In an 8-page article, which was initially published in a Greek monthly magazine back in 1988 and more recently republished online (in Greek) in several sites as both, text and video, I unequivocally described Constantinople – Istanbul as ‘the Lunar City’ (https://www.academia.edu/23392671/Κωνσταντινούπολη_η_Σεληνιακή_Πολιτεία_του_καθ_Μουχάμαντ_Σαμσαντίν_πρώην_Κοσμά_Μεγαλομμάτη). And in article published last year (29 May 2021), I determined that Sultan Mehmet II Fatih’s conquest of Constantinople (29 May 1453) was the most useless Ottoman victory, extensively analyzing the reasons, which should imperatively make the brainless and easily suggestible sultan abstain from such meaningless attempt at the time.
Quite unfortunately for him and his ignorant and unsuspicious successors, they made their capital of a city that was bearing an enormous historical burden, also involving a very perplex and extremely conflicting relationship with Rome, the real capital of Western European Christianity. Inanely enough the Ottoman sultans thought at the time that it would be possible to exorcize an unknown (to them) past with some incomprehensible (to them) verses of the Quran, and they therefore fell victims of few Satanic theologians (currently named ‘Sunni’, although the term is a neologism lacking any historicity), who falsely represented, viciously introduced, and abjectly misinterpreted Islam as a task of conquering, thus drawing Prophet Muhammad’s curse on them, their evil deeds and unfathomable idiocy. Here: https://www.academia.edu/43199538/29_May_1453_The_most_Useless_Ottoman_Victory
This article was translated into Greek and then republished in several Greek sites and blogs due to the interest that many Greeks showed for a very unusual, non-sectarian, non-conventional, and genuinely objective, historical scholarly analysis that did not start from an idiotically preconceived standpoint in order to try to defend a Christian thesis if the author is Christian, a Muslim thesis if the author is Muslim or an atheist thesis if the author is an atheist. Such a stance is genuinely ludicrous and quasi-automatically self-discredited – anytime anywhere and under any circumstances whatsoever. The Greek translation was also republished here:
https://www.academia.edu/43346356/29_Μαΐου_1453_Η_πιο_Άχρηστη_Οθωμανική_Νίκη
Contents
I. Today’s Fake Religions and Fake Sciences: Obstacles on our Way to find the Truth
II. No Imperial Capital can be located on the Seaside
III. Troy: Constantinople’s Real Predecessor
IV. Hittite-Achaean Alliance against Accursed Troy
V. Sea Peoples’ Invasions: Reaction to the Hittite-Achaean Alliance and the Trojan War
VI. Constantinople: as Troy’s Descendants, the Romans return …
VII. Iranians and Macedonians in the Turkish Straits, and the pro-Roman Stance of the Attalids
VIII. Constitutio Antoniniana: Death Certificate of the Ancient Greeks
IX. The Rise of Sassanid Iran, Roman Defeats in the East, and the Roman Administrative Divisions
X. Praefectus Urbi; at the very Origin of the World’s most Perverse Theocracy: Papoceasarism
XI. Constantine I, the Slow Rise of Christianity, and the Events Preceding the Construction of Constantinople
XII. Constantine I, New Rome (Constantinople), and the Reasons for it
XIII. New Rome (Constantinople): a Disadvantaged Location as per the Principles of Geographical Determinism
XIV. New Rome (Constantinople): a Christian Empire’s Capital lacking Christian Credentials
I. Today’s Fake Religions and Fake Sciences: Obstacles on our Way to find the Truth
Historical truth does not ‘justify’ any sectarianism and does not comply with the silly religious pseudo-beliefs of modern times. Today, there are no religions left, except for few systems of spirituality and faith shared by the indigenous inhabitants of remote societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that live far from the modern technological world and the political regimes that tyrannize the Mankind. Today’s so-called official dogmas of the world’s major religions have been monstrously distorted and their spiritual – metaphysical essence disfigured. Their cosmogonic, cosmological, eschatological and soteriological dimensions were forged, and their moral doctrine was corrupted and conditioned on the modern world’s inhuman evilness. Their terms have been altered, the connotation of their key words and codes perverted, their cults falsified (‘reformed’ is the anodyne description of the fact), and their practice reduced to ludicrous and meaningless caricatures. That’s why today’s fake religions function as political ideological systems and ignorant, uneducated, uncultured and thoughtless ‘believers’ accept the monstrous lies that today’s pseudo-religious ‘leaders’ shamelessly propagate before joining Satan, their god, at the bottom of the Hell.
On the other hand, the modern historical science, as part of the wider circle of Humanities, has been founded on biased Renaissance times’ aberrations and peremptory assumptions, on the racist myths and arbitrary maxims of Classicism, on the inhuman aphorism of the Enlightenment, and on all useless and paranoid axioms of modern Western colonial political ideological systems (the infinite contamination of Jacobinism, Marxism-Leninism, parliamentarianism, conservatism, liberalism, Leftism, socialism, communism, Euro-centrism, neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, evolutionism, rationalism, Hegelianism, modernism, materialism, postmodernism, de-constructivism, etc.). Any scholarly research, which is parameterized on any of the aforementioned and other minor systems, represents a deliberate distortion and an ignominious fallacy.
To discover the historical truth in any field of research one must go beyond all fake religions of our times, all philosophical systems, all political ideologies, all academic schools, all preconceived aberrations, all sorts of subjectivism and ego-centrism, and every inherent inclination to project today’s ‘values’, ‘principles’, criteria and measures on the historical times that one may wish to examine.
II. No Imperial Capital can be located on the Seaside
I am afraid that, for Christians and Muslims alike, for Turks and Greeks equally, historical truth is far bitterer, far direr, and far darker than they can even imagine. And when it comes to the Mediterranean Sea’s incomparably greater city today, quite unfortunately, its true greatness is specified in terms of sinister failure, ominous calamity, and obnoxious destruction.
In brief, Constantinople – Istanbul should have never existed. And, if by an erratic coincidence and abominable misfortune, few demented people constructed a town in that location, this agglomeration of edifices should always remain a sly passageway, a furtive station, and a basis for further expeditions or eventually a fated porthmus (strait; https://logeion.uchicago.edu/porthmos).
Either in the Mediterranean or worldwide, there was never a coastal city that became the capital of an empire in historical, pre-Renaissance times, except that city was the metropolis of a maritime realm (like Carthage) or the headquarters of a commercial network (like Alexandria). It is quite indicative: Alexandria’s importance in the trade routes between East and West (i.e. the silk, spice and frankincense trade routes across lands, deserts and seas) increased when Octavian invaded the Ptolemaic capital (30 BCE) and Alexandria ceased to be the capital of a kingdom; even then, Alexandria ad Aegyptum was somewhat eclipsed by the arch-rival city of Gerrha in the Persian Gulf, at least until the end of the Arsacid Parthian times (250 BCE – 224 CE). About: https://www.academia.edu/23214313/Meluhha_Gerrha_and_the_Emirates_by_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
Quite contrarily, Rome, which lies on the Italian Peninsula, is located at a distance of no less than 34 km from Coccia di Morto, which is the nearest coastal point (https://www.tripadvisor.it/Attraction_Review-g656615-d15755215-Reviews-Spiaggia_Coccia_di_Morto-Fiumicino_Province_of_Rome_Lazio.html).
