At the same time, it is quite possible that the Campus of the Hebdomon extended some distance towards the city. The plain was not a mathematical point, and a portion of it may have been nearer the city than the seventh milestone itself was. That must be decided by the nature of the ground, not by subjective considerations. But to make the plain reach to the city walls for the reason assigned is preposterous. This brief account of the arguments with which Gyllius and Du Cange upheld their views must suffice. For all the evidence at our command goes to prove that the suburb occupied the site of the modern village of Makrikeui. In support of this proposition there are, first, express statements to the effect that the Hebdomon, taken as a whole, was seven miles distant from the city. That is how Theophylactus Simocatta,[1198] for instance, indicates the situation of the suburb: “It was a place seven miles from the city”—ἐν τῷ λεγομένῳ Ἑβδόμῳ (τόπος δὲ οὗτος τοῦ ἄστεος ἀπὸ σημείων ἑπτὰ). That is how Idatius, also, describes the suburb’s position, when speaking of the inauguration of Valens and of Arcadius there: “Levatus est Constantinopoli in Milliario VII.”[1199] And it is in the same terms that Marcellinus Comes refers to the suburb, when he records the fact that Honorius was created Cæsar in it: “Id est, septimo ab urbe regia milliario.” To understand such expressions as denoting the whole territory between the walls of the city and the seventh milestone is out of the question. As employed by these writers, the term “Hebdomon” or “Septimum” means a definite place, reached only when a person stood seven miles from the point whence distances from Constantinople were measured. In the second place, not only is the Hebdomon, as a whole, described as being seven miles from the city, but the particular objects found there are similarly identified. The Church of St. John the Baptist in that suburb, Sozomon,[1200] Socrates,[1201] and John of Antioch[1202] state in express words, was seven miles from the city. The Church of St. John the Evangelist, which stood in the suburb, is declared by Socrates[1203] to have been at the same distance. Thus, also, the Campus of the Hebdomon is described by Cedrenus as “the plain in front of the city, seven miles distant.”[1204] The Imperial Tribune in that Campus was, according to Idatius and Marcellinus Comes, at the seventh mile: “In milliario septimo, in Tribunali;” “Septimo ab urbe regia milliario.” So, likewise, the palace which Justinian the Great built at the Hebdomon[1205] is described, in the subscription to several of his laws, as at the seventh mile: “Recitata septimo milliario hujus inclytæ civitatis, in Novo Consistorio Palatii Justiniani.”[1206] In all these passages the Hebdomon is defined with a precision that renders any vague and loose application of the term impossible, if language has any meaning. So much for the distance of the Hebdomon from the city.