Everyday Life in Byzantium Read online

  51 Typical ninth-century coastal and fishing craft

  Russian trade with Byzantium began on a large scale in the tenth century. Russian merchants converged on Constantinople, travelling either across Transcaucasia, from an eastern Black Sea port or, more usually, via Chersonesus, down the Dnieper river and across the Black Sea to the Byzantine capital. They came with fish, leather goods, honey, wax, and caviar from the Sea of Azov; they took back with them horses, pepper, silk (some of which they re-exported), wine, fine glass, metal-work and, after the country’s conversion to Christianity in 988, church furnishings. Though the movements and number of all foreign merchants entering the Byzantine capital were carefully controlled by a quaestor, exceptionally strict rules were imposed on the Russians, probably because from about 860 they had started launching heavy attacks on Constantinople. At least two of these had carried the Russians to the very walls of the Byzantine capital. It was in fact due to their military victories that, in 907, the Kievan were able to obtain from the Byzantines trading concessions of an unusually favourable nature. The treaty exempted them from paying either entry or exit dues—a privilege which they forfeited in 944—and entitled them to receive free issues of bread, wine, meat, fish and vegetables throughout their stay in Constantinople. In addition a special bath house was provided for their use and, on departure, they were equipped with whatever sails and ropes they needed for their return journey, and an anchor. Nevertheless, like all foreigners, the Russians had to report their presence to the Prefect of Law on arriving in the capital. Their stay there was limited to three months each year; any goods unsold at the end of that period could, however, be left with the Prefect to dispose of, the sums realised by him being handed to them on their return to Constantinople a year later. In addition to these restrictions the Russians were not permitted to live within the walls of Constantinople, but had to reside in special quarters prepared for them in the Magnaura district; they could only enter Constantinople by one gate and had to be always unarmed and accompanied by a Greek official. If they came in a group their number was not permitted to exceed 50. Similar restrictions on living in the city were not imposed on others and, in the eleventh century, some 60,000 foreigners, mostly Italian merchants, resided in the capital. The Muslims amongst them were free to perform their religious practices in mosques of their own. But the Italians obtained more concessions than the others: the Genoese enjoyed particular privileges, for it was they who, in 1261, in return for helping the emperor to re-enter Constantinople and regain his throne, were given the district of Galata to live in and, what was far more valuable, the right to use the Straits at will, concessions which were to ruin the Byzantine economy within a couple of centuries.

  7 - TOWN LIFE

  With the exception of Constantinople, all major Byzantine towns were ancient foundations. They had grown up in antiquity, expanding in a haphazard manner. In the process each acquired its own characteristic features. Thus, by Byzantine times, Alexandria had become an essentially industrial and commercial city, where the working class was always on the verge of rioting. Antioch, with its famous summer resort of Daphne about two hours’ drive distant, was of a quieter temperament; its handsome stone houses were adorned with elaborate floor mosaics reflecting the stability and wealth of its theatre-loving middle class, most of them prosperous traders. Old cities such as these were essentially international in outlook, but the Byzantine government ensured that, from the very start, all became strongholds of Orthodoxy. The change probably helped the Greek inhabitants, whilst still a minority, to impose their own language and culture upon these ancient cities. They did so during the opening phase of Byzantine history, at the very time when Egypt and Syria were contributing much both to the culture and the economy of the Byzantine state. With the loss to the Arabs of these prosperous regions town life declined and Asia Minor became all-important to Byzantium. Asia Minor was valuable not only for essential supplies of basic food and of minerals, but also for its own cultural heritage dating back to Phrygian and Hittite times. It made its impact felt in intellectual circles in Constantinople, but its effect was to some extent counteracted by the increasing strength of the Slays living on Byzantium’s northern and western borders. However, Slavic influence proved scarcely more significant than that of Asia Minor, for the appearance on Byzantium’s eastern borders from the tenth century onwards of the Seljukid Turks and their gradual conquest of Anatolia, coinciding as it did with the advance of Saladin’s Saracens, again turned Byzantine eyes eastward; at the same time it encouraged the growth of towns at the expense of that of the countryside. The arrival of the Mongols at the start of the thirteenth century kept attention firmly fixed on the East, notwithstanding the Latin occupation of Constantinople and the growing importance of Italy’s merchant states. Because of these political developments Constantinople became even more strongly international in character than any of Byzantium’s older cities, her population numbering more foreign residents of more diverse nationalities than were to be found in any other Byzantine town.