III. Troy: Constantinople’s Real Predecessor
There had however been -long before Constantinople, long before Byzantium (the 1st millennium BCE city which was located on the same geographical spot, being first called ‘Lygos’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Istanbul#Lygos / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium)- another, very ancient, coastal city in the wider region, which comprises the Bosporus (İstanbul Boğazı), the Marmara Sea (Marmara Denizi), and the Dardanelles (Çanakkale Boğazı); this very ancient city was an exceptionally wealthy commercial center and the capital of a confederation, but not an imperial capital: Troy.
If we carefully observe and effectively contemplate the outline of the wider region, which separates the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea, we understand very well that 3rd–2nd millennium BCE Troy (Taruisha or Wilusa in Hittite; Truva or Troya in Turkish) was Constantinople’s real predecessor in a broader sense. As a wealthy rival of the Hittite Empire, Taruisha had the power to mobilize the Lukka (also known as Assuwa) Confederacy and generate serious troubles to the imperial capital Hattusha (Boğazköy), particularly when the Hittite army was fighting against the Babylonians, the Mitanni Hurrians, and the Egyptians in the vast empire’s S-SE borders.
From the highly informative Hittite archives, we learn that the Hittite Empire’s western confines were constantly in turmoil; the reason for this was the fact that the Balkan Peninsula was not part of the then civilized world, which involved Mesopotamia, SW Iran (Elam), Anatolia, Canaan (Phoenicia and Syro-Palestine), Egypt and Cush (Ancient Ethiopia, i.e. today’s Sudan). Crete, the Aegean Sea, the Balkan Peninsula and the rest of 2nd millennium BCE Europe were an unimportant, barbaric and consequently chaotic fringe that did not matter at all for the then centers of World Civilization.
In Western Anatolia, even now and then, disorderly elements among the Lukka, the Arzawa, the Hapalla, the Mira, the Wilusa, and the Assuwa (which stretch across the north-western confines of Anatolia) forced the Hittite army to forthwith cancel military operations in Mesopotamia and Canaan (then known as Amurru) and undertake expeditions to the West in order to pacify the chaotic periphery.
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Download Joachim Latacz’s interesting viewpoint on Wilusa (Wilios/Troia) as Center of Hittite Confederate in North-West Asia Minor:
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IV. Hittite-Achaean Alliance against Accursed Troy
At a certain moment, the Hittites found it proper to strike a formal alliance with their relatives and subordinates in the Balkan Peninsula’s southernmost extremities, namely the Ahhijawa, who are identified by all Hittitologists with the tribe of the Achaeans (later considered as the earliest tribe of the Ancient Greeks). Hittite sources reveal that the tiny and marginal Achaean kingdoms were duly utilized by the imperial court at Hattusha in order to ensure safety in the empire’s western confines, when the bulk of the Hittite military force was engaged against the other great empires of the then known world in the S-SE borders, i.e. in territories of today’s Northern Iraq, Northern Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.
One cannot have any doubt about the force, the wealth and the size of the rivals:
– Hattusha, the imperial Hittite capital, stretched over an area of ca. 270 ha, without counting the Hittite sacred land and religious capital at nearby Yazilikaya.
– However, the 13th c. BCE walled city of Troy (so, at its culminating point) did not cover an area larger than 74 acres (: 30 ha).
– And the tiny Achaean kingdom’s capital Mycenae had an area of 32 ha (including however the citadel and the lower town). Details and bibliography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaz%C4%B1l%C4%B1kaya
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaz%C4%B1l%C4%B1kaya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_language#Luwian_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assuwa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapalla
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzawa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Mira
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Homeric_epics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaeans_(Homer)#Hittite_documents
What was later mythologized in Homer’s epics as Trojan War was nothing more than an expedition in support of the Hittite Empire and an attack of the South Balkans’ Achaeans, the relatives and allies of the Hittites, against the wealthy commercial center (Taruisha) that instigated all the anti-Hittite activities in Western Anatolia. The Achaean success, which satisfied the imperial Hittite needs in the empire’s western confines, proved however to be short-lived and ultimately calamitous for both allies, the Hittites and the Achaeans.
V. Sea Peoples’ Invasions: Reaction to the Hittite-Achaean Alliance and the Trojan War
Exasperated with the destruction of Troy, all elements of the anti-Hittite and anti-Achaean alliance, known as ‘Sea Peoples’ in the Ancient Egyptian historical sources, fomented a rebellion in South Balkans, Western Anatolia, the Aegean Sea, and Crete, destroyed the Mycenaean and other friendly kingdoms, burned all Achaean citadels, attacked and destroyed the Hittite capital Hattusa, spread throughout Canaan and Amurru (today’s Syria), and attacked Egypt where only after three land and sea battles was Ramses III able at last to disperse and annihilate them. The Annals of Ramses III, inscribed amongst others on the walls of his mortuary temple at Madinat Habu in Thebes West (today’s Luxor) describe in extreme details the events.
General background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medinet_Habu_(location)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medinet_Habu_(temple)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_III
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
Scholarly publications:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/986225?seq=1
https://www.academia.edu/22842873/LES_PEUPLES_DE_LA_MER_ET_LA_FIN_DU_MONDE_MYCENIEN
The conclusion that we can safely draw from this briefly mentioned major event of the History of Ancient Orient during the 2nd millennium BCE is that
a) the Turkish straits (the Bosporus, the Marmara Sea, and the Dardanelles) region cannot be the region of a major imperial capital; and
b) the Turkish straits region stands instinctively in opposition to Anatolia, and more particularly, the central Anatolian plateau can be the region of a major imperial capital.
In other words, the Pre-History of Constantinople-Istanbul proved to be nefarious, already 1500 years before Constantinople was first built in 324-330 CE (solemnly inaugurated on 11th May 330) and 2650 years before the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II invaded it on 29th May 1453.
VI. Constantinople: as Troy’s Descendants, the Romans return …
It goes without saying that for no less than one and half millennia after Troy’s siege and destruction (1200 BCE – 330 CE) the Turkish straits region remained a largely unimportant periphery in the History of the Mankind; to be exact, the region was good enough for the role that the geomorphological environment determined it, namely that of a passageway – not that of an imperial center. No major city or state was developed in this region between the fall of Troy and the exquisite, monumental construction of the city that Constantine I wanted to function as an Eastern Rome or New Rome.
It is however noteworthy that it took 100 years for the new city to be endowed with an official description of its parts and monuments, namely the illustrious and lengthy Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae. Today’s stupid Greeks and idiotic Turks, who –both- so much claim that the accursed city is “theirs”, have failed to come up with a Modern Turkish or a Modern Greek translation of the fundamental text, which was elaborated in Latin, the then official language of the Eastern Roman Empire (the old Roman Empire was divided into two parts after Theodosius I’s death in 395 CE).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Istanbul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notitia_Urbis_Constantinopolitanae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Roman_Empire#Further_divisions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy
This fact concludes the case of the two peoples, who incessantly prefer to live in darkness, ignorance, disbelief and falsehood, choosing the fallacy of their elites instead of the truth of their common historical documentation. This situation can only herald an ominous destruction for both peoples.
