Byzantium

Byzantium was a Greek city, according to legend first settled by Megarians and Argives under (the probably fictional) Byzas about 657 B.C.. Over the centuries, it became or Constantinople' was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. in 196 A.D. it became nearly completely destroyed by Septimus Severus. Later, he rebuild large parts of the town and renamed it Augusta Antonia. The city was refounded by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 330 A.D. with special ceremonies, and became shortly afterwards the new capital of the Roman Emperor. It remained the capital of the eastern part of the empire when the empire was divided into two halves in 395 A.D., and wheras the western half fell to Barbarian invasions in the space of less than a century, the eastern half survived through the entire Medieval period. The centre of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, it was sacked by the Western Christian forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and wasn't regained by the Byzantines, under Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologous, until 1261. After this it grow weaker and smaller, until Constantinople finally fell to the Turks in 1453 A.D.. It is today the Turkish city of Istanbul.