form of a colonnade.
Constantine then pushed the Empire to adopt a series of laws and policies to improve the status of Constantinople, which quickly became the first major city in the Mediterranean world. He personally authorized the Roman nobility to move into the noble residences of the new capital free of charge. The Senate of Constantinople was also given the same legal status as the Roman Senate. This series of measures led to the rapid development of the new capital, and the city's population grew so dramatically that modern historians roughly estimate, based on records of food imports into the city, that its population had reached 500,000-1,000,000 people by that time. Even in the 13th and 14th centuries, Venice, the richest city in Europe, had only 200,000 people.
Constantinople's political centrality also determined its enormous role in the history of the empire, which made it a religious and cultural center. By that time, five major dioceses had formed within the empire: Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch and Byzantium. They represented the most powerful forces of Christianity. And immediately afterwards the religious position of Byzantium rose dramatically, from last to first, and with the support of the emperors gained a position of equal importance to Rome, even surpassing it in many respects, with the Archpriest of Constantinople becoming the head. Because of the emperor's tight control over church affairs, all bishops in the empire, including the Bishop of Rome, had to be at the beck and call of all times.
The cultural environment of Constantinople developed accordingly, and the safe and comfortable environment and prosperous city life attracted intellectuals from all over the country, and the scholars and scholars who had been gathered in Rome flocked to the new capital to open various kinds of schools. The first university in Europe, the University of Constantinople, was founded in the 5th century. It then became a place of learning for princes and nobles and their children from all over the Mediterranean world and Europe.
The dynamism of economic life here was the basis for the formation of various other advantages. Its natural geographical advantages were more fully realized after the construction of the new capital. Merchants, ships and goods from all over the world gathered here. The Byzantine gold coins also became an international hard currency.
The construction and opening of the new Roman city of Constantinople marked the beginning of the history of the Byzantine Empire. The achievements of Constantine I will also go down in history with the existence of Constantinople.
The short-lived glory: the martial feats of Belisarius
After the 4th century A.D., the Roman Empire gradually split into two parts, east and west. But the successive emperors of the Byzantine Empire all claimed to be the rightful heirs of the Roman Empire, not only calling themselves Roman emperors, but also retaining the title of the Roman Empire, and even up to the 4th and 5th centuries, when the barbarians - the various Germanic tribes - attacked Western Rome in force, they still believed that they possessed suzerainty over Western Rome. They all recognized that the invasion of Western Rome by the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths was legitimate and personally commissioned by their ---- legitimate emperors of the Roman Empire residing in Byzantium. But reality was reality after all, and the Byzantine Empire had lost control of the western region. So recover the lost land, re-unify the Roman Empire, revitalize the former glory became the core of the early Byzantine Empire's ruling policy, but also become the biggest wish of each emperor.
This wish was realized in Justinian I (JUSTINIAN, 527-565), and in Justinian's restoration of the great cause of Belisarius, with his outstanding military talent, established a great achievement that will remain in history.
BEILISARIOS (505-565) was a native of Germania on the border between Thrace and Illyria. According to PROCOPIUS (500-565), the greatest writer of his time, he was a man of great bearing, great strength, good at riding and shooting, and of a bold and resolute character, which made him stand out from the multitude of officers. Justinian had great appreciation and trust in him, first appointing him as his captain of the guard, then promoting him to be governor of Mesopotamia. At the age of 24, he was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Theater. And he did not disappoint Justinian's trust in him, achieving a series of brilliant victories against the Persian Empire, the Byzantine Empire's main enemy at the time.
In 531 A.D., Belisarius was patrolling the borders with the empire's eastern border guards when they met the Persian army at the city of Dallas in northern Mesopotamia. This expeditionary force of CHOSROES (531-579), king of Persia, numbered 40,000, while Belisarius had only 25,000 men. Most of the officers at that time proposed to retreat. Belisarius, however, stood up for strategy, and ordered to meet the attack. He wisely saw that the retreat of our army would affect the whole eastern front and encourage the enemy. At the same time, although the enemy's numbers are large, but is a tired division, our army to wait for labor, and have a strong city to defend. When fighting with the Persian army, he changed the traditional three-army formation to a five-army one, with four groups of cavalry at the front and another group of infantry as a reserve. The Persian right army attacked first, and Belisarius ordered the opposite left army to retreat, luring the enemy to go deeper and make them suffer from the enemy's back, and at the same time, he quickly divided his troops into the enemy's back, attacked on three sides, and seriously hurt the enemy army. The Persian army had to change the left army to attack, Belisarius repeated the same trick, and ordered the middle two teams of cavalry to forcefully tear through the Persian left army. Each attacked and annihilated the enemy army. He then ordered the entire eastern front to attack and won a great victory. From then on, he gained even more trust and moved toward the pinnacle of his military career.
Belisarius's contribution to Byzantine military technology and the art of war was not limited to his outstanding performance and art of command. He created the first armored cavalry unit of the Byzantine army. He was the first to introduce many of the Avars' and Persians' weapons and cavalry equipment: stirrups, armor, spears, and bows and arrows. Until then Byzantine cavalry was small in number, unarmored and used short weapons. The cavalry units formed by Belisarius were equipped with Germanic spears and Persian bows and arrows and perfected the means of cavalry combat. And more importantly, his military prowess contributed greatly to the realization of Justinian's political ambition to rebuild the great Roman empire.
At that time, the territory of the Byzantine Empire included the Balkan Peninsula south of the Danube River, the Crimean Peninsula to the east coast of the Black Sea, Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean from the Caucasus through the upper reaches of the Two River Basin to the west of the Gulf of Ahoba, as well as the Egyptian region north of present-day Aswan and the North African region east of present-day Gulf of Surt. In 533 AD, Justinian I waged a war of conquest of the western Mediterranean world in order.
The Byzantine Empire
The Roman Empire was split in two in 400 AD. The Western Roman Empire was attacked by militant peoples and fell in 476. The Eastern Roman Empire continued for another thousand years. The Eastern Roman Empire was the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as its capital.
In the sixth century the Byzantine Emperor Justinian brought Byzantium to its height. Justinian's dream was to build a great Christian empire. With the help of his wife Theodora, Justinian instituted new laws and began to build churches everywhere. Clergy, artists and merchants were among the guests at Eustace's palace.
Byzantine art was famous for its fine embroidery and ivory carvings, but Byzantine artists also produced huge mosaics and portraits of Christendom.
Byzantine Christians developed their own distinctive style of church architecture, and they used Greek Latin in their prayers. The highest ecclesiastical authority rested with the Archbishop of Constantinople. The Archbishop of Constantinople broke away from the Western Church in 1054 after a long dispute with the Pope. It became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Byzantine Empire was constantly being invaded by Islamic Arabs and Turks. Although the Western Crusaders were supposed to be on Byzantium's side, Byzantium felt threatened by them all the time. The Crusaders occupied Byzantium in 1204, but were later driven out by the Byzantines in 1261.