Constantinopolis

About 541 he removed to Constantinopolis, where he received every mark of imperial favour both from Justinianus and Justinus the Second.

Thus the Roman emperor Severus had destroyed the Hellenistic city; as to the emperor Constantine, he tore down pagan monuments to rebuild Byzantium as Constantinopolis, the capital of a Christian empire.

Like the monuments culled from the cities and sanctuaries of the Roman world, the relics of Constantinopolis created a history for the city both through individual identity and their status as appropriated objects.

Nonetheless, in the fourth century, Roma began to appear in a new guise, in a whole series of official images from coins to consular diptychs, more or less twinned with her upstart “sister”, Constantinopolis.