The Forum of Constantine in Constantino PDF
The Forum of Constantine in Constantino PDF
The Forum of Constantine in Constantino PDF
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(Leipzig 19011907) I 118, here 17; see A. Kaldellis, The Works and
Days of Hesychios the Illoustrios of Miletos, GRBS 45 (2005) 381403.
5 Konstantinos of Rhodes On Constantinople 120, ed. and transl. I. Vassis
and L. James, Constantine of Rhodes: On Constantinople and the Church of the Holy
Apostles (Ashgate 2012).
6 Patria of Constantinople 2.45, 3.11 (ed. Preger, Scriptores II). The standard
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a native of Dyrrachion.11
The forum of Constantine is said in later sources to have
been paved in stone paving-slabs, and was accordingly known
as or (plaka is a paving-slab).12 Limited
excavations in the forum area in 19291930 discovered paving-
slabs of Prokonessian marble.13
Many sources refer to a Senate House as forming part of the
forum complex. The city had two Senate Houses (Senata or
Sinata), one at the forum and another adjacent to the palace.
The earliest reference to the one by the forum is probably that
in the Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae (early fifth century, but
probably based on a late fourth-century draft). This is an early
list of the regions, monuments, and amenities of the city. This
Senate House is located in the sixth region of the city (where
the forum also was), specifically in the same place (eiusdem loci)
as the porphyry column of Constantine.14 Hesychios claims
that Constantine built two Senata, presumably the one in his
forum and the other by the palace (Patria 41). The one by the
forum was severely damaged by a fire during the reign of Leon
I (457474), in 464 (or 465). This fire ruined a large part of the
city and is mentioned in all the chronicles. Extant reports begin
Ioannis Zonarae Epitomae historiarum (Berlin 18411897); Life of Andreas the Fool
31 (line 1920), ed. and transl. L. Rydn, The Life of St. Andrew the Fool
(Uppsala 1995).
13 E. Mamboury, Le Forum de Constantin, la chapelle de St. Constantin
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only in the early sixth century, but they were based on fifth-
century information and indicate that the area of the forum
was hit hard.15 The most detailed accounts of the areas de-
stroyed by the fire, however, come from two later chroniclers,
Ioannes Zonaras (twelfth century) and Georgios Kedrenos (late
eleventh or twelfth century). Their ultimate common source,
which they probably used independently albeit through un-
known intermediaries, likely antedated the extant sixth-century
reports that we have as it is more detailed. The passage of time
and this sources reuse by later writers have not, in this case, di-
minished the credibility of its testimony. Zonaras was a serious
historian and Kedrenos a mere copyist: neither was in the habit
of elaborating history with fantastic elements. Everything about
their almost identical report of the fire could have come, and
likely did come, from a lost fifth-century source, possibly Mal-
chos of Philadelpheia, a late fifth-century historian mentioned
as a source for that fire by Zonaras and the Souda.16 Regarding
the forum, Zonaras says that the fire burned a great house
called the Senaton, a glorious and superbly brilliant building,
where the Senate and leading men would deliberate, along
with the emperor, when he donned consular regalia. Ke-
drenos version is the same, only in place of the phrase a
glorious and superbly brilliant construction he has instead
adorned with bronze images and porphyry stone elements.17
15 Marcellinus Comes Chron. s.a. 465, ed. and transl. B. Croke (Sydney
1995), argues (at 99) for September 464; Malalas Chron. 14.43, ed. I. Thurn,
Ioannis Malalae Chronographia (Berlin/New York 2000); Euagrios HE 2.13, ed.
J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius (London
1898); Chron.Pasch. s.a. 465 (p.595), with a possibly duplicate entry s.a. 469
(p.598); Theophanes Chron. p.112 de Boor. R. C. Blockley tentatively at-
tributed Euagrios information to Priskos of Panion fr.42, who finished his
work in the later 470s: The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman
Empire II (Liverpool 1983) 350.
16 T. Stevenson, What Happened to the Zeus of Olympia? AHB 22
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530); and Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai 5, 38, 56 (ed. Preger, Scriptores I 1973;
also ed. and transl. Cameron and Herrin, Constantinople). It was probably
from the Parastaseis that the notice passed to the Patria of Constantinople 1.57;
cf. Theodoretos HE 1.32.
21 Parastaseis 38 (Preger I 42); see the commentary in Cameron and
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308313.
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excursus at 563568 that does not come from Konstantinos of Rhodes; see
Karpozilos, III 346347.
28 Life of Andreas the Fool 31 (lines 19191933); see P. Stephenson, Staring
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29 Stephenson, The Serpent Column 125 n.93; Skylla: Bassett, The Urban
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n.84), 113.
32 Parastaseis 44a, 78; Patria of Constantinople 2.28.
34 For the statues brought to Constantinople and the claims made about
foundations.
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on its side: 71 x 65. We must not forget that, if the Medusa heads came
from the forum arches, the latter were separated by a great expanse and
may not have been of exactly the same size to begin with.