  As a newly created town Constantinople was laid out along new lines from the outset; these combined to some extent ideas that had been developed in Rome with those prevalent in the East, for example at Palmyra. For that reason, rather than because of its role as the capital of Byzantium, a description of Constantinople provides us with a clearer idea of Byzantine views on town-planning than would one dealing with any of the Empire’s other famous cities. It is all the more unfortunate, therefore, that so much of ancient Constantinople lies buried some seven metres deep beneath the average street-level of present-day Istanbul. Travellers and pilgrims to the Holy Land have left us a vivid account of the city’s beauty and magnificence, but these are worded in such general terms that they are of little help to archaeologists trying to reconstruct the town’s original plan. Excavations were started in Constantinople after the First World War. Though they have disclosed many valuable facts, work has in the main been confined to small areas of open ground near the Hippodrome and the Great Palace, and the sites of most of the major buildings mentioned in early records still await discovery. Today it is possible to form only a very general idea of what this once world-renowned capital looked like.

  The area enclosed by Constantinople’s walls contained seven hills. This resemblance to Rome was increased by the town’s layout for, though the main streets conformed to the triangular shape of the peninsula, they followed, in so far as the lie of the land permitted, the rectilinear plan admired in the Old Rome. To begin with, as at Ostia near Rome, the richer houses were generally two storeys high, but already the names of their owners were cut on the walls fronting onto the streets. Many entrance doors were made of iron studded with stout nails, yet the street sides of such houses can hardly be called their ‘fronts’ for, in contrast to Ostia, in the earlier phase these were left blank, the windows all being placed on the opposite wall, where they overlooked an enclosed courtyard. The owner’s stables, cattle sheds, poultry houses and essential store rooms gave out onto the courtyard, which was generally large enough for exercising his horses and, most important of all, to include the cistern or well on which the household depended for its water supplies. However, in the fifth century, taller houses appeared in Constantinople and, although the lower sections of the walls fronting onto the street remained blank, it became customary to insert rows of windows in the upper floors. These were either rectangular or rounded at the top; stucco frames were fitted into them which were in their turn set with small panes of glass. These glass sections were either octagonal or rectangular; they were made from slabs of glass beaten flat and cut into sections measuring 8-12 inches in length, though those used in the finest houses were as much as 2 feet long. It seems probable that iron bars were fitted outside the lower windows and that some of these already bulged outward at the bottom to form a sort of window seat, as was to become general in Ottoman Turkey. Many of the upper windows were fitted with balconies; indeed, balconies became so popula
r and so numerous that when Emperor Zeno (474-91) came to the throne he passed a law forbidding streets to be less than 12 feet wide and balconies less than 15 feet from the ground or under 10 feet away from the front of the opposite house. Strict regulations were also in force to ensure that no house encroached on a neighbour’s light or his view of the sea and that each was fitted with drainpipes and gutters. Though palaces were generally constructed of marble blocks erected on brick foundations, most houses were built of brick; the few that were of stone were generally faced with stucco. Many of the richer houses had flat roofs which were used as terraces during the summer months; others had sloping roofs made of tiles with a cross set proudly at their summit.

  The houses were generally built round a central hall. These halls were used as reception rooms by the men of the household. Stone or wooden columns, though placed in the hall to act as supports for the upper storeys where the family’s rooms were situated, served also as adornments. A staircase, in most cases built of wood, though stone was used in the more prosperous houses and marble in the very richest, led to the principal rooms disposed on the first floor. The windows of these opened onto galleries overlooking the courtyard. Houses such as these generally contained more than one sitting-room; like most of the others these had plastered walls which were often decorated with crosses and religious texts, but, at any rate in later times, mural paintings of a secular character were quite common. The sitting-rooms were used more by the men of the household than by the women; the latter spent most of their time in the company of their children and serving maids in the rooms situated in the top storey of the house. Like monasteries, houses such as these contained a hot room for use on the bitterly cold days that are typical of Constantinople’s winter climate; many of the richer houses were also centrally heated by means of the hypocaust system used by the Romans, though most people relied on charcoal braziers. The kitchens contained a low hearth with square pipes forming a chimney above them to carry away the smoke of the wood fires, which were often used in preference to open charcoal stoves. All the houses were provided with lavatories, the drains of which eventually emptied into the sea. It was also customary for each household to have its own bath house, usually situated in the garden. Rich people also often had a private chapel, or at any rate a shrine in their grounds. In contrast, the very poor were deplorably housed, only the most fortunate among them living in small houses roofed with rushes and with beaten earth floors. However, from the fifth century, skyscraper blocks of flats, containing anything from five to nine storeys, were built to serve as tenements. They were divided into flatlets which were let off to working people, who generally lived in them in poverty and near-slum conditions. Hovels of abysmal wretchedness were to be seen everywhere, many springing up almost overnight to house squatters who, having once erected a roof over their heads, were able to stay on as permanent inhabitants. Some of the worst slums grew up in the neighbourhood of the Great Palace; in these sinister districts murders and thefts were common, and the riots which so often disrupted the capital’s life frequently started here.

  The authorities were never able to solve the problem presented by these slums, which owed their existence to the magnetic attraction which Constantinople exercised from the start, drawing people to itself from all parts of the Empire. By the fifth century Constantinople possessed 323 streets containing 4,383 houses, 20 state bakeries for dealing with those who were entitled to issues of free bread, and 120 additional bakeries. The population is believed to have been in the region of 500,000; by the ninth century the figure had risen to a million, but it dropped sharply during the Latin occupation of the city, and never rose again to anything like the same number.

