he first is the Tep-Kapou (Cannon Gate), or Porta
Sancti Romani. This was the weakest part of the fortifications of
Constantinople, the "heel of Achilles", as it has been well called,[24]
and here the last Roman Emperor of the East, Constantine Palaeologus,
died bravely in the breach for the cause of Christianity and
civilisation, The other gate is the Porta Aurea, a fine triple gateway,
the centre arch of which rests on two Corinthian pilasters. Through this
gateway--the nearest representative of the Capitoline Hill at Rome--the
Eastern Emperors rode in triumphant procession when a new Augustus had
to be proclaimed, or when an enemy of the Republic had been defeated. It
is possible that Theodoric may have seen Anthemius, the Emperor whom
Constantinople gave to Rome, ride forth through this gate (467) to take
possession of the Western throne: possible too that the great but
unsuccessful expedition planned by the joint forces of the East and West
against the Vandals of Africa may have had its ignominious failure
hidden from the people for a time by a triumphal procession through the
Golden Gate in the following year (468). This gate is now walled up, and
tradition says that the order for its closure was given by Mohammed, the
Conqueror, immediately after his entry into the city, through fear of an
old Turkish prophecy, which declared that through this gate the next
conquerors should enter Constantinople.

[Footnote 24: By Dr. Dethier. "Bosphore et Constantinople", p. 51.]

Of the palace of the Emperor, into which the young Goth was ushered by
the eunuch-chamberlain, no vestige probably now remains. The Seraglio
has replaced the Palation, and is itself now abandoned to loneliness and
decay, being only the recipient of one annual visit from the Sultan,
when he goes in state to kiss the cloak of Mohammed. The great mosque of
St. Sophia on the right is a genuine and a glorious monument of Imperial
Constantinople, but not of Constantinople as Theodoric saw it. The
basilica, in which he probably listened with childish bewilderment to
many a sermon for or against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon,
was burnt down sixty years after his visit in the great Insurrection of
the "Nika", and the noble edifice in which ten thousand Mussulmans now
assemble to listen to the reading of the Koran, while above them the
Arabic names of the companions of the Prophet replace the mosaics of the
Evangelists, is itself the work of the great