Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

928 31. building and architecture
in the seventh century does there seem to have been a decisive shift away
from the traditional urbanism in Rome, with, for example, the conversion
of the senate house into the church of S. Adriano in Foro (625/38).
At Constantinople (Fig. 40), prestige monuments were needed to symbolize
the pretensions of the empire. Being New Rome, the city consciously
reproduced some of Old Rome’s features: a palace/hippodrome
complex, fora, a capitolium, thermae, all set out on ‘seven hills’. The historiated
columns of Theodosius I and Arcadius imitated that of their supposed
ancestor Trajan at Rome. Emperors of the fifth and sixth century
added to the series of fora created by earlier emperors – Constantine,
Theodosius I and Arcadius – along the main street (the Mese) and beyond,
thereby enlarging the city’s ceremonial setting. Theodosius II (405–50) built
a semicircular portico, the Sigma, west of the Forum of Arcadius (of c. 403)
in the direction of the city’s Golden Gate, where he also set up bronze elephants
brought from Athens. The Forum of Marcian (450–7), whose
central monolithic column still stands on its base carved with Victories,
spanned the street leading north-west to the imperial mausoleum of the
Holy Apostles. The Forum of Leo I (457–74) was erected on the ancient
acropolis of the city, north-east of the church of St Irene. At 26 metres, its
honorific column was among the tallest in the city; the colossal Corinthian
capital, recently rediscovered, supported a bronze statue of the emperor,
perhaps to be identified with the Colossus of Barletta removed from the
medieval city by the Venetians (Fig. 44). The Tetrastoon, a large pre-
Constantinian agora (190×95 metres) bounded by four porticoes which lay
at the east end of the city, was Constantinople’s equivalent of Rome’s
central forum. Around it stood the Milion, the law courts, St Sophia, the
senate, the entrance to the imperial palace, and the Zeuxippus Baths. From
this ancient forum a somewhat smaller agora, renamed the Augustaion, was
carved, possibly in 459 (Figs. 40, 43). In 532 Justinian rebuilt the surrounding
structures and enclosed the Augustaion with a wall and paved it in
marble; he replaced a silver statue of Theodosius I with an equestrian
statue of himself on top of a masonry column plated in bronze. 14
Honorific monuments were still being erected in Constantinople in the
early seventh century. In 609 Phocas set up a masonry column near the
bronze tetrapylon on the Mese (Fig. 40), intended to support a statue of
himself; in 612 Heraclius put a monumental cross on top of it. In 614,
Heraclius erected in Constantine’s Forum the last recorded honorific
statue, an equestrian portrait of the patrician Nicetas. 15
In other cities similar building of fora, porticoes and civil basilicas is
known, mostly from texts, and occasionally from excavation. Although
14 Mango, Studies on Constantinople i.123–6; x.1–4; Addenda, 3; Mango (1959) 36–60; Krautheimer,
Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture 174. 15 Mango, Studies on Constantinople ix.30–1; x.14–17.
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