The passion for bricks and mortar consumed him. Like Augustus, he thought that a great imperial city could not be too lavishly adorned as a visible proof of present magnificence and a guarantee of future permanence. Nor was it in Constantinople alone that he built. Throughout his reign new public buildings kept rising in Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and the cities of Gaul. His impatience manifested itself in his letters to his provincial governors. “Send me word,” he wrote imperiously to one of them, “not that work has been started on your buildings, but that the buildings are finished.” To build Constantinople he ransacked the entire world, first for architects and builders, and then for art treasures. With such impetuous haste there was sure to be scamped work. Some of the buildings crumbled at the first slight tremor of earthquake or did not even require that impulse from without to collapse into ruin. It is by no means impossible that the havoc which seems to have been wrought in Constantinople by earthquakes during the next two or three centuries was largely due, not to the violence of the seismic disturbances but to insecure foundations and bad materials. The cynical Julian compared the city of Constantine to the fabled gardens of Adonis, which were planted afresh each morning and withered anew each night. Doubtless there was a substantial basis of fact for that bitter jibe. Yet, when all allowances are made, it was a marvellous city which Constantine watched as it rose from its foundation. Those who study the archæology of Constantinople in the rich remains which have survived in spite of Time and the Turk, are surprised to find how constantly the history of the particular spot which they are studying takes them straight back to Constantine. Despite the multitude of Emperors and Sultans who have succeeded him, each anxious to leave his mark behind him in stone, or brick, or marble, Constantinople is still the city of Constantine. In the centre, he laid out the Augustæum, the ancient equivalent, as it has well been pointed out, of the modern “Place Imperiale.” It was a large open space, paved throughout in marble, but of unknown shape, and historians have disagreed upon the probability of its having been circular, square, or of the shape of a narrow rectangle. It was full of noble statuary, and was surrounded by an imposing pile of stately buildings. To the north lay the great church of Sancta Sophia; on the east the Senate House of the Augustæum, so called to distinguish it from the Senate House of the Forum; on the south lay the palace, entered by an enormous brazen gate, called Chalce, the palace end of the Hippodrome, and the Baths of Zeuxippus. The street connecting the Augustæum with the Forum of Constantine was known as Μέση, or Middle-street, and was entered on the western side. In the Augustæum, which later Emperors filled with famous statues, there stood in Constantine’s day a single marble column known as the Milion—from which