The transfer of an imperial capital seems a drastic step, but conceptually simple. Indeed, we know about capitals. They are permanent, having been there if not forever, then for many centuries: London, Paris and Lisbon, for instance. Others, such as Washington, DC, and Brasilia, have been created in more recent periods. They could be transferred from one city to another, as in the case of Bonn and Berlin, St Petersburg and Moscow. Or things may be a little more ambiguous: Amsterdam is capital of the Netherlands, but The Hague (‘s Gravenhage) is seat of the government and, most of the time but not always as a matter of principle, royal residence. In the case of Rome, things are even more complicated.

Rome was no state; it was no people; it was not the capital of an Empire. It was a city, but it was also far more than that. Rome was the Empire, and that is what it remained until the fifteenth century, for the Byzantine Empire is a modern appellation. Those we often call ‘the Byzantines’ called themselves citizens of the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Emperors were called Roman Emperors until the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century.Footnote ¹ In its classical age there was hardly a straightforward name for the Roman state, for civitas was a fluid term that could simply indicate any tribe or city, but could also refer to its citizens. The expression that most often is used for the ‘Roman state’ in Latin is nomen Romanum, the Roman name. It indicated all that was Rome: the people, the state, the Empire and its reputation.

Cicero is the first to use this term frequently: ‘For so great is the dignity of this empire, so great is the honour in which the Roman name is held among all nations.’Footnote ² Here it can still be interpreted as merely a term for ‘reputation’. That is no longer the case when Cicero says: ‘Who has such a hatred, one might almost say for the Roman name, as to despise and reject the Medea of Ennius or the Antiope of Pacuvius, and give as his reason that though he enjoys the corresponding plays of Euripides he cannot endure books written in Latin?’Footnote ³ Another clear instance is: ‘Plans have been formed in this state, O judges, for destroying the city, for massacring the citizens, for extinguishing the Roman name.’Footnote ⁴ Here civitas, urbs, cives and nomen Romanum are used in one and the same sentence in four different meanings, all designating essential aspects of Rome.Footnote ⁵ The expression nomen Romanum occurs quite frequently in Augustan literature, notably in the work of Livy, where I count more than twenty instances. It is found again in phrases that may indicate ‘the Roman reputation’ or ‘fame’,Footnote ⁶ but also in the sense of ‘power’: ‘Go, and with the help of the gods, restore the unconquerable Roman name!’Footnote ⁷ It is encountered frequently as well as a term for ‘the Roman people’: ‘But, they added, the immortal gods, taking pity upon the Roman name [i.e. the people], had spared the innocent armies.’Footnote ⁸ It can be used in a more abstract sense for ‘the existence’ or ‘identity’ of Rome: ‘the Volsci, their ancient foes, had armed for the purpose of extinguishing the Roman name.’Footnote ⁹ In the fourth century the Isaurians are described as inhabiting a region ‘in the middle of “the Roman name”’.Footnote ¹⁰ Here, of course, it refers to the Roman Empire in a territorial sense.

All the same it is telling that there was no more concrete term for the Roman state or the Empire. Rome was eternal, of course.Footnote ¹¹ It still is. However, nowadays we think of Rome as a city being eternal. Cicero, when he called Rome eternal, thought of the Roman Empire being eternal, but he never distinguished between city and Empire.Footnote ¹²

And yet, the capital of the Empire was transferred from Rome to Constantinople in the fourth century. That might seem a conceptual impossibility, but it happened. It was part of a major eastward shift of power, economic and military. That, however, is not the subject of this short chapter, which discusses the historical background to the transformation of the city of Byzantium into Constantinople.

When this happened there had been in fact a tradition of about four centuries suggesting that it might occur. There was a rumour to that effect at the time of the rule of Julius Caesar:

The fact that there was such a rumour does not mean, of course, that Caesar actually contemplated it, but it proves that the idea, or rather the fear, existed. It was thinkable to transfer the essence of what was the city of Rome to another city.

The second case arose not long after Caesar’s death: few stories are as familiar as that of Antony and Cleopatra, at least in one seventeenth-century version. There were rumours among the Romans that Antony, if victorious, intended to bestow their city upon Cleopatra and transfer the seat of power to Egypt.Footnote ¹⁴ Here we might notice already that the element of an East–West antagonism is clearly perceived, an antagonism which ultimately, more than four centuries later, led to the division of the Empire into an eastern and a western half. It is remarkable to note that Horace was worried when Augustus financed buildings in Ilion.