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Download the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae in Latin:
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The historical reality that Romans (and not Phrygians, Assyrians, Iranians or Macedonians) were the first to imagine it possible for a major imperial city to be constructed and function in that location only confirms Rome’s greatest poet Virgil and all the ancient Roman traditions, as per which the Romans were the descendants of the legendary Aeneas, one of the few Trojans who escaped the destruction of Troy, being of noble origin, since his father was the first cousin of Troy’s last king Priam.
These legends reflect a historical connection between the Romans and the NW confines of Anatolia and the wider region of the Turkish straits. Of course, the Ancient Greek and Romans myths are unreliable and we cannot afford to take them as historical texts, but the decipherment of Luwian hieroglyphic script and the study of contemporaneous, 2nd millennium BCE historical sources help us reveal the Luwian origin of that name: Pa-ri-a-mu-a (‘unusually brave). This name has been historically attested in several cases. In any case, the language of the Trojans was a Luwian dialect. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_Rome#Aeneas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Rome#Legend_of_Rome_origin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization#Origins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_origins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid
The Phaistos Disk Seems to Be Trojan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_and_Remus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priam#Etymology
VII. Iranians and Macedonians in the Turkish Straits, and the pro-Roman Stance of the Attalids
As one can easily surmise, many great historical developments took place worldwide during the period that starts with the departure of the last Trojans from their ill-fated and destroyed capital and ends with the construction of Constantinople. As a matter of fact, after many centuries of migrations, instability, divisions, and constant wars, in the late 5th and early 4th c. BCE, the wider region of the Turkish straits and almost the entire Balkan Peninsula became integral part and administrative units (‘satrapies’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire) of the Achaemenid Empire of Iran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_the_Achaemenid_Empire: 550-330 BCE).
The worldwide unprecedentedly immense empire controlled all lands, seas, gulfs and lakes between the mountains of Transylvania beyond the northernmost confines of the Balkan Peninsula (https://www.livius.org/articles/person/darius-the-great/sources/the-gherla-inscription/), Macedonia and the eastern coast land of the Black Sea (https://kpfu.ru/staff_files/F_1398648344/IA54004.pdf), and further beyond, to the Old Suez Canal (Darius the Great’s Suez Inscriptions: Birth Certificate of the Silk Roads / https://silkroadtexts.wordpress.com/), the Red Sea and the empire’s eastern borders, which stretched from the Indus River Delta to Central Asia. Darius I’s Royal Road (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road) linked Susa to Sardis (the former capital of Lydia), thus greatly minimizing the distance between the Turkish straits and the Persian Gulf.
Both, Xerxes I the Great (in 480 BCE) and Alexander the Great (in 334 BCE) passed by the re-inhabited city of Troy and made sacrifices in the local temples’ altars. The latter invaded the chaotic periphery of the Ancient Greek cities and used Greek soldiers to prevail over the Iranian armies at a particular conjuncture: the imperial Achaemenid force was in decline and the Egyptians had revolted against Iran. As Alexander felt no enmity but admiration for the magnificence of the Iranian (not ‘Persian’) Empire, his otherwise misinterpreted campaigns’ sole result was the continuation of the Iranian Empire with another capital, namely Babylon. One must however add that it is very interesting that, although Alexander the Great founded many cities named after him, he did not find it opportune to found one city in the wider region of the Turkish straits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_founded_by_Alexander_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_(disambiguation)
His divided successors’ inability to maintain unity and stability in the vast empire led to the so-called Partition of Babylon (323 BCE), which in fact was the partition of the Iranian Empire among the numerous and incompetent pretenders to the throne. With the Asiatic and European coastlands of the Turkish straits divided between the remnant of the Macedonian kingdoms and the Attalids of Pergamon, it was only a matter of time for the Romans to secure a successful return to Anatolia. Quite revelatory of several intriguing trends, the Pergamon-based Attalid dynasty, which controlled the old territory of Troy, became the best ally of the Romans against the Macedonians, the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. And Augustus rebuilt Troy to its past glory, naming the city Ilium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diadochi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attalid_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_Wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy#Classical_and_Hellenistic_Troy_(Troy_VIII)
VIII. Constitutio Antoniniana: Death Certificate of the Ancient Greeks
A major development that preceded the construction of Constantinople was the disappearance of the various ‘ethnicities’ (: nations) within the Roman Empire. Due to the groundbreaking Constitutio Antoniniana (which is also known as the Edict of Caracalla; 212 CE), every free inhabitant of the empire was given full Roman citizenship. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutio_Antoniniana
Because of the edict of Caracalla, the Greeks, the Cappadocians, the Phoenicians, the Syrians (Aramaeans), the Egyptians, the Gauls, and all the other nations of the vast empire were reduced to mere linguistic particularities around an overwhelming Orientalization – Latinization process of nation building. Following the extensive diffusion of Oriental religions, cults, mysticisms, worldviews, trends and ways of life throughout the empire, the old and obsolete pantheons of the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts and the other European nations were erased, and all the nations of the Roman Empire shared one common, typically Oriental, culture encompassing various religions, spiritual initiations, wisdom, cosmologies, cosmogonies, eschatology, soteriology, cults, and mysticisms of Iranian, Egyptian, Anatolian, Aramaean and Phoenician origin.
Progressively, the traditional cultural identities of the Greeks, the Romans and the other Europeans were thus totally altered and fully Orientalized. And when all the old nations that had been conquered by the Romans became Roman citizens within the Roman Empire, they were all amalgamated and transformed into a genuinely Oriental nation, the Roman nation, thus reducing their linguistic particularities and their literary narratives about the past into meaningless reminiscences. It was an unprecedented overwhelming victory of the people over the elite, of the collectivity over the individuality, and of the spiritual over the material.
Thus, when Constantinople was constructed, there were no more ‘Greeks’ (Achaeans, Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians) throughout the South Balkans and Western Anatolia; following the Roman occupation (146 BCE), the Greeks, like many other nations, namely the Illyrians, the Macedonians, the Thracians, the Phrygians, the Lydians, the Carians, the Lycians, the Cappadocians, became a subject nation of the Roman Republic. With the progressive cultural Orientalization (1st c. CE – 3rd c. CE), the Greeks became a culturally Oriental nation worshipping Mithra and Isis, while obliterating Athena and Zeus. Accepting the edict of Caracalla (212 CE), the Greeks admitted that there was no genuine Greek nation anymore, because they had no royal or other concept and system of governance that they would eventually prefer, cherish and opt for. With the imposition of the Roman imperial ideology, the Ancient Greek politics were irrevocably dead.
This means that, before the descendants of the Ancient Greeks went physically extinct in South Balkans, following a) the extensive and merciless persecution of the pagans in the Christianized Roman Empire (4th – 6th c. CE) and b) the excessive depopulation process that followed the so-called ‘Barbarian invasions’ (4th – 7th c. CE), there were no descendants of Ancient Greeks, who valued their ancestry and defunct traditions.
Not one Greek-speaking inhabitant of Roman Greece (during the 1st – 3rd c. CE), let alone a local authority, bothered to
1- commemorate the ridiculous factoids and insignificant events of the so-called ‘victories’ of Marathon and Salamis (the 5th c. BCE fights against the invading Iranian armies, which became however of paramount importance only in the 19th c. (!!??) for the ludicrous modern pseudo-Greek state, which is merely an Anglo-French colonial fabrication),
2- pay tribute to the various worthless Ancient Greek kings, tyrants, authors or statesmen of the past (the likes of Agis, Cleomenes, Peisistratus, Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles Aristotle, Euripides, Demosthenes, etc.), and
3- honor the memory of the otherwise disreputable Delian League.