38 Malalas Chron. 18.17, 18.91; cf. Prokopios Buildings 1.11.1215.
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Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 3
There is an alternative possibility regarding the Gorgon
heads. A corrupt section of Parastaseis (40) notes the existence of
two Gorgons sculpted from marble at or near the Artopoleion,
or Bread Market, the one Gorgon on the left and the other on
the right, facing each other, a work of Constantine. The Ar-
topoleion was near the forum of Constantine, so our surviving
Gorgons may have come from there, except that the Parastaseis
is clearly referring to two heads, not two pairs of two heads that
faced in opposite directions. The notice at least reinforces the
idea that Constantine used Medusas as imagery in his mon-
uments.
In their related accounts of the destructive fire of 464 under
Leon I (discussed above), Zonaras and Kedrenos also mention
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39 Zonaras Chron. 14.1 (III 125); Kedrenos Comp.Hist. I 610. For Nym-
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42 Marcellinus Comes Chron. s.a. 407; see J. Crow, J. Bardill, and R. Bay-
liss, The Water Supply of Byzantine Constantinople ( JRS Monogr. 11 [2008]) 15.
43 C. Mango, Studies on Constantinople (Aldershot 1993) II, 313.
27 (2014) 304326.
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tinople, Water History 4 (2012) 3555, here 44; K. Dark and F. zgm,
Constantinople: Archaeology of a Byzantine Megapolis. Final Report on the Istanbul
Rescue Archaeology Project 19982004 (Oxford/Oakville 2013) 2425 and
passim.
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necropolis, and the citys sewer lines, had they been super-
imposed. There is potential for a Gothic novel in all this.
Moreover, Christian writers began already in the fifth cen-
tury to imagine that various Christian and Old Testament
relics were incorporated into the column and statue ensemble.
The number and variety of these claims grew over the cen-
turies,57 but it is probably safe to say that none of them could
be verified, in fact that none of them were truenot only in
the literal sense, but also in the sense that Constantine himself
probably did not set them into circulation, so we need not
dwell on them here. These legends, the product of views of the
Christian past that postdated Constantine, were a Byzantine
way of Christianizing a monument whose imagery was ob-
viously rooted in the Graeco-Roman past, in some respects
uncomfortably so.
Was there an inscription associated with the statue? Later
Byzantine sources assert that there was, and they quote
different versions of it. This appears, however, to have been a
misunderstanding. The historian Hesychios in the sixth century
wrote that, in the forum statue, we see Constantine shining
forth over the citizens like the sun.58 Later authors took this
claim, probably from Hesychios and certainly wrongly, as
being an inscription carved upon the statue itself, or specifically
upon the rays of its head.59 The Christian imagination invented
a different epigram that was supposedly inscribed upon the
statue.60 These claims could be made and could endure be-
cause no one could see what was written upon a gilded statue
almost fifty meters up in the air.
We come, finally, to the statues that were positioned around
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the forum and that should have been visible to all who passed
through it. Most of the information and sources about them
have been admirably gathered and discussed by Sarah Bassett,
though she treats all sources as equal and does not delve into
the more problematic reports in the Parastaseis.61 The statue
that captured the most attention and is most reliably attested
was a colossal bronze Athena standing outside the Senate
House, to the left of the porch as one went in. It is mentioned
by many authors, including Arethas (early tenth century), Kon-
stantinos of Rhodes, and the historian Niketas Choniates (early
thirteenth century, and highly reliable on this topic). The
precise identification of this Athena used to exercise scholars.
Was she the Promachos from the acropolis at Athens, the
Parthenos, orthe position that has the most support in the
Byzantine sourcesthe Athena of Lindos (on Rhodes)? The
most recent proposal, by Titos Papamastorakis, is that Cho-
niates detailed description of the statue best matches the
Minerva dArezzo type.62 Facing Athena near the Senate
House was a Thetis or Amphitrite, reported by Kedrenos and
Arethas, and apparently identified on the basis of her crown of
crabs. Choniates is also our sole witnessthough we need no
otherfor a statue group of the Judgment of Paris: he men-
tions Paris, Hera, Aphrodite, and the golden apple, but not
Athena as part of this group. This ensemble suggests an interest
in the history of Troy, a theme that Sarah Bassett highlights in
her analysis of the forums mythological repertoire.63
There were certainly more statues on display in the forum.
But the evidence that we have for them beyond this point is
difficult or problematic. Choniates, for example, mentions two
bronze female statues that stood on the forums western arch
and that were popularly identified in the twelfth century as
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64 Choniates History 151 (not discussed by Bassett), ed. J.-L. van Dieten,
its potential for the forum); and (in more detail) Matthews, in Shifting Cultural
Frontiers 220. Elephant: J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops:
Army, Church, and State in the Age of Arcadius and Chrysostom (Oxford 1990) 275.
66 Parastaseis 17; Patria of Constantinople 2.103.
67 Parastaseis 38 (end).
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