Rumours like those in the times of Caesar and Antony were spread as well during the reign of Caligula (AD 38–41):

Again, in the reign of Nero, in 68, there were reports that Nero planned to kill the senators, burn down the city and sail to Alexandria.Footnote ¹⁷ At a less sensational level Tacitus reports what Nero actually did: ‘Eager to make a brilliant name as learned and eloquent, Nero successfully backed Ilium’s application to be exempted from all public burdens, fluently recalling the descent of Rome from Troy and of the Julii from Aeneas and other more or less mythical traditions.’Footnote ¹⁸

In the early third century, after the death of Septimius Severus there is said to have been a plan to divide the Empire into two parts, the West going to Caracalla with Rome as capital; the Propontis would serve as boundary and Byzantium as military frontier city. Geta, the younger son, would obtain the East with Antioch or Alexandria as capital and Chalcedon as frontier city.Footnote ¹⁹

There was then a definite anxiety concerning the central role of Rome as the essence of its Empire attested from the early years of the principate onward. In most cases these rumours focused on rulers who were hated (or slandered) in particular and who died a violent death: Antony, Caligula, Nero, but not, for instance, Augustus or Claudius. At another level, Tacitus’ observation has been quoted often:

For clarification of these long-standing ideas about the place of Rome within the empire, we might recognize traditions about the origins of the city of Rome in the far distant past. The foundation myths of Rome emphasized a Trojan origin, most famously celebrated by Vergil in the reign of Augustus, but already attested in poetry of the third–second centuries BC.Footnote ²¹ Not only Rome but the house of Caesar also claimed to be of Trojan origin.

Well before the reign of Augustus, in the days of the republic, Troy already played a special role as the ancestral home of the Romans. Pyrrhus, who claimed to be a descendant of Achilles, regarded this tradition as an indication that he would defeat Rome, a Trojan colony.Footnote ²² Scipio Africanus visited Troy in 190 BC, emphasizing that the Romans were descendants of the Trojans.Footnote ²³ A century afterward, Sulla honoured the city. Subsequently, Caesar visited it:

Augustus visited Troy,Footnote ²⁵ and afterward Claudius again honoured the city in a manner typical of the astute, but somewhat pedantic historian that he was.

It will be clear from this little survey that there are two kinds of reports: those concerning historical leaders who were regarded as bad news and who are described as intending to abandon Rome and move power eastward. Then there are the more responsible characters who are reported as having merely paid their respect to the old city of Roman origins.

The rumours did not disappear. In the third–fourth centuries the Christian author Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325) predicted that what previously wicked rulers had only planned eventually and inevitably would happen in fact.Footnote ²⁷

We may note, incidentally, that Lactantius was close to Constantine. It will be appropriate here to refer to a text written more than four hundred years earlier, namely Polybius’ History, where he recalls Scipio Aemilianus’ famous tears at the destruction of Carthage.Footnote ²⁸ Scipio is said to have mentioned the fall of earlier empires and then, crying, to have quoted, ‘The day shall be when holy Troy shall fall and Priam, lord of spears, and Priam’s folk.’Footnote ²⁹ When asked ‘what he meant by these words, he did not name Rome distinctly, but was evidently fearing for her, from this sight of the mutability of human affairs’.Footnote ³⁰ Thus we find ruminations about the end of Rome in two authors as far apart as Polybius and Lactantius. Rome may fall one day like Troy in the past, besides other empires – the ones mentioned by Scipio, according to Polybius, are mostly in the East: Assyrians, Medes, Persians, besides Macedonia. The explicit idea that power will return to the Orient did not occur, of course, to Polybius, who wrote before Rome conquered the Near East. The idea of an east–west clash developed after Rome expanded farther east, to Anatolia, Syria and Egypt.

Eventually it happened. In 330 Constantine founded Constantinople.Footnote ³¹ Yet there are reports that the choice of Byzantium for the purpose had been far from certain. There were rumours that the first location had been closer to the traditional location of Roman origin, namely at Troy. We see this in Zosimus (c. 500):

Also, extensively in Sozomen (400–50):

Constantine is reported first to have thought of Serdica (Sofia),Footnote ³⁴ ChalcedonFootnote ³⁵ and perhaps even Thessaloniki. It is probably significant that the two really major cities of the East are not mentioned: Antioch and Alexandria. There is disagreement about the historical truth of these reports, but the least that can be said is that they reflect an idea that had been around for over almost four centuries.

In this connection it is important – as has been observed frequently – that in the third century the emperors frequently resided for long periods in various cities. According to Herodian, referring to the second century, ‘Rome is wherever the Emperor is’ (addressed to Commodus).Footnote ³⁶ Diocletian, Maximian and the other tetrarchs instead travelled between – and resided in – a series of smaller but still sizable cities nearer the frontiers, which were aggrandized with major public building projects such as palaces and hippodromes (often side by side as though they were little Romes), basilicas and baths: these included Trier, Milan, and Aquileia in the west; Spalato, Sirmium, Thessalonica and Serdica in the Balkans; Nicomedia and Antioch in the east. It is therefore conceivable that Constantine at first saw his foundation as belonging to this category.Footnote ³⁷