That ludicrous past was not anymore theirs; so trivial it was that they left it in oblivion.
Anatolian Greeks survived however in Ionia and Pontus, being spiritually Iranized and Egyptianized (after adopting Mithraism and Isidism), culturally Orientalized, nationally Romanized, and linguistically Latinized. Still today, they represent a historical continuity of three millennia after having been Christianized (Eastern Romans, Ρωμιοί/Romii, Rumlar) and Islamized (Turks, Τούρκοι, Türkler). Basics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_pagans_in_the_late_Roman_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_migrations_to_the_Balkans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sclaveni
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Philipp_Fallmerayer
Analysis:
https://www.academia.edu/45050255/China_Turkey_Orientalism_and_Black_Athena
When it comes to the various Greek-speaking nations (i.e. the various descendants of the Phrygians, the Lydians, the Carians, the Lycians, the Cappadocians, the Thracians, the Macedonians, the Illyrians and the Pelasgians), during the first centuries of the Christian era they were not ethnically Greek, they were not culturally Greek, and they were heavily Latinized. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civis_romanus_sum
IX. The Rise of Sassanid Iran, Roman Defeats in the East, and the Roman Administrative Divisions
It is on this historical background that Constantine I decided to construct the new city. It was a period of upheaval for the entire empire; in the eastern borders, the wars with Iran, which started with the rise of the Sassanid dynasty (224 CE), caused disastrous defeats at the hands of Shapur I (240-270), one of the World History’s greatest conquerors and harsher combatants. Between 242 and 252, despite many wars in almost all of his frontiers, Shapur I defeated Timesitheus, Gordian III, and Philip the Arab, who had to sign a humiliating peace treaty after the Battle of Meshik (Mesiche/Μεσιχή; 244).
Following the subjugation of Armenia and Georgia, Shapur I won over Roman armies at the battle of Barbalissos (today’s Qala’at Balis) near Euphrates in 252, invaded Syria and Antioch, forcing the Romans to focus on the Eastern front. Valerian recaptured Antioch only to be defeated in 260 CE at the Battle of Urhoy (Edessa of Osrhoene, today’s Urfa in SE Turkey), which is the permanent nadir of Roman History, because Valerian was also held captive and grossly humiliated by the Iranians.
The serious challenges in the East were not the Roman Empire’s sole problem in the middle of the 3rd c. CE; in the northern borders, the wars with the Germans, the Goths and the various invaders produced an alarming situation too. Furthermore, financial difficulties caused because of various irregularities in the internal and external trade, the ensuing internal unrest, various natural disasters, the problems related to the succession, and the difficulty to efficiently rule the vast empire ended up in a system of administrative division as per which the empire would be governed by two senior emperors (titled ‘augusti’) and their deputies (named ‘caesar’), so four distinct rulers, each controlling one part of the empire.
The administrative novelty lasted for four decades from Diocletian to Constantine I (284-324). As system, it was effective because it helped the imperial class of Rome to reinstate public order, military discipline, urban safety, institutional functionality and operability. However, this development generated four operational capitals, thus reducing Rome to merely a nominal capital under a praefectus urbanus (or praefectus urbi), who was not anymore under the direct supervision of the emperor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy#Detailed_timeline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praefectus_urbi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_prefects_of_Rome#4th_century
During this period, the four capitals of the respective administrative divisions were:
– Mediolanum (today’s Milan) for Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northern Africa west of Cyrenaica;
– Augusta Treverorum (today’s Trier) for the territories of today’s France, England, Western Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands;
– Sirmium (today’s Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia’s Voivodina) for the empire’s Balkan territories; and
– Nicomedia (today’s Ismit in Turkey), for the Roman territories in Anatolia, North Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine, Egypt, and Cyrenaica.
The aforementioned system is now called ‘Tetrarchy’, but this is a modern scholarly term, and it does not have any historicity; the analogies with the Judean Tetrarchy (after the death of Herod I) and the infamous persons involved in the coinage of the term (notably the Social Darwinist German historian Otto Karl Seeck) render its use absolutely unnecessary.
However, Diocletian’s administrative reform was a must; to some extent, it reflected a Roman reaction to another earlier and very obnoxious development, which did not last long, but rang a warning bell for the imperial Roman elite; in 271 CE, the imperial territory was dramatically shrunk due to the secession of the Palmyrene (Tadmur) kingdom (270-273 CE) in the East and the Gallic state (260-274 CE) in the West. Basics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrene_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Empire
X. Praefectus Urbi; at the very Origin of the World’s most Perverse Theocracy: Papoceasarism
It is however noteworthy that Diocletian’s reform
a) familiarized Romans with operational capitals located far from Rome and at times on the very borderlines (notably Augusta Treverorum and Sirmium);
b) revealed that the empire’s main weakness was in the East, and this was due to the rise of the powerful Sassanid dynasty in Iran. The eastern Roman capital was located in the wider region of the Turkish straits and not in one of the two major cities in the East, namely Antioch and Alexandria, which were evidently viewed as very exposed to the Iranian armies and to other unpredictable challenges, notably various wealthy Aramaean ‘buffer kingdoms’ and caravan cities located between the Romans and the Iranians, such as Tadmur (Palmyra), Osrhoene (Edessa/Urhoy/Urfa), Adiabene, Hatra, Characene); and
c) generated as side-effect the concept of Rome being self-ruled and preserved in peace, while the operational capitals are far.
This reality, embodied in the status and the tenure of praefectus urbi, is the earliest form of Papocaesarism, i.e. the concept and practice of the Anti-Constantinopolitan popes of Rome. This concept stands at the antipodes of Caesaropapism, which was practiced in Constantinople and was imposed on Rome by Justinian I.
However, the opposition between Palace and Temple was the real historical background out of which the both, Caesaropapism and Papocaesarism, emanated as forms of spiritual, religious, theological and imperial juxtaposition and polarization; and this enormous background antedates the appearance of Constantinopolitan Caesaropapism and Roman Papocaesarism by at least 3500 years, as it is first attested in Sumer (South Mesopotamia) at the very middle of the 4th millennium BCE, even in period when no writing system had been introduced, but the archaeological material record is quite revelatory.
Without further expanding on the topic, which is vast and vastly documented either in the History of the Ancient Oriental empires or in the case of the ill-fated Roman Empire, I have however to admit that this contrasting issue (Caesaropapism vs. Papocaesarism) has played a determinant role in the permanent, fierce opposition between Rome and New Rome (Constantinople), extensively interacting also with the equally vast topic of the Sibylline Oracles and Books. The fact that the ominous contrast was carefully and systematically forsworn during no less than 3.5 centuries of pre-Christian imperial Roman rule demonstrates and confirms the absolutely sinister nature of Rome’s Christianization, which is something that very few people today are able to dissociate (as one always should) from the widespread diffusion of the early Christian faith and the rise of the Christian theology, namely the schools of Antioch, Alexandria, Caesarea of Cappadocia, Nisibis, Edessa of Osrhoene, and Seleucia-Ctesiphon (the Fathers of the Christian Church). Basics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesaropapism
N. R. Khan, Papocaesarism and Caesaropapism as Action Mechanisms of Christian Theocracy
http://vestnik.krsu.edu.kg/en/archive/39/1726
Download the PDF: / Скачать PDF:
It is quite interesting that the last holder of the title of praefectus urbi, after Rome’s fall (476 CE) and evidently much after the term had lost its entire importance, was none other than Pope Gregory I (590-604), one of the most anti-Constantinopolitan popes of the fallen Rome.
