Hippodrome of Constantinople

“ The mosaics of Justinian are about to be lighted by electricity. Boulevards have been cut through Stamboul. Old Turkish houses have been torn down by the hundred in the interests of street widening. Only a miracle saved the city walls from being sold as building material. I could wish that the edifices encumbering the sphendone of the Hippodrome might be sold as building material, in order to give back to the city its supreme ornament of a sea view. Imagine what such a wide [404] blue vision might be, seen from the heart of the town—perhaps through a dark-green semicircle of cypresses! ”

“ Constantinople has been terribly ravaged by fires, no less than fifteen having occurred during the past two weeks. Almost every night the sky has been reddened by burning houses, and the minarets of the seven hills lighted with an illumination brighter than that of the Bairam. All the space from the Hippodrome to the Sea of Marmora has been swept away; the lard, honey, and oil magazines on the Golden Horn, with the bazaars adjoining; several large blocks on the hill of Galata, with the College of the Dancing Dervishes ”

“ It was so highly prized, that the Turks considered it as the talisman that protected the Greek empire; and when Mohammed entered the devoted capital in triumph, he struck off one of the heads with his battle-axe, to destroy, as it were, the delusion. It is now a truncated stump, and constantly battered with stones by the Turks, as if their ancient superstition and prejudice yet existed.
The illustration represents the present state of the Hippodrome, and gives an idea of its ancient use. The Turks have no trials of equestrian skill like those of the Greeks ”

“ The inner narthex of the church formed a magnificent vestibule 205 ft. long by 26 ft. wide, reveted with marble slabs and glowing with mosaics.
The citizens of Constantinople found their principal recreation in the chariot-races held in the Hippodrome, now the At Meidan, to the west of the mosque of Sultan Ahmed. So much did the race-course (begun by Severus but completed by Constantine) enter into the life of the people that it has been styled “the axis of the Byzantine world.” ”

“ At a later period of my journey, however, I succeeded in viewing several harems.
THE HIPPODROME
is the largest and finest open place in Constantinople. After those of Cairo and Padua, it is the most spacious I have seen any where. Two obelisks of red granite, covered with hieroglyphics, are the only ornaments of this place. The houses surrounding it are built, according to the general fashion, of wood, and painted with oil-colours of different tints. I here noticed a great number of pretty children’s carriages, drawn by servants. ”

“ It is true that in the engraving it is rendered as if these columns were attached to a wall, or rather as if a wall were built between the columns, for they appear both inside and out; but this interpretation cannot be given to a description of this colonnade by Gyllius. [289] “In the front of the hippodrome facing the Propontis there was a range of seventeen pillars of white marble standing when I first came to Constantinople, going round that part of the hippodrome which lies between south and west.” ”

“ The opinion is quite general that it was destroyed by the Turks, and that much of its material went to construct the Mosque Sulymanie. The latter averment is doubtless correct; but it is only justice to say that the Crusaders, so called Christians, who encamped in Constantinople in 1204 were the real vandals. For pastime, merely, they plied their battle-axes on the carvings, inscriptions, and vast collection of statuary in marble and bronze found by them on the spinet, and elsewhere in the edifice. When they departed, the Hippodrome was an irreparable ruin—a convenient and lawful quarry. ”

“ Behind the palace was the Hippodrome, where the races were held, the real centre of the life of Constantinople, the Forum, Senate-house, and the Emperor's church, dedicated to the Holy Wisdom of God. All these buildings have gradually been replaced by others even more sumptuous than the ones to adorn which Constantine ransacked the Empire. [84] The problem of this first period was to set a cupola on a square plan. ”

“ Just as the whole city was concerned in the doings of the Church, its buildings, its festivals, its councils, so were all the citizens bound to take part in its military defence. The walls, like the churches, belonged to all. Strict laws, from which no one was exempt, and the power of levying special taxes besides the due proportion of the city land-tax, made every man liable to contribute. Characteristically the Hippodrome had its share in directing the work. The two factions of the Circus, the blues and the greens, were charged with the direction ”

“ His first demand will be to celebrate mass in Sancta Sophia. If the world were about shaking itself to pieces, the commotion would be but little greater than the breaking of things we will then hear. Oh, it is an ill wind which blows him to our gates!" Meantime the Hippodrome had been converted into a Campus Martius, where at all hours of the day the newly enlisted men were being drilled in the arms to which they were assigned; now as archers, now as slingers; now with balistas and catapults and arquebuses ”

“ Among the Greeks who resorted to Constantinople were many idolators of the old religion, who would wilfully transmit any legend favourable to their own superstition.” Hence, probably, the charm mentioned above, was attached by them to the Delphic serpent on the column in the Hippodrome, and revived (after the partial mutilation of the figure) by their descendants, the common people, who are always the last in every country to forego an ancient superstition. ”

“ The topography of Constantinople The study of works of architecture in ancient cities, like Athens, Rome, or Constantinople, naturally entails a study of the topography of the town; and in the case of Constantinople this study is equally important for the historian. Little progress of a satisfactory kind can be made until either Constantinople passes under a European government, or a complete change comes over the spirit of Turkish administration. The region of the Imperial Palace and the ground between the Hippodrome and St. ”

“ Like their pagan ancestors, they consecrate a well to some presiding being, and ascribe to it corresponding virtues. The efficacy, however, is not of the same character. A modern Greek recognizes no Hippocrene, whose draughts inspire him with poetry; but he has29 innumerable sources of salutary waters, which, by some supernatural power coupled to it by its patron, heals diseases; and around Constantinople are many wells dedicated to different saints, which retain all the virtues of the pool of Bethesda. ”