Why Byzantium was chosen over more important cities is a matter of speculation. Before Constantine made his decision, there was no particular reason to believe Byzantium was destined for this particular greatness and centrality.Footnote ³⁸ It has been called ‘the key to the Pontus’.Footnote ³⁹ It is well known that the site had important strategic advantages, but also problems, described briefly and to the point by Polybius: ‘The Byzantines occupy a site, as regards the sea, more favourable to security and prosperity than any other city in the world, but as regards the land it is in both respects more unfavourable than any other.’Footnote ⁴⁰ He then describes how it controls access to the Black Sea and occupies fertile land. The currents in the Bosporus supplied it with excellent fish.Footnote ⁴¹ However, it was hard to defend on the west side. The site was being surrounded by Thracians with whom the Byzantines were engaged in constant warfare. The prevailing winds made it difficult to approach and supply by sea from the South. It had no natural fresh water supply. A factor not emphasized in the ancient sources, but undoubtedly important as well and relevant for Constantine’s choice, was its controlling position on one of the two land bridges between Europe and Asia Minor.Footnote ⁴² The history of the city before the fourth century is a subject of great interest but less immediately relevant for the present discussion.Footnote ⁴³

Recent studies have suggested modifications in the traditional interpretation of claims, made first by Christian authors, that Constantine’s city was conceived from the start as the new or second Rome and also as a purely Christian city.Footnote ⁴⁴ Regarding its Christian character, it should be noted that Byzantium before Constantine had no distinguished history as a Christian city.Footnote ⁴⁵ It is not even mentioned in the New Testament. These later Christian authors offer their own perspective which ignores the fact that there were both secular and non-Christian sacred buildings in the city.Footnote ⁴⁶

The claim that, from the start, it was intended to replace Rome is not conclusively confirmed, given the relatively slow development of Constantinople as imperial capital. There is no contemporary evidence that Constantine always conceived his new foundation as the eastern capital of the empire, or that he intended that it should replace Rome.Footnote ⁴⁷ It has been argued that Constantine may not have had a fully formed plan already in 324.Footnote ⁴⁸ True, there are claims that Constantine decided in 324 to found it as ‘the new Rome’Footnote ⁴⁹ or ‘the second Rome’,Footnote ⁵⁰ but these sources are of a later date. In fact, the name that stuck was Constantinople.Footnote ⁵¹ The city actually took time to develop into an imperial capital.Footnote ⁵² A praefectus urbi as existed in Rome was not appointed until 359.Footnote ⁵³ The city became the undisputed centre of the Late Roman Empire only in the reign of Theodosius I. This has been demonstrated by an analysis of the subscriptiones of imperial constitutions, preserved in the Codex Theodosianus, showing that over 240 laws had been issued at that time, out of a total of more than 600 included in this compilation, which were enacted from Constantinople.Footnote ⁵⁴ Half a century after its foundation Constantinople formally became ‘the New Rome’,Footnote ⁵⁵ even though Rome, in the fourth century and during the first half of the fifth, retains a privileged position in the literary documents of the time that mention it, especially those produced by pagan, Latin-writing authors.Footnote ⁵⁶ Eutropius is a relatively early historian who mentions the ascent of Constantinople:

That still is a somewhat ambiguous, rhetorical assertion. Eutropius had a vested interest, for he was magister memoriae in Constantinople in the second half of the fourth century.

Conclusions

Reality trumped ideology again and again. Old fears became reality.

Rome was not a capital city. It was not supposed to be one. It was the state, the Empire, the collective citizenship, all in one. In theory it could not be duplicated or transferred. Paradoxically, there was fear and there were rumours for centuries that precisely this would happen, even at a stage when there was no such danger. Eventually it happened indeed, and when it did – another paradox – this may not have been the intention from the start. Before Constantinople was founded, there had been fears for more than three centuries that a new capital was to be located at or near the mythic cradle of Rome: Troy. These fears were combined with a pronounced view of an East–West antagonism which, somehow, was translated over time into the actual split of the Empire into an eastern and a western part, a Latin-speaking and a Greek-speaking half. Not so long before this took place, the new capital was planted on a suitable site without Roman historical significance, replacing an old Greek city.

Although the sources have been interpreted along different lines, it now seems very likely that Constantine did not declare from the start that he was founding a ‘New Rome’ or ‘Second Rome’, a city to replace Rome. Also, not having declared that he was in fact doing so, it did not become a reality in his days, but only under his successors. Like so many foundations, at first it was just another city on an important site, although an old and venerable one, renamed after the man who refounded it. Yet Constantine’s decision had drastic results: it initiated the transfer of the centre of the Empire eastward, to the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire, even though it took more than a generation before this became a reality, whatever had been intended. It is conceivable, although a matter of speculation, that Constantine, in selecting Byzantium for his new city of Constantinople, consciously avoided the antagonism that would have been the result if he had truthfully declared that he was establishing a New Rome or an alternative Eastern Rome on or near the site of Roman origins. Christians later claimed he had founded a Christian city – that was only partially true. Again, it is possible that Constantine avoided fierce conflict by refraining from establishing a fully Christian, second Rome.

The fear that Rome would come to an end never materialized (Rome is still there),Footnote ⁵⁸ but the shift of the centre of power eastward took place, not as the result of a one-time decision by a ruler, but through historical dynamics and preceded by centuries of suspicion and tension. The decision rather reflected a development that occurred, inevitably, over time. Emperors who called themselves Roman continued to reign in the East over subjects who called themselves Romans, although Greek was their language, until the fifteenth century, a thousand years longer than in the Western Roman Empire, where the last Emperor, Romulus Augustu(lu)s, abdicated in 476.Footnote ⁵⁹