were therefore
directed to institute schools, to appoint professors, and by the hopes
of rewards and privileges to engage in the study and practice of
architecture a sufficient number of ingenious youths who had received a
liberal education. The buildings of the new city were executed by such
artificers as the reign of Constantine could afford; but they were
decorated by the hands of the most celebrated masters of the age of
Pericles and Alexander. To revive the genius of Phidias and Lysippus
surpassed indeed the power of a Roman emperor; but the immortal
productions which they had bequeathed to posterity were exposed without
defence to the rapacious vanity of a despot.

By his commands the cities of Greece and Asia were despoiled of their
most valuable ornaments. The trophies of memorable wars, the objects of
religious veneration, the most finished statues of the gods and heroes,
of the sages and poets, of ancient times, contributed to the splendid
triumph of Constantinople, and gave occasion to the remark of the
historian Cedrenus, who observes, with some enthusiasm, that nothing
seemed wanting except the souls of the illustrious men whom those
admirable monuments were intended to represent. But it is not in the
city of Constantine, nor in the declining period of an empire, when the
human mind was depressed by civil and religious slavery, that we should
seek for the souls of Homer and of Demosthenes.

During the siege of Byzantium the conqueror had pitched his tent on the
commanding eminence of the second hill. To perpetuate the memory of his
success, he chose the same advantageous position for the principal
forum, which appears to have been of a circular or rather elliptical
form. The two opposite entrances formed triumphal arches; the porticos,
which enclosed it on every side, were filled with statues; and the
centre of the forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated
fragment is now degraded by the appellation of the "burnt pillar." This
column was erected on a pedestal of white marble twenty feet high, and
was composed of ten pieces of porphyry, each of which measured about ten
feet in height and about thirty-three in circumference. On the summit of
the pillar, above one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, stood the
colossal statue of Apollo. It was of bronze, had been transported either
from Athens or from a town of Phrygia, and was supposed to be the work
of Phidias. The artist had represent