Chapter LVII

Notwithstanding the rivalry of the Venetians, who in 1296 even seized upon Galata, or Pera as the colony was usually called by the Latins, and their frequent quarrels with the Greeks, the commercial prosperity of the Genoese settlement went on increasing until about the middle of the 14th century, when the Customs dues amounted to 200,000 hyperperes, those at Constantinople scarcely reaching the sum of 30,000 hyperperes (Niceph. Greg., ii, 842). This “State within a State”, no doubt excited the cupidity of the Turks after their assumption of power in Europe, and the removal of the sultan’s residence to Adrianople; but the Genoese succeeded for a time in averting the threatening danger by making numerous concessions, as appears by the treaty of commerce concluded by them in 1387 with Murad I., whose successor, Bajazet, lay siege to Constantinople. This monarch, however, was constrained to turn his arms against Timour, and the capital was spared the horrors of a longer siege. The battle of Angora, so fatal to the Ottoman power, delayed for a few decades only the fall of the Greek Empire and the disappearance of the Genoese.—Bruun.

The ruins near the sea and at no great distance from Constantinople, believed by Schiltberger to have been those of the royal city, must have been the remains of Alexandria Troas opposite the island of Tenedos. It was there that the Russian pilgrim Daniel, and the author’s contemporaries, the archdeacon Zosimus and Clavijo, thought they saw the ruins of Troy, as was the case one hundred years later, 1547, with the French traveller Belon, who landed that he might examine them with the greater facility. At the base of a small hillock, but within the circuit of the walls of the city, were some ancient arches and the remains of two palaces in marble (Obs. de plusieurs singularités trouvées en Grèce, en Asie, etc.; in Saint-Martin, ii, 8). Belon passes lightly over the difficulty he experienced in not finding near this, the supposed site of the Homeric city, the two rivers Simoïs and Xanthus.

The honorary president of the Geographical Society at Paris has lately sought to prove, that the city of Priam should be looked for where Lechevalier conceived it to be, that is to say, at Bunarbashí, whence Dr. Schliemann believes he is justified in removing it to the neighbourhood of Ilium Recens or Hissarlik, as the result of the successful explorations conducted by himself with the assistance of his wife. Although some English and most German authorities applaud the zeal with which his work was performed, and the great importance of his discoveries to students of archæology, all are not so readily persuaded that the question of the position of Ilium is solved, seeing that the topographical details, as we receive them from Homer, are drawn from the imagination of the poet, rather than after the reality.—Bruun.

When Edrisi visited Constantinople, circa 1161, sports were held in the hippodrome, which he considered the most marvellous in the universe. It had to be passed before reaching the palace, an edifice unequalled in its proportions and in the beauty of its construction (Jaubert edition, 297). Bertrandon de la Brocquière, 1432 (Early Travels in Palestine, Bohn edition, 1848), thus describes one of the sports he witnessed in the large and handsome square in front of St. Sophia: “I saw the brother of the emperor, the despot of the Morea, exercise himself with a score of other horsemen. Each had a bow, and they gallopped along the enclosure throwing their hats before them, which, when they had passed, they shot at; and he who with his arrow pierced the hat or was nearest to it, was esteemed the most expert.”—Ed.

A short time before the author’s arrival in the city of the Cæsars, the aged Manuel died (1425), and John, his son and successor, was forced to sign a treaty of peace with the Turks, the conditions being of the most onerous nature; for he was deprived of all his possessions with the exception of the capital, the appanages in the Morea of the Greek princes, and a few fortresses on the shores of the Black Sea (Zinkeisen, Gesch. d. O. R., i, 533); he also covenanted to pay the sultan an annual tribute of 300,000 aspres, and to make him numerous presents of great value as a mark of personal regard. In such circumstances the unfortunate monarch must have been under the necessity of laying hands upon all the gold he could come across, and Schiltberger’s bon mot on the disappearance of the apple together with the emperor’s power, might be taken literally.

Zosimus relates that the statue which held the apple was distant an arrow’s flight from the hippodrome, doubtlessly the “fine square for tilting”, now known as the Meïdan. The magnificent palace wherein receptions were held, and that excited the admiration of Schiltberger, must have been the Boukoleon and Daphna which adjoined the hippodrome (Dethier, Der Bosphor und Constantinopel, Wien, 1873, 22). This edifice was greatly neglected during the reigns of the last of the Palæologi, and after his conquest of Constantinople, Mahomet II. ordered its complete destruction.

The other palace noticed was the Blackernes, in which Clavijo (Hakluyt Soc. Publ. 29) was received by the emperor Manuel. Near it, Bertrandon de la Brocquière found a “fausse braie d’un bon et haut mur en avant du fossé, qui était en glacis excepté dans un espace de deux cents pas à l’une de ses extrémités près du palais”. This must have been the place where Schiltberger saw a “getüll.”1—Bruun.

(5A.) The statement that the statue was placed on a pillar is corroborated by Cedrenus in his Chronicles, and in the Annals of Zonaras, in which works we find it stated that the great pillar Augusteon was erected in the fifteenth year of the reign of Justinian, the statue being placed on it two years later. When Bertrandon de la Brocquière saw the equestrian statue, which he inadvertently calls that of Constantine, it grasped a sceptre in the left hand. Pierre Gilles, the naturalist and author, sent to the Levant by Francis I. of France, found portions of this statue in the melting house where ordnance were cast, it having been overturned and destroyed in 1523 (Antiquities of Constantinople, London, 1729); or in 1525, according to the anonymous author of the Constantiniade. The proportions were colossal, for the leg exceeded the height of a man, and the nose was nine inches in length, as were also the hoofs of the horse. Gilles represents that the statue, which was made of brass, faced the East, as if the emperor was marching against the Persians; the right arm was stretched out, and in the left hand was a globe to signify universal power over the whole world, all success in war being attributed to the cross fixed on the top. He was dressed like Achilles, in a coat of mail and shining helmet.

It is certain that the globe and cross disappeared fully one hundred years before the arrival at Constantinople of Gilles, whose detailed description of the statue must have reference to its original condition.—Ed.