CHAPTER IV


On the shore to the right of the port of Byzantium were at that time
thickly scattered the villas or suburban retreats of the wealthier and
more luxurious citizens. Byzantium was originally colonized by the
Megarians, a Dorian race kindred with that of Sparta; and the old
features of the pure and antique Hellas were still preserved in
the dialect,[19] as well as in the forms of the descendants of the
colonists; in their favourite deities, and rites, and traditions; even
in the names of places, transferred from the sterile Megara to that
fertile coast; in the rigid and helot-like slavery to which the native
Bithynians were subjected, and in the attachment of their masters to
the oligarchic principles of government. Nor was it till long after
the present date, that democracy in its most corrupt and licentious
form was introduced amongst them. But like all the Dorian colonies,
when once they departed from the severe and masculine mode of life
inherited from their ancestors, the reaction was rapid, the degeneracy
complete. Even then the Byzantines, intermingled with the foreign
merchants and traders that thronged their haven, and womanized by the
soft contagion of the East, were voluptuous, timid, and prone to every
excess save that of valour. The higher class were exceedingly wealthy,
and gave to their vices or their pleasures a splendour and refinement
of which the elder states of Greece were as yet unconscious. At a
later period, indeed, we are informed that the Byzantine citizens
had their habitual residence in the public hostels, and let their