Uncovering major bath complexes
Jun 11, 2013 6:59:08 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2013 6:59:08 GMT -5
Mr. Frankopan, at once Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, has written in to pose for us a number of questions: "Why was Constantinople built in the first place?" is his first. Then he evidently greatly puzzled repeats it in a different form: "What was the fundamental purpose of Constantinople?" He continues with "What was wrong with cities like Nikomedia, a long-established location on the imperial gallop through the eastern provinces, and what is more, not far away in northern Asia Minor? Why was a major new urban centre needed, and whom was it for?"
And he gives us a glimpse of a learned man's botherations: "It is frustrating that there is still much about Constantinople that remains hidden beneath the streets of modern Istanbul: none of the major bath complexes known from the written sources has been uncovered, while the precise location of some of its largest early churches remains obscure." [I think there he should have written "the precise locations . . . remain obscure."]
"The best we can do is to use texts like the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanæ, which sets out the physical layout of the city in the fifth century, and try to use that as a guide to work out what was where in the metropolis. Later travellers' accounts from the sixteenth century also give glimpses of how things had once been - such as the enormous statue of the Emperor Justinian that was being demolished as Peter Gilles visited the city in the sixteenth century, in order to be melted down into Ottoman cannons."
And he gives us a glimpse of a learned man's botherations: "It is frustrating that there is still much about Constantinople that remains hidden beneath the streets of modern Istanbul: none of the major bath complexes known from the written sources has been uncovered, while the precise location of some of its largest early churches remains obscure." [I think there he should have written "the precise locations . . . remain obscure."]
"The best we can do is to use texts like the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanæ, which sets out the physical layout of the city in the fifth century, and try to use that as a guide to work out what was where in the metropolis. Later travellers' accounts from the sixteenth century also give glimpses of how things had once been - such as the enormous statue of the Emperor Justinian that was being demolished as Peter Gilles visited the city in the sixteenth century, in order to be melted down into Ottoman cannons."