Book 4

The Oracle Found in the Walls of Chalcedon

The emperor issued an order that the walls of Chalcedon, a city across the water from Byzantium, should be torn down. He had sworn to do this once he had conquered the usurper, because the people of Chalcedon had taken the usurper’s side, had used insulting language toward Valens, and had shut their gates against him as he passed by their city. So, in keeping with the imperial decree, the walls were razed, and the stones were carried to Constantinople to be used in building the public baths called the Constantianae. On one of these stones an oracle was found engraved, which had lain hidden for a long time. It predicted that when the city was supplied with plenty of water, the wall would serve for a bath; and that countless hordes of barbarian nations would overrun the provinces of the Roman empire and do a great deal of harm, but would themselves be destroyed in the end. We will set down the oracle here for the pleasure of the studious:

“When nymphs shall dance their mystic dance with watery feet

Through proud Byzantium’s stately street;

When rage shall overthrow the city wall,

Whose stones shall go to fence a bathing place:

Then savage lands will send forth countless swarms,

Adorned with golden hair and burnished arms,

Who, having crossed the Danube’s silver streams,

Will lay waste the Scythian fields and Moesia’s meadows.

But when, flushed with conquest, they enter Thrace,

Fate will assign them there a burial place.”

That was the prophecy. And it did in fact happen afterward that, when Valens supplied Constantinople with plenty of water by building an aqueduct, the barbarian nations made various invasions, as we will see later. But some people explained the prediction differently. When that aqueduct was finished, Clearchus, the prefect of the city, built a stately bath, which was given the name “the Plentiful Water,” in what is now called the Forum of Theodosius. Because of it the people held a festival with great rejoicing, and in this, they say, those words of the oracle were fulfilled:

“dance their mystic dance with watery feet

Through proud Byzantium’s stately street.”

But the prophecy was fulfilled later. While the demolition was going on, the people of Constantinople begged the emperor to stop tearing down the walls, and the people of Nicomedia and Nicaea sent from Bithynia to Constantinople with the same request. The emperor, however, was so enraged against the people of Chalcedon that he could hardly be brought to listen to these petitions in their favor. But to keep his oath, he ordered that the walls be pulled down, while at the same time the gaps were to be repaired by filling them in with other, small stones. That is why, to this day, one can see in certain parts of the wall very poor materials laid on top of enormously large stones, forming the ugly patches that were made on that occasion. That is enough about the walls of Chalcedon.