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Updated: June 20, 2025
In B.C. 408 the important towns of Chalcedon, Selymbria, and Byzantium fell into the hands of the Athenians, thus leaving them undisputed masters of the Propontis. These great achievements of Alcibiades naturally paved the way for his return to Athens. In the spring of 407 B.C. he proceeded with the fleet to Samos, and from thence sailed to Piraeus.
The embrasures of some of its towers, as well as of the towers that flank the ramparts of the town from the southern angle of the castle to the sea, blackened as is supposed by the Greek fire, announce that it was the principal bulwark of the city on the side of the Propontis, in the latter times of the empire.
The northern shores of the AEgean and the Propontis, and the whole coast of the Euxine were strewn with Greek settlements. The Greek towns, especially Miletus, on the western coast of Asia Minor, themselves sent out colonies, as Cyzicus and Sinope, south of the Propontis and the Euxine. The foregoing statements give only a general idea of the wide extent of Greek colonization.
Pompey was still contending with Sertorius, and Metellus by age unfit for service; which two alone were the competitors who could prefer any claim with Lucullus for that command. Cotta, his colleague, after much ado in the senate, was sent away with a fleet to guard the Propontis, and defend Bithynia.
On April 6th Sultan Mahomet II encamped on the slope of the hill facing the quarter of Blachern, a little beyond the ground occupied by the crusaders in 1203, and immediately ordered the construction of lines extending from the head of the port to the shore of the Propontis.
The youth was dismissed from the perils of the Turkish war, by the paternal care of the emperor Romanus: but the mother of the Comneni, with her aspiring face, was accused of treason, and banished, by the sons of Ducas, to an island in the Propontis.
Hence he sailed to Eubea, thence to Lesbos, where Agrippina was delivered of Julia, who proved her last birth; then he kept the coast of Asia and visited Perinthus and Byzantium, cities of Thrace, and entered the straits of Propontis, and the mouth of the Euxine; fond of beholding ancient places long celebrated by fame: he relieved at the same time, the provinces wherever distracted with intestine factions, or aggrieved with the oppressions of their magistrates.
Old Chiron came down from his hills to cheer them, and pray for their return; and as the oars kept measured time, Orpheus struck his lyre in tune with their splash in the blue waters. They had many adventures. After passing the Hellespont, they found in the Propontis, which we call the Sea of Marmora, an islet called the Bears’ Hill, inhabited by giants with six arms, whom they slew.
Bajazet carried his victorious arms from the Danube to the Euphrates, and the Roman world became contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth, a space of ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains of Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and populousness of a kingdom.
At a small distance from the old castles we discover the little town of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, which may almost be considered as the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople. The Bosphorus, as it begins to open into the Propontis, passes between Byzantium and Chalcedon.
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