e habits of forty years. Rome was insensibly
confounded with the dependent kingdoms which had once acknowledged
her supremacy; and the country of the Caesars was viewed with cold
indifference by a martial prince, born in the neighborhood of the
Danube, educated in the courts and armies of Asia, and invested with
the purple by the legions of Britain. The Italians, who had received
Constantine as their deliverer, submissively obeyed the edicts which he
sometimes condescended to address to the senate and people of Rome;
but they were seldom honored with the presence of their new sovereign.
During the vigor of his age, Constantine, according to the various
exigencies of peace and war, moved with slow dignity, or with active
diligence, along the frontiers of his extensive dominions; and was
always prepared to take the field either against a foreign or a domestic
enemy. But as he gradually reached the summit of prosperity and the
decline of life, he began to meditate the design of fixing in a more
permanent station the strength as well as majesty of the throne. In the
choice of an advantageous situation, he preferred the confines of Europe
and Asia; to curb with a powerful arm the barbarians who dwelt between
the Danube and the Tanais; to watch with an eye of jealousy the conduct
of the Persian monarch, who indignantly supported the yoke of an
ignominious treaty. With these views, Diocletian had selected and
embellished the residence of Nicomedia: but the memory of Diocletian was
justly abhorred by the protector of the church: and Constantine was not
insensible to the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate
the glory of his own name. During the late operations of the war against
Licinius, he had sufficient opportunity to contemplate, both as a
soldier and as a statesman, the incomparable position of Byzantium;
and to observe how strongly it was guarded by nature against a hostile
attack, whilst it was accessible on every side to the benefits of
commercial intercourse. Many ages before Constantine, one of the most
judicious historians of antiquity had described the advantages of a
situation, from whence a feeble colony of Greeks derived the command of
the sea, and the honors of a flourishing and independent republic.

If we survey Byzantium in the extent which it acquired with the
august name of Constantinople, the figure of the Imperial city may be
represented under that of an unequal triangle. The obtuse point, whi