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An ancient city of Thrace on the site of present-day Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by the Greeks in the seventh century B.C. and taken by the Romans in A.D. 196. Constantine I ordered the rebuilding of the city in 330 and renamed it Constantinople.
Byzantium, Greek city by the Propontis (the Sea of Marmora), at the southern end of the Bosporus on the European side, later renamed Constantinople (see below) and now Istanbul. It was magnificently situated, commanding the two opposite shores of Europe and Asia with the advantages of security and great facility for trade. It was originally founded by Megarians in the seventh century BC, opposite Chalcedon (the ‘city of the blind’, so called by the Delphic oracle because its earlier Megarian founders had failed to choose the superior site of Byzantium). Ruled by Persia from 512 to 478 BC, then alternately under Athenian and Spartan dominion in the fifth and fourth centuries, Byzantium was a formal ally of Athens from c.378 to 357 BC, and then again when successfully resisting Philip of Macedon in the famous siege of 340–339. The help supposedly given by the goddess Hecatē on this occasion was commemorated on Byzantine coins by her symbol of crescent and star (adopted by the Turks as their device after they captured the city in AD 1453). The city suffered severely from the Celtic (Gallic) invasions of the third century BC (see GALATIANS) and subsequently passed into the Roman empire, while remaining Greek in culture. It was chosen by the emperor Constantine for his new capital (AD 330), to be known thereafter in the West as Constantinople. When the Roman empire in the West finally collapsed in the fifth century under barbarian invasions (see FALL OF ROME) the eastern empire and its capital, firmly in the Greek world, flourished. The city's position as the capital of the eastern empire was interrupted in 1204 when it was captured by the French and Venetians (collectively known as Latins) during the Fourth Crusade, and became the seat of the Latin empire until restored to Greek possession in 1261. The last emperor, Constantine XIII, was killed when the city and empire fell to the Turks in 1453. See also BYZANTINE AGE.
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
an ancient city on the Bosporus founded by the Greeks; site of modern Istanbul
Byzantium (Greek: Βυζάντιον) was an ancient Greek city, which, according to legend, was founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas (Βύζας or Βύζαντας in Greek). The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion. The city is what later evolved to be the center of the Byzantine Empire, (the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages) with the name Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, the city became known as Istanbul to the Ottoman Turks, but that didn't become the official name of the city until 1930.
The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. The traditional legend has it that Byzas from Megara (a town near Athens), founded Byzantium, when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. Byzas had consulted the Oracle at Delphi to ask where to make his new city. The Oracle told him to find it "opposite the blind." At the time, he did not know what this meant. But when he came upon the Bosporus he realized what it meant: on the Asiatic shore was a Greek city, Chalcedon. It was they who must have been blind because they had not seen that obviously superior land was just a half mile away on the other side of the Bosporus. Byzas founded his city here in this "superior" land and named it Byzantion after himself. It was mainly a trading city due to its strategic location at the Black Sea's only entrance. Byzantion later conquered Chalcedon, across the Bosporus.
After siding with Pescennius Niger against the victorious Septimius Severus, the city was besieged by Roman forces and suffered extensive damage in AD 196. Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus, now emperor, and quickly regained its previous prosperity. The location of Byzantium attracted Roman Emperor Constantine I who, in AD 330, refounded it as Nova Roma. After his death the city was called Constantinople ('city of Constantine'). It remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was later called the Byzantine Empire by historians.
This combination of imperialism and location would affect Constantinople's role as the crossing point between two continents: Europe and Asia. It was a commercial, cultural, and diplomatic magnet. With its strategic position, Constantinople could control the route between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.
On May 29, 1453, the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, and, once again, became the capital of another powerful state, the Ottoman Empire. The Turks called the city Istanbul (though not officially renamed until 1930) and it has remained Turkey's largest (and arguably its most important) city, although Ankara is now the capital.
In 670 BC, the citizens of Byzantium claimed the crescent moon as their state symbol, after an important victory. However, the origin of the crescent moon and star as a symbol dates back much earlier - to ancient Babylon and ancient Egypt [1] [2]. Nevertheless, Byzantium was the first governing state to use the crescent moon as its national symbol. In AD 330 Constantine I added the Virgin Mary's star to the flag.
The crescent moon and star was not completely abandoned by the Christian world after the fall of Constantinople. To date the official flag of the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem is a labarum of white, a church building with two towers, and on either side of the arms, at the top, are the outline in black of a crescent moon facing center and a star with rays.[1]
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Classical Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Byzantium". Read more |
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