From Byzantium to Constantinople : An Urban History

by: Matthews, J.

Price: 84,80 EURO

(in stock)

From Byzantium to Constantinople
An Urban History

John Matthews

Gives a complete urban history of Constantinople
Offers a nuanced understanding of the role of Christianity and Christian institutions in a city where many other interests clamored for attention
Contributes to an understanding of urban planning and city building in the context of government policy and action
Presents a variety of specialized and rare source materials

Description
The consecration of the city of Constantinople in 330 CE on the emplacement of the Greek city of Byzantium was one of the most important moments in the whole of Graeco-Roman history. The foundation of the city responded to important changes in the social, political, and cultural character of the Roman empire of the first three centuries. In its role as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, it provided a setting for a new religion and the framework for more than a thousand years of continued Roman history in the east. From Byzantium to Constantinople explores, in great detail, the Graeco-Roman context of the city and its early history in the first century of its identity as the new Rome.

The book surveys the events that led to the establishment of Constantinople, the circumstances of its foundation, and the first hundred years of its development as an imperial capital city resting upon a new religious identity. Based on a description and critical evaluation of the sources of the earlier history of the city of Byzantium, it attends to one document in particular—the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae—a regional survey of the resources and monuments of the city, written in the early fifth century but preserving many details of the city as it had developed from its Greek and Roman background. Ranging from descriptions of Constantinople's facilities for the fighting of fires and distributions of bread, to the number of churches established in this period, the Notitia allows for a study of the economic and social diversity and housing conditions of its regions.

Constantinople, the new Rome founded by the first Christian emperor, was not built in a day nor did it lack an earlier history as an important city in a strategic location. The integration of these diverse and variously problematic sources enables the foundation of Constantinople to be understood in terms of a developing understanding of its role, and as a series of initiatives that could be accommodated by the resources of the government as it responded to new and distinctly non-Classical loyalties.

Table of Contents
Preface
List of Figures
I. From York to Byzantium
II. From Byzantium to Constantinople
III. Sources and Materials
IV. Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae
V. The Fourteen Regions
VI. Urban Development (1): The Severi to Constantine
VII. Urban Development (2): The Successors of Constantine
VIII. Urban Development (3): The Dynasty of Theodosius
IX. Other Monuments, Palaces and Churches
X. The Population of Constantinople
XI. From the New World
Abbreviations And Short Titles
Bibliographical References
Index

From Byzantium to Constantinople : An Urban History

by: Matthews, J.

• ISBN-13: 9780197585498
• ISBN-03: 0197585493
• Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2025

Price: 84,80 EURO

(in stock)