Byzas
Legendary founder of Byzantium, later Constantinople and Istanbul.
Byzas was the legendary founder of Byzantium, the city later known as New Rome and Constantinople and today called Istanbul. The city is home to 18% of the population of Turkey.
Quick Facts
- Parents
- Keroessa or Semystra and Poseidon
- Birthplace
- Megara
Facts from the source article.
Background
The legendary history of Byzantium's founding is most fully preserved in the Patria of Constantinople by the 6th-century writer Hesychius of Miletus, which records multiple versions of the myth. Hesychius' preferred account states the city received its name from Io, daughter of the Argive king, who was raped by Inachus and transformed into a cow. Zeus loved Io, and Hera sent a gadfly to drive her to Thrace, where she gave birth to Ceroessa, mother of Byzas by Poseidon. Another tradition holds that the city was founded by Argives following an oracle at Delphi, while others claim Megarians led by Byzas, or that Byzas is the son of the nymph Semystra.
Founder of