The next gate was called that of S. Æmilianus, now Daoud Pasha Kapoussi, which ended the walls of Constantine along the shore. The next is the [Greek: porta tou Psamatha], Psamathia Kapoussi, named, as is the quarter, after the sand thrown up on the beach. The next, Narli Kapoussi, the Pomegranate gate, is that which gave admission to the monastery of the Studium. Here on the Decollation of S. John Baptist, August 29, the Emperor was received by the abbat and conducted in state to the church to attend the Eucharist of the day. On the tower close by is an inscription recording its reparation by Manuel Comnenus. Beyond was the church and monastery of Diomed, on whose steps Basil the Macedonian slept when he first came to Constantinople a homeless wanderer. The wall ends with the famous Mermer Kuleh. Perhaps this was at one time the prison of S. Diomed, where Pope Martin I. was placed in 654, and Maria Comnena, mother of Alexius II., was imprisoned by Andronicus Comnenus. Traces of a two-storeyed building still exist behind this magnificent tower which so splendidly ends the sea-walls.
[Illustration: THE MARBLE TOWER AT S.W. CORNER OF THE WALLS]
So we turn northwards and enter upon the famous defences, so long the bulwarks of the Empire.
Something has already been said about the building of the Theodosian walls. It has been seen that Anthemius who ruled as Prætorian prefect during the minority of the Emperor Theodosius II. enlarged and refortified the city, and that "the bounds he assigned to the city, fixed substantially her permanent dimensions, and behind the bulwarks he raised--improved and often repaired, indeed, by his successors--Constantinople acted her great part in the history of the world." Repaired by Constantine, then holding the office that had been held by Anthemius, thirty-four years after the first construction, "this was a wall, indeed, [Greek: to kai teichos ontôs][62]--a wall which, so long as ordinary courage survived, and the modes of ancient warfare were not superseded, made Constantinople impregnable, and behind which civilization defied the assaults of barbarism for a thousand years."
The walls stretch now from the marble tower to a short distance beyond the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. Originally they went further, but, as will be seen, they were superseded by newer fortifications beyond that point.