“ There is hardly a street of Stamboul in which some such window does not give a glimpse into the peace and gravity of the East. The windows do not all look into mosque yards. Many of them open into the cloister of a medresseh, a theological school, or some other pious [8] foundation. Many more look into a patch of ground where tall turbaned and lichened stones lean among cypresses or where a more or less stately mausoleum, a türbeh, lifts its dome. Life and death seem never very far apart in Constantinople. In other cities the fact that life has an end is put out of sight as much as possible. ”

“ Even the Grand Street of Pera, on which are our hotel and all the foreign embassies, is very mean in appearance. The embassies themselves are fine, as they are set far back from the street, surrounded with ample grounds, and on one side overlook the Bosphorus, but the street itself is dingy enough. To our surprise we find that Constantinople has no architectural magnificence to boast of. Except the Mosques, and the Palaces of the Sultan, which indeed are on an Imperial scale, there are no buildings which one would go far to see in London or Paris or Rome. ”

“ The only remaining beauty of this famous square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan Achmet, which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and without. Its six slender and towering minarets are the handsomest in Constantinople. The wondrous obelisk in the centre of the square, remains perfect as in the time of the Christian emperors, but the brazen tripod is gone from the twisted column, and the serpent-like pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to its fall. ”

“ There were very few tourists in Constantinople when I was there. People were afraid of war, and before I left the Orient express had ceased to run. But I found awaiting the padishah many Indian pilgrims, a large troop of pilgrims from Trebizond who were on their way to Mecca, several Persians wearing black toques, and a good many Turks. These were in the courtyard close to the mosque, where I was allowed to stand by the aristocratic young chief of police, who wore a woolly, gray, fez-shaped cap. Outside the railings stood a dense crowd of veiled women. ”

“ They race up from the Dardanelles, and hundreds of rakish-looking craft, rigged as those that the traveller may see any day off the north coast of Africa, fly before the wind. The rain falls in torrents, and then suddenly all is still again, the sea is quiet, and the rearguard of the tempest sweeps away up the Bosphorus, to leave the sun in possession of its former battlefield. Even so came the invincible navies of Egypt and Syria, carrying the swarthy sons of Arabia towards the treasures they descried within the walls of Constantine’s Imperial City. ”

“ We met, perhaps, one individual in a street; and the perfect silence, and the cheerless look of the Turkish houses, with their jealously closed windows, gave it the air of a city devastated by the plague. The population of Constantinople is only seen in the bazaars or in the streets bordering on the Golden Horn. In the extensive quarter occupied by dwelling-houses only, the inhabitants, if at home, occupy apartments opening on their secluded gardens, or are hidden from the gaze of the street by their fine dull-coloured lattices. ”

“ In younger days wars were waged because some fair lady had been carried off, some rich jewel stolen, and in order that black insults might be wiped out. We live nowadays beneath a more sombre sky. From isolated incidents our motives have crystallized into definite principles, and it needs the delicate eye of the artist to see any of the old lustre in our honest if humdrum efforts to defend them.
Constantinople—the name conjures up dreams of Eastern colour, Eastern sights, and Eastern smells: visions of Turks in baggy breeches and jaunty fez ”

“ And many a Turkish monument has interest for them only because its marbles are anagrams that spell anew the glory of the ancient world.
Need I say that I am no such man? The essential colour of Constantinople is for me, who am neither Byzantinist nor Orientalist, a composite one, and the richer for being so. I confess I do not like the minarets of St. Sophia, but it is only because they are ugly. I am sorry that the palace of Constantine has so completely disappeared, but I am Philistine enough to suspect that the mosque built on its site may lift quite as imposing a mass against the sky. ”

“ After a tedious delay, a gentle breeze, and, on the second day, a strong gale from the south, carried them through the Hellespont and the Propontis: but the city was already invested by sea and land; and the Turkish fleet, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, was stretched from shore to shore, in the form of a crescent, to intercept, or at least to repel, these bold auxiliaries. The reader who has present to his mind the geographical picture of Constantinople, will conceive and admire the greatness of the spectacle. ”

“ It is true that the interior of Constantinople is exceedingly dirty, and that the number of small houses, the narrow streets, the unevenness of the pavement, the filthy dogs, etc., do not strike the beholder as excessively picturesque; but then he soon comes upon some magnificent edifice of the time of the Moors or Romans, some wondrous mosque or majestic palace, and can continue his walk through endless cemeteries and forests of dreamy cypresses. ”

“ Beneath an outward veneer of self-control there is a deal of the unbridled, unbroken master man of the Middle Ages left in this population. The slums of Constantinople have before now sent forth lovers for queens and wives for emperors. The Greek valet has the same pride in his veins as the more highly placed, for people in his humble station of life, men and women alike, still possess that sense of unsubdued personality the loss of which is one of the dark shadows which cloud our more “civilized” communities. ”

“ The surrounding heights command every approach to it, and a chain has more than once been drawn across the narrow entrance to its roadstead when the city was besieged. The latter, too, can be defended easily, for it is built upon hills, bounded on the land side by an extensive plain. An assailant, to insure success, must dispose not only of an army, but also of a powerful navy. In addition to all these natural advantages of its site, Constantinople is in the enjoyment of a climate far superior to that of the cities of the Black Sea, for it is screened by hills from cold northerly winds. ”

“ The difficulties at Constantinople proved to be almost trivial in comparison with those which ensued at Athens. Every step was met, both by the official persons and the people generally, with jealousy and obstruction. If a scaffold was put up, the Turks were sure that it was with a view to look into the harem of some neighbouring house. If a fragment of sculpture was examined with any visible delight or eagerness, they were equally sure that it must contain hidden gold. ”