Thither, also, on account of the wide and free space afforded by the plain the population of the city fled, on the occasion of a violent earthquake, to find a temporary abode, or to take part in public supplications for the withdrawal of the calamity.[1234] Such services were attended by the emperor and the patriarch, and it was on such an occasion that the Emperor Maurice, a particularly devout man, and the Patriarch Anatolius, proceeded from the city to the Campus, on foot.[1235] It was customary, moreover, to hold religious services at the Campus on the anniversary of a great earthquake, to avert the recurrence of the disaster, or to celebrate the fact that it had not been attended with loss of life.[1236] There, also, public executions took place,[1237] or the heads of persons executed elsewhere were set up for public gaze, as in the case of the Emperor Maurice and his five sons.[1238] But the chief interest of the Hebdomon belongs to it on account of the many associations of the suburb with the life of the Byzantine Court. There, in the early days of the Eastern Empire, while old Roman customs prevailed and the army continued to be a great political factor, an emperor often assumed the purple, in the presence of his legions and a vast concourse of the citizens of the capital. At the suburb, also, triumphal processions sometimes commenced their march to the Golden Gate and the city. And there the emperors had a palace to which they resorted for country air, or to escape the turbulence of the Factions, or to take part in the State ceremonies performed on the adjoining Campus. The earliest reference to the Hebdomon, though not by name, is in connection with the inauguration of Valens there, in 364, as the colleague of his brother, the Emperor Valentinian: “Valentem, in suburbanum, universorum sententiis concinentibus (nec enim audebat quisquam refragari) Augustum pronuntiavit; decoreque imperatorii cultus ornatum et tempore diademate redimitum in eodem vehiculo secum reduxit.”[1239] In commemoration of the event Valens erected a tribune, adorned with many statues, for the accommodation of the emperors when taking part in State functions on the Campus of the suburb.[1240] It was known as the Tribune of the Hebdomon (ἐν τῷ Τριβουναλίῳ Ἑβδόμου).[1241] [Illustration: Triumphus Theodosii.] Valens also provided the Harbour of the Hebdomon with a quay, and showed his partiality for the suburb otherwise to such an extent that Themistius ventured to expostulate with him, and to charge him with forgetting to improve and beautify the capital.[1242]