Texts, translations and further readings about the Sbylline Oracles and Books:
https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/Χρησμοί_Σιβυλλιακοί
https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/Χρησμοί_Σιβυλλιακοί/Βιβλίο_Γ
https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/sib15.htm
https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/
https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/sib05.htm
Download this PDF with list of resources (iconography and bibliography):
https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/bible/bible-pseudepigrapha/sibylline-oracles
https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/sibylline-oracles-iii46-62 (biased)
https://www.skarlakidis.gr/el/books/proaggeloi/25-2012-09-08-10-52-58.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylline_Oracles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylline_Books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl
XI. Constantine I, the Slow Rise of Christianity, and the Events Preceding the Construction of Constantinople
Constantine I advanced through the ranks during the times of Diocletian’s reform, which means that he understood the functionality of the system, its strengths and its weaknesses. His father, Constantius (also known as Constantius I; in later periods, he was usually called Chlorus), served as Caesar under Maximian. His capital was Augusta Treverorum (Trier, Germany). In 305, he was proclaimed Augustus with Mediolanum (Milan) as capital, while Galerius became Augustus in the East with capital at Laodicea (Izmit, Turkey). However, campaigning against the Picts in Scotland, he died in 306, thus opening the way for his son, Constantine (Flavius Valerius Constantinus), to be proclaimed Augustus by the Roman armies at Eboracum (York, North England). Constantine had spent many years in the courts first of Diocletian and then of Galerius, and during that period, he fought against barbarian invaders in the Balkan North and against the Iranians in Syria and Mesopotamia. Having asked permission to leave, Constantine joined his father in England few months before Constantius died.
Constantine’s territory comprised Gaul, Spain and England, but he was soon (end 306) challenged by Maxentius, who rebelled against him; a compromise was achieved between Maxentius’ father Maximian and Constantine, involving an imperial marriage between the latter and Maximian’s daughter Fausta. However, this solution did not last long, and the western half of the Roman Empire lived in absolute instability during 307-308. Since Galerius’ effort to pacify the rivals did not endure, Maximian revolted against Constantine in 310, but was defeated and forced to commit suicide. Constantine’s position was however very weak in the empire, as he was lacking a significant support; he therefore tried to get some religious backing, by replacing Ancient Roman gods with Sol Invictus Mithra as the supreme imperial deity and his own patron.
The period 310-324 CE represents a time of unrest and upheaval, not only at the administrative but also at the spiritual, cultural, and religious levels. The rivalry, fights, compromises, alliances and plots of several pretenders to the four imperial positions of the administratively divided empire produced a total chaos, which is not properly and impartially known to us, because many historical sources were deliberately destroyed (example: Constantine imposed damnatio memoriae on Maximian), various authors contradict one another, and even worse, the main Christian sources are highly untrustworthy, due to the extensively distortive effort, which was involved in writing a revisionist, pro-Constantine, biased narrative and a highly subjective and partial version of the facts.
A typical example of the degree of event falsification, which is commonly attested in these sources, is what we now call the Edict of Milan (Edictum Mediolanense; 313 CE). This was not a proper, solemn ‘edict’, but just an imperial letter dispatched by Licinius to the Roman administrative heads of his domain, namely the East; and it was sent from Nicomedia (only the meeting between Licinius and Constantine took place in Milan). This is how Lactantius, writing in Latin, describes it in his De Mortibus Persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors); however, Eusebius of Caesarea (Caesarea Maritima in Palestine), in his Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία (Latin: Historia Ecclesiastica/ English: Church History), presents the fact in a most solemn manner. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactantius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortibus_persecutorum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_History_(Eusebius)
https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0265-0339,_Eusebius_Caesariensis,_Historia_Ecclesiastica,_GR.pdf (page 174/180 of the PDF)
https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0265-0339,_Eusebius_Caesariensis,_Historia_ecclesiastica_%5BSchaff%5D,_EN.pdf (page 793/838 of the PDF)
https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lactantius/demort.shtml (scroll down: chapter 48)
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0705.htm (scroll down: chapter 48)
Of course, preposterous accusations of Eusebius for anti-Semitism are baseless and nonsensical, but one must admit that the Father of the Christian Church History presented his topics in very contrasting manner on a black and white background, eulogizing Constantine and vilifying Licinius in very subjective and peremptory way.
Following Galerius’ death, Constantine and Licinius had to strike an alliance to oppose their respective contenders, who made a strong bond against the two augusti. Constantine won Maxentius in the battle of Turin (Augusta Taurinorum) in 312 and little time later, in the battle of the Milvian Bridge (28 October 312), which has been highly mythologized by contemporaneous and posterior Christian historiographers, involving narratives about epiphany, dream revelations, supernatural phenomena, and spectacular solar halos. Basics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Turin_(312)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Milvian_Bridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Christianity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staurogram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stauros
Following Maxentius’ death and post-mortem dismemberment, systematic elimination of his public monuments and dismantlement of his guards, a real anti-Roman purge took place in Rome; the army of the imperial capital was totally disbanded. The Constantinian pogrom bore typical characteristics of a military coup. Numerous edifices were demolished and new structures built, while an enormous imperial propaganda was orchestrated to depict Constantine as ‘liberator’ in an effort to evidently break ground and depart from earlier Roman practices and traditions. Few people understand correctly what happened at those days; as a matter of fact, it had nothing to do with the rise of Christianity, as many erroneously assume, but it was rather the installation of an Anti-Christian regime in the semi-destroyed capital of the Roman Empire.
The disastrous developments brought Licinius back to the West, and it is on this background that the critical meeting between Licinius and Constantine took place in Milan (313). This event was later popularized as the beginning of the acceptance of Christianity in the Roman Empire, whereas in reality the then established force was determined to break down the imperial cult of Ancient Rome, i.e. the quintessence of the Roman identity, while progressively introducing doctrinal elements that had nothing in common with what the great theological schools of Christianity could ever accept (notably the temporal power of the so-called ‘holy see’).
Of course, as a military man with elementary education and insubstantial intellectual faculties, Constantine had absolutely no idea of what was going on around him. His supporters’, allies’ and advisers’ back thoughts, evil ideas, and sophisticated schemes would outlive him by millennia. That is why he unintentionally but easily fell victim of the flattering descriptions and comments, which still today constitute the major elements of what is called ‘Constantinian shift’ or ‘Constantinianism’. Basics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_of_ancient_Rome#The_Imperial_cult_and_Christianity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auctoritas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_power_of_the_Holy_See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinian_shift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabus_of_Errors
However, the aforementioned developments did not ensure peace in the divided Roman Empire; Licinius had to fight against Maximinus Daza in the battle of Tzirallum (in today’s Tekirdağ province of Turkey near the shore of the Sea of Marmara) and then to chase him up to Cilicia (Tarsus) where the unfortunate pretender died. Centrifugal forces were pulling the two augusti apart from one another, and the first battle between Licinius and Constantine took place in Cibalae (currently Vinkovci in Croatia) in late 316. Licinius lost also the battle in Mardia (presently Harmanli in Bulgaria’s Haskovo province), but Constantine’s subsequent miscalculations exposed him to risks and obliged him to make a peace deal at Serdica (Sofia) in early 317. It was clear that this would not last long and finally, after an early naval battle in 323, the battle of Adrianople (Edirne) in July 324, the naval battle of Hellespont (Dardanelles) in July 324, and the battle of Chrysopolis {Üsküdar on Istanbul’s Asiatic seaside, near Chalcedon ( Kadıköy)}, Licinius was finally defeated, imprisoned and then killed.