  Constantinople’s founder had had a far smaller city in mind when he planned his new capital: he gave it its rectangular plan, and divided it roughly into two equal parts by means of its main street, the Mese. The Mese grew to be two miles long. It led from the main city gate at the south-western corner of the land walls to the cathedral of Haghia Sophia. Following the general line of the coast, though some distance from it, it passed such notable landmarks as the Forum of Theodosius (rediscovered by British archaeologists in 1928), the Forum Tauri and those named after Arcadius, Anastasius and Constantine. The latter was distinguished by a great porphyry column surmounted by a statue of the emperor; though the statue has disappeared, Constantine’s column still survives in its original position, but the shaft is battered and the base has been repaired; it is known by the Turks as the Burnt Column. To the east of Constantine’s Forum the Mese led past the Hippodrome and ended at the main entrance of the cathedral of Haghia Sophia—the mother church of the Orthodox world. The area in front of the cathedral had been laid out by Constantine as the town’s main square. He had called it the Augustaion in memory of his mother, the Augusta Helena, enclosing it with columns and placing a statue of Helena at its centre. The Minium—a column which marked the start of the Mese and which, like a similar column in Rome, had the distances to various parts of the Empire inscribed on it—stood close to the Augustaion and on a line with the main entrance to the Great Palace situated farther to the east. The houses lining the Mese had low arcades with shops at street level. Some of the arcades were adorned with statues; as in other parts of the town the shops beneath them were grouped according to the wares sold in them; their entrance doors generally opened into a public hall which often contained a table with goods laid out on it.

  Of all Constantinople’s many entrance gates the one at the far end of the Mese ranked as the most important, for it was this gate which the emperors used whenever they set out for Europe, either to campaign against the turbulent Slays or to inspect their western borderlands. It was at that point too that they made their official entry when they returned in triumph or presented themselves for coronation; and, with few exceptions, it was there that they were welcomed or bidden farewell by their sons and the highest dignitaries of the realm and all the senators. From as early as the reign of Theodosius this gate became associated in people’s minds with ceremonial occasions. The gate was an impressive structure of white marble, and was fitted with great doors of burnished brass whose brilliance gave rise to the name, the ‘Golden Gate’. Today, battered and bereft of these shimmering doors, the tarnished white marble structure does not at first sight seem to live up to its evocative name, but when the first feeling of disappointment has worn off the splendour of the gate’s severe lines and the harmony of its superb proportions quickly kindle the visitor’s admiration.

  The Hippodrome was the centre of the townspeople’s lives in a way which neither the Palace to the east, nor the cathedral of Haghia Sophia to the north could ever hope to be. Entrance to the Hippodrome was obtained on presentation of a token, but without charge, and the tiers of marble seats were open to the town’s male inhabitants regardless of class or occupation. The first hippodrome in the city was built under Septimius Severus, but it was remodelled by Constantine I. In the Byzantine world the Hippodrome quickly came to combine the theatrical functions of Rome’s Circus or Colosseum with those of a racecourse for charioteers. In addition, as was the case of the Agora at Athens and the Forum in Rome, it was also used for religious processions such as the important one on Palm Sunday, for state ceremonies and for political meetings. Political opinions were also expressed by means of athletic contests. On more than one occasion prisoners were publicly tortured in the Hippodrome.

  The arena itself was primarily designed for chariot-racing and was wide enough to hold four chariots abreast; each was drawn by four horses and was therefore called a quadriga. The Hippodrome could hold 40,000 spectators; it was modelled on the Circus Maximus of Rome, but the games held in it were never quite so cruel as those organised in Rome. A row of monuments erected along the centre of the arena to form a spina marked the division between the downward and upward course. These monuments included the famous serpent column brought from Delphi on which the names of the states involved in the battle of Plataea w
ere inscribed, and an Egyptian obelisk which Theodosius I set up on a sculptured base. Both survive in their original positions, though the racecourse lies buried under some three metres of earth and is now laid out as a garden. The base of the obelisk was decorated on all four sides with sculptures; one scene shows Theodosius accompanied by his courtiers seated in his box in the Hippodrome, presumably watching a race. The charioteers raced round the spina in much the same way as the children shown bowling their hoops on the mosaic scene from the floor of the Great Palace race round two terminal structures shaped like turrets. To obtain an idea of what an advancing quadriga must have looked like as it thundered down the course we must turn to the sumptuous textiles on which Byzantine weavers represented them skilfully capturing the excitement of the race. Wide though the course was (about 60 metres by 480 metres long) great skill was required to race the chariots on it at top speed. The people’s excitement often reached fever point and must have resembled that of a Spanish crowd attending a bullfight today.