ABSTRACT
When the Persian Megabazos visited Byzantium in the fifth century BCE, he observed its marvellous position and, comparing it with that of Chalkedon on the Asian side of the narrow entrance to the Bosporus, remarked that its founders must have been blind not to have settled Byzantium first. 1 Both colonies were founded by Megara, with Chalkedon (founded 688 BCE) preceding Byzantium by some seventeen years. 2 These words of the Persian general became famous in antiquity, and we find them reverberating in a fictitious Delphic oracle given to the Megarians and ordering them to found the colony (Byzantium) ‘opposite the City of the Blind.’ 3