XII. Constantine I, New Rome (Constantinople), and the Reasons for it
Taking into consideration the fact that, few years before his final defeat, Licinius had restarted the persecutions against the Christians, Constantine I’s victory did not have only a personal but also an imperial dimension, underscoring the slow but solid process of Christianization that was already underway. There were several reasons that imposed the selection or construction of a new imperial capital. The Roman Quadrumvirate (or ‘tetrarchy’), which was initiated by Diocletian, proved to be as troublesome as the Roman Triumvirates, 400 years earlier, because it generated an inevitable antagonism. However, it also showed that critical changes had to be implemented and more importantly, there was an evident need of at least another capital closer to the northern and eastern borders. On the other hand, Diocletian’s capital (Nicomedia/Ismit), ca. 100 km east of the Bosporus straits, was known as the headquarters of the worst persecution against the Christians. Subsequently, the numerous, unprecedented developments that had taken place during the previous 40 years ruled out the selection of that city as new capital.
The apparent reasons that led Constantine I to the decision of founding a new capital in the location of today’s Istanbul are:
A- the need to better defend the eastern and the northern borders of the empire;
B- the urgency to often dispatch armies and fleets to the east within shorter time;
C- the demand for an impregnable capital;
In this regard, it is essential to note that the Bosporus and the Dardanelles constitute superb natural defenses against attacking fleets sailing from either the Black Sea or the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the Bosporus constitutes a formidable defense line against attacking armies coming from the East (Iran). In such occasions, Nicomedia would be far more exposed to the enemy.
D- the necessity to rupture with the earlier forms of spirituality, mysticism, religious traditions, eschatology, soteriology, and initiation rites that existed throughout the empire;
E- the exigency to strengthen the region (Roman civil diocese) of Macedonia where Christians were fewer than in the Italian Peninsula; here it has to be clarified that the Roman civil diocese of Macedonia encompassed all the southern confines of the Balkans, because the geographical / administrative term ‘Greece’ had already been abolished (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_diocese); and
F- the requirement to accommodate the desire to progressively transform Rome into a distant, yet authoritarian, religious capital for the entire Oecumene, which meant that either no emperor would have the city as capital or every local ruler would be subordinated to Rome’s urban and worldwide religious authority.
The comprehensive construction of the new city leaves no doubt that the earlier settlement (Byzantium) was -to its greatest extent- leveled to the ground and the entire site expanded after a new, entirely genuine and rather grandiose plan. The term ‘Byzantium’ was then obliterated and the city was proclaimed as capital on 11th May 330 CE under the name Nova Roma (‘New Rome’). Other names were also used, namely ‘Second Rome’ and ‘Eastern Rome’. We know that Constantine I did not name the city after himself; contrarily, he named a city in Palestine after his mother. This is actually the city’s worst point in its almost 1700-year long history. New Rome was also named Κωνσταντίνου Πόλις (‘Constantinou Polis’; Latin: Constantinopolis, i.e. Constantine’s city) later, but this was rather an adjectival use or a descriptive reference – and not an official name (Nova Roma Constantinopolitana).
This means that ‘Constantinople’ was not a name given to the city by its founder. It is therefore very wrong to make a parallelism between Alexander the Great and Constantine I, and imagine that ‘Constantinople’ is a name similar to ‘Alexandria’. The difference is not just the fact that the former is a composite name with two components, namely the emperor’s name and the Greek word for ‘city’ (polis); if Constantine I named after him the city that he founded, the name would be ‘Constantinia’. If that were the case, then most probably, Constantine I would also found other cities after him; but we know quite well that he did not do anything of the sort, although his architectural work is enormous in terms of urban expansion, military fortification, and sacral architectonics.
Several historical sources are missing due to successive destructions and at times because of premeditated acts; that is why our information is based on slightly later and often conflicting sources as per which in the official decree the city was called ‘Roma secunda’/’secunda Roma’ (Second Rome) or ‘Nova Roma’ (New Rome). The latter appellation is confirmed by Socrates of Constantinople, a 5th c. historian who is also known as Σωκράτης Σχολαστικός/Socrates Scholasticus; the former name is mentioned by Cassiodorus, a mainly 6th c. historian, who amongst others translated excerpts from Socrates Scholasticus’ works into Latin.
This is what Socrates of Constantinople states:
“he enlarged, surrounded with massive walls, and adorned with various edifices; and having rendered it equal to imperial Rome, he named it Constantinople, establishing by law that it should be designated New Rome. This law was engraven on a pillar of stone erected in public view in the Strategium, near the emperor’s equestrian statue“.
(edited and revised with notes by the Rev. A. C. Zenos, D.D.), book I, chapter XVI, p. 53/325
Basics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates_of_Constantinople
This is what Cassiodorus relates, translating Socrates Scholasticus’ text into Latin:
“Quae cum primitus Byzantium vocaretur, auxit, et maximo eam muro circumdedit, et diversis ornatum fabricis aequam Imperiali Romae constituit; et denominatam Constantinopolim appellari secundam Romam lege firmavit, sicut lex ipsa in marmoreal platona noscitur esse conscripta, et in Strategio juxta equestrem statuam eius est constituta“.
Basics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiodorus
XIII. New Rome (Constantinople): a Disadvantaged Location as per the Principles of Geographical Determinism
The imperial capital name issue was indeed a time bomb, which played a critically determinant role in the History of Christianity, in the History of the Roman Empire, in the History of the Mediterranean, in the History of Europe, and consequently in the History of the World. However, few people today know, let alone understand, the nature of this ferocious rivalry, which was due to many different factors.
A very crucial factor was the location of the new capital, if viewed through the viewpoint and the perspective of the ancient science of Geographical Determinism, which was greatly elaborated, continually studied, and effectively relied upon in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hittite Anatolia, Canaan-Phoenicia, Iran, Turan and China, before being further diffused among other nations and further developed down to Renaissance, when the rise of modern sciences overshadowed it. As per the principles of Geographical Determinism, the geomorphological location of New Rome (Constantinople) has several privileges, but in no way does it endow the city with traits of imperial capital. There cannot be capital of an empire that is located on the seashore, except for the case this empire is a counterfeit, devilish and ominous or eventually a cursed and maledicted state.
Successful capitals of empires can only be located nearby (or crossed by) rivers, at the confluence of two rivers, by the shores of a lake, at the foothills of mountains, and in vast plains or high plateaus. In other words, New Rome (Constantinople) would never make a Nineveh, a Babylon, an Assyria, a Hattusha, a Persepolis, an Istakhr or a Baghdad. Constantine’s city would never be the equivalent of Thebes of Egypt, Susa (the Ancient Elamite capital that the Achaemenids and Alexander made also theirs), Afrasiab – Samarqand, Xi’an {西安, i.e. the historical capital Chang’an (長安) of China} and Delhi. And it could not be a match for Rome.
