ABSTRACT
On the death of Theodosius I in AD 395, Constantinople had been an imperial seat for over sixty years, since the refoundation of the classical city of Byzantium as Constantinople (‘the city of Constantine’) by Constantine the Great. Although it is common to refer to it as the eastern capital, this is not strictly correct: Constantine founded it along the lines of existing tetrarchic capitals such as Nicomedia and Trier, and although he naturally resided there for most of the time from its dedication in AD 330 to his death in AD 337 he seemed to envisage a return after his death to an empire partitioned geographically between several Augusti (Eusebius, Vita Constantini IV.51).1 This division did not work out in practice: fighting soon broke out after Constantine’s death, and by AD 350, with the death of the second of his three surviving sons, the third, Constantius II, became sole emperor like his father. Nevertheless, there were often two or more Augusti ruling together during the later fourth century, and it was not a novelty in itself when on the death of Theodosius I the empire was ‘divided’ between his two sons Honorius and Arcadius. What was different now however was the fact that the two halves of the empire began to grow further and further apart.
