ABSTRACT
In the second half of the seventh century BC Greek colonists from Megara founded the city of Byzantium on the European shore of the Bosporus. In about 150 BC, even before Macedonia became a Roman province (148 BC), this city became a dependency of the Romans. It soon became the eastern terminus of the Egnatian Way, which led to Thessalonike in Macedonia and to Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic. The emperor Septimius Severus laid siege to the city, which had sided with his rival Pescennius Niger, in AD 193, took it after almost three years, destroyed its walls, and let his soldiers loot it. He soon rebuilt it on a larger scale. Constantine, too, as mentioned in Chapter 6, had to besiege the city in the course of his second war against Licinius. The advantages of its location will not have been lost to Constantine’s trained eye, just as they had not been lost to the Athenians or to the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, or to Philip II of Macedon in his quest for power.