Even worse, and despite its several undoubted privileges, New Rome was located in the maritime passageway between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea (namely the region of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus strait), which is not a recommendable location for cities, let alone capitals. It is interesting to note that, throughout World History and with the sole exception of Troy, there have not been major cities built in the maritime passageways. This concerns the Red Sea straits, the Persian Gulf straits, the Gibraltar straits, which are the most notable maritime passageways that have been historically documented and described.
To add insult to injury, New Rome (or Second Rome or Constantinople), constructed on European soil, contrarily to Diocletian’s capital Nicomedia, was the first imperial capital ever built in the Balkan Peninsula. This unprecedented fact highlights the urgency with which Constantine I was forced to act after his victory over Licinius. Back in the beginning of the 4th c. CE, it was very well known that no empire had ever existed on the Balkans. Alexander the Great abandoned his insignificant capital of Pella, and after conquering the Iranian Empire, selected the millennia long, holy Mesopotamian city of Babylon as his imperial capital.
When the Macedonian king arrived at the legendary city as a suppliant, the ‘Gate of God’ (this is the real name of Babylon: Bab-ili in Assyrian-Babylonian and KA-DINGIR-RAKI in Sumerian) had already a two millennia long historicity. No other city in the world, not even Thebes of Egypt, could at that time raise such a claim. As a pious and faithful emperor, Alexander zestfully renovated and resolutely rebuilt temples, altars, walls and palaces, therefore embellishing and expanding the only city in the History of the Mankind that was believed to be the center of the universe. This concept was later copied and reproduced by the Ancient Hebrews, the Jews, and the Muslims but in a rather trivial and extraneous manner.
As a matter of fact, the Balkan Peninsula was never home to great empires, even if we take into consideration the small kingdom of Macedonia, which was enormously despised and hated by the Greeks of the Balkans’ southern regions, if we are not ignorant, oblivious or mendacious enough to forget Demosthenes and his incessant diatribes and insults against the non-Greek Macedonians. When the empire of Alexander the Great was divided among the Epigones, the island of Crete was considered as Egyptian (not Macedonian) territory and it was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. Only the Eastern Roman and the Ottoman Empires were significant realms that controlled the Balkans, but the real center, the heart and the ‘soul’ of both states was Anatolia, not the Balkan Peninsula. Everything started in Anatolia and was then diffused in the Balkans; this has been the typical trait of History for more than 5000 years.
The above truthful remarks do not however mean that New Rome (Constantinople) was doomed since Day 1; no, not at all! But, on the basis of ancient sciences, wisdom, and geomorphological analysis, it would be very difficult for an empire to effectively endure, advance, and focus on an expanding line of imperial order, while having its capital located there. Perhaps, Constantine’s capital would be good enough for two or three centuries. Then, the imperial capital should eventually be transferred to another location, and more specifically in the central plateau of Anatolia, which had already been the high place of a remarkably successful empire.
For the case of Constantine’s capital, the earlier negative impression that was left out of the experience of four imperial capitals (Diocletian’s administrative reform and division) only prevented the sole ruler of the Roman Empire from reconsidering the option – under totally different terms of course. Yet, there were many empires known for having more than one capital at a time; Achaemenid Iran is the perfect example in this case. Parsa (Persepolis) was the main capital of Darius I the Great; Pasargad (Pasargadae) was the old capital of Cyrus II the Great; and Hegmat-ane (Ecbatana, today’s Hamedan), the old Median capital, was their summer capital. Furthermore, Susa (Shushin, today’s Shush), known as major urban center of civilization since the 4th millennium BCE and capital of the kingdom of Elam, was also made capital. Last but not the least, Babylon, one of Mesopotamia’s holiest and most ancient sites, capital of the Nabonid dynasty (625-539 BCE), which was overthrown by Cyrus, and one of the pre-Islamic world’s most advanced scientific, academic, spiritual and religious centers, was also an Achaemenid capital. But the eventuality of multiple Roman capitals was ruled out, at least for the rest of Constantine’s lifetime.
However, in addition to the improper location of the new capital, the name itself produced a major problem, which functioned, as I already said, like a real time bomb. If Antioch or Alexandria was then proclaimed as imperial capital, it would be eventually risky from a military/geostrategic viewpoint, but the entire trouble with the name would be avoided.
XIV. New Rome (Constantinople): a Christian Empire’s Capital lacking Christian Credentials
Founding a new capital in a disadvantaged location for imperial capitals and naming it after the earlier imperial capital, which was in the process of becoming the empire’s religious capital (at least this was then in the minds of Rome’s ‘Christian’ authorities) were not the sole ominous parameters of the foundation of New Rome. Although badly needed (the First Council of Christian Churches had to be held in Nicaea, today’s Iznik/Turkey, in May 325 CE), the new capital was quite prematurely constructed for a Christian Empire. Most of the people forget that, when New Rome was inaugurated in 330, the appearance of the newly-built capital had nothing in common with what one could describe 100 years later (around 430 CE) as a ‘Christian city’.
Although the gradual transformation of New Rome into a fully-fledged, ostensibly Christian urban center would not be, and proved not to be, a problem (and the new capital became an apparently Christian city after 380 CE, when the famous Edict of Thessalonica was promulgated), the real issue in 330 CE was a totally different issue. In reality, New Rome – Constantinople definitely lacked any Christian credentials, and -even worse- it was not located in a region known for its significant contribution to the then under formation Christian theology. Already, Rome was not a significant center of Christian theology and the local theologians were not doctrinally self-luminous; on the contrary, they extensively relied on the major schools of Christian theology, which were located in the East. This fact concerned New Rome even more markedly.
It is certain that Constantine I did his best to rapidly build great palaces, public buildings and temples; the famous Church of the Holy Apostles (after 1463-1470 it was rebuilt as Fatih Camii/Mosque) was constructed with the intention to transfer and accommodate the relics of all the twelve apostles of Jesus. Other objects deemed holy were also brought to the city in order to consecrate and protect the new capital: part of the Christian True Cross, the Rod of Moses, etc.; in this regard, it is essential to always bear in mind that most of these traditions may be part of the later need to build stronger testimonies justifying the position of New Rome as the imperial capital par excellence and as the leading Christian Church in the Orient. Basics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_of_Moses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehushtan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boukoleon_Palace
Despite the aforementioned effort and the evident magnificence of the new capital, which featured impressive squares like the Augustaeum, monumental gates like the Chalke and the Golden Gate, great palaces like the Great Palace and the Palace of Daphne, a Praetorium, a Curia, an hippodrome, impressive colonnades along the main streets, majestic edifices like the Milion, several fora (forums), and the walls, New Rome’s imperial propaganda could not match that of Rome, which had already been firmly propagated as the main religious center of Christianity on the basis of systematic myths and unsubstantiated legends.
A major point of the Roman propaganda about Rome’s credentials of Christianity is the narrative as per which apostles Peter and Paul founded the ‘Church of Rome’, before being supposedly martyred there at the time of Emperor Nero. The fable about Linus being ‘reportedly’ appointed as first bishop of Rome originates out of thin air; the entire story was fabricated by Irenaeus at a most crucial moment, when he was fighting against the Gnostic onslaught on the Christian faith in the middle of the 2nd c. CE. Irenaeus’ nonsensical comment about Tatian (the 2nd century’s leading theologian, author and exegete) being a follower of the Christian Gnostic theologian is quite enough to fully and irreversibly discredit the author of ‘Against Heresies’ (Adversus haereses/Κατά αιρέσεων).
Irrespective of Irenaeus’ veracity or prevarication, the fact is that Rome’s ‘Christian’ establishment had already produced its legends and propaganda tales, when New Rome was under construction. This situation, as it could be expected, produced its own dynamics which functioned in favor of Rome’s primacy (i.e. papal primacy). While building the new capital, Constantine also started and executed two major Christian architectural projects, namely the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the erection of the old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This is a good example of how the Roman primacy propaganda functioned at the time; the church was built on the hill where St. Peter had been supposedly buried and in this manner, an unsubstantiated narrative was ‘expected’ to be confirmed by a totally unfounded endeavor. All these aberrations would later be held as ‘proofs’ of Roman primacy. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_primacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_primacy#First_Council_of_Constantinople_and_its_context
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_papal_primacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great#Religious_policy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople#324%E2%80%93337:_The_refoundation_as_Constantinople
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre#Construction_(4th_century)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St._Peter%27s_Basilica
The elements of religious forgery usually intermingle with the various components of theological life, therefore creating tensions; all accounts made, the down-to-earth reality of the Early Christian Church was that of incessant theological polarizations, debates, interpretations, doctrines, disputes and treatises. In that level, neither Rome nor New Rome really mattered; in an era of ferocious Christological controversies, which started in the East, none of the two cities was known for its erudite scholars, knowledgeable exegetes, and wise Fathers of the Christian Church.
In this regard, the Alexandrian school of Christian theology had already greatly advanced in the 2nd c. CE; the main rival schools of Christian hermeneutics were the School of Antioch and the School of Urhoy (Edessa of Osrhoene). Later, in the middle of the 4th c. CE, great theological schools appeared also in Caesarea of Cappadocia, Nisibis (Northeastern Mesopotamia) and Seleucia-Ctesiphon (Central Mesopotamia). However, neither Rome nor New Rome had formed until the middle of the 4th c. CE similar centers of Christian Patristic literature. Almost all major Fathers of the Christian Church belonged to the schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, Caesarea, Nisibis and Seleucia-Ctesiphon. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechetical_School_of_Alexandria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechetical_School_of_Antioch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Edessa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_centers_of_Christianity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Nisibis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocian_Fathers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Seleucia-Ctesiphon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East
While victorious Constantine attempted to create an entirely new, Christian Roman Empire with capital in the East, the forces that had earlier supported him applied a wrong treatment on him; for these forces that dwelled in Rome, Constantine’s construction of a new capital far from Rome was conform to their interests, but his appellation of the new capital (New Rome) was unacceptable. Even worse, the great respect and love that the emperor felt and expressed toward Eusebius of Caesarea and Constantine’s tendency towards Arianism were intolerable and incalculably disastrous for them and their elaborately concealed version of counterfeit Christianity.
Today most of the people believe that Constantine was against Arius, but this is very wrong indeed; this is only the interpretation given to the facts by the systematic forgers, who many centuries later turned so openly and so vociferously against New Rome – Constantinople. In reality, in the beginning, Constantine I was rather neutral between the ardent theologian Arius and bishop Alexander of Alexandria; but he could not afford to oppose the majority of the participants of the First Council of Nicaea. However, one must remark that this theological dispute, which was in fact an internal affair of the Church of Alexandria (and had therefore to be solved within the limits of that Church), skillfully became a key topic for all Christian bishops and theologians only to subtly promote Rome’s position among the other Christian churches, already at a moment when the new capital, New Rome, was under construction (325).
This helps us also understand why the fervently built new capital did not have all the highest level dignitaries of Rome; there would not be and finally there were not ‘quaestors’ to supervise the public treasury, elected ‘tribunes’ to protect the people’s interests or ‘praetors’ to administer justice. The ‘senators’ of New Rome did not have the superlative title ‘clarissimus’, but the simple adjectival form (positive degree) of ‘clarus’. And atop of the new capital, there was a proconsul and not a praefectus urbanus (or praefectus urbi). This situation tells us clearly that, while New Rome was still under construction, there was already an opposite force at work.
For the forces that wanted to turn Rome into a religious capital of the entire empire, the new capital’s name New Rome was a permanent source of destabilization and discredit.
These are the forces that propagated the use of the name ‘Constantinople’ instead of ‘New Rome’ throughout the Roman Empire and kept pressurizing on this issue until the middle of the 15th c.
These are the same forces, which did not accept the New Roman/Constantinopolitan selection of the Roman popes, as Justinian I stipulated (a practice that lasted from 537 until 752).
These are the forces that opposed the Quinisext Ecumenical Council (Πενθέκτη Σύνοδος – Concilium Quinisextum), which was held in 692.
These are the forces that coined the nickname ‘Graeci’ (Greeks) for the Romans of the Eastern Roman Empire as early as the 8th c. CE.
These are the forces that triggered the Schism (first in 863-867 and finally in 1054) between Rome and New Rome – Constantinople.
– How can we identify them?
– The easiest and commonest way would be to call them ‘the anti-Constantinopolitan party of Rome’; they also had their fifth column in New Rome – Constantinople, i.e. the ‘pro-Roman party of Constantinople’.
However, this way of identification is external, confusing, and clearly misleading. This is so because for the forces that wanted to turn Rome into a religious capital of the entire empire (and later of the world/’Ecumene’), the imperial capital name issue was in reality only the smokescreen. As such, it was used by them to conceal a calamitous reality, which concerns the entire world today.
This reality was however known to the anonymous author of the illustrious Chronicon Paschale – only too well. That is why he denounced the calamitous reality, by naming New Rome – Constantinople simply, briefly and strictly ‘Rome’.
By so doing, the author of the Chronicon Paschale, who lived at the time of Emperor Heraclius (610-641), simply rejected flatly the Christian identity of Rome. If New Rome – Constantinople is the only Rome, then the old Rome is not ‘Rome’ anymore. This automatically means that the old Rome is not Christian at all.
How the centuries-long confrontation with the non-Christian (or pseudo-Christian or Anti-Christian) Rome dragged New Rome – Constantinople to several unnecessary compromises that brought about the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire, I will explain in the forthcoming second part of the present series of articles.
And how the confrontation between Rome and New Rome – Constantinople or, to put it correctly, between the Counterfeit Anti-Christian Rome and the True Rome (which is New Rome – Constantinople) continued during the Ottoman times (1453-1923), because Mehmet II’s ignorance, foolishness and idiocy led him to uselessly and calamitously invade New Rome – Constantinople, claim Roman continuity, and even proclaim himself as Roman Emperor (without having a clue of what it takes to be a Roman Emperor), I will explain in the forthcoming third part of the present series of articles.
One point can be surely deduced from the aforementioned presentation: the forces that wanted to turn Rome into a religious capital of the entire empire would have surely been satisfied, if in 476 CE both parts of the Roman Empire had collapsed and disintegrated at the same time. Then, they would not have needed to keep an ace up their sleeve for longer; they would have revealed their ominous intentions quite sooner. And the final deception, i.e. the anti-human, anti-Christian, and anti-Godly Renaissance, would have taken place almost 1000 years earlier.
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