An infinite variety of interest attaches to these walls—from the gates that pierce them, the towers that flank them at intervals of some sixty feet, the devices, monograms, and inscriptions of every period they contain, the associations they have had so much time to accumulate. Two points, however, have a special interest for expert and layman alike. I have already spoken of Tekfour Seraï, where the Theodosian wall merges into later additions, and of the imperial quarter of Blacherne. I have yet to speak, even more cursorily, of the Golden Gate. This great triple portal and the marble towers flanking it existed before the walls themselves, having been built as a triumphal arch over the Egnatian Way by Theodosius the Great, after his defeat of Maximus in 388. The statue of the emperor and the other sculptures that adorned it once are gone, but you can still see over the central arch the rivet holes of the original inscription: HAEC LOCA THEVDOSIVS DECORAT POST FATA TYRANNI AVREA SÆCLO GERIT QVI PORTAM CONSTRVIT AVRO When the younger Theodosius extended the walls he made the Golden Gate a part of them, but kept it as the state entrance to the city. Distinguished guests were met there—ambassadors, visiting princes, at least one Pope. Holy processions burned their incense under that archway. Through it passed emperors in splendour when they came to the purple, or when they returned victorious from war. No gateway in Europe can have seen so much of the pomp and glory of the world. Now the arches are blind, save for one small postern in the centre, and that was nearly choked by an earthquake in 1912. One Roman eagle still looks down from a high marble cornice upon the moat, empty of all but garden green, and upon a colony of Turkish gravestones that stand among cypresses where the _Via Egnatia_ started away for the Adriatic.