Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities

by Bettany Hughes

The Turks use a special tense when describing the legends of their city – ‘as was remembered’.

The ancient Greeks had no separate word for religion.

She also appeared on the city’s coins and is, a little unexpectedly, still a ghost in Istanbul today – it is a Hecate-style star and moon that adorn the blood-red Turkish flag.

Helena’s historical circumstances almost certainly form the basis of the Cinderella story – a humble beginning that would become a globally significant fairy-tale.

Women in the city were still fed half-rations, as they had been throughout classical antiquity. They were still the daughters of Eve.4

The opening three lines of the Codex defined life under law as living honestly, hurting no one and giving each their due. This is Justinian as the new Solomon. And although the enterprise was predominantly practical, a vast operation in the cataloguing and control of history, it is also (with some marked exceptions) remarkably progressive, both socially and intellectually.

There is a sense around this time that Britain has at last been regained as part of the oikoumene – a liminal land, a ferox provincia16 but a territory that practically and emotionally was happy to be a part of something bigger than itself.

That's changed recently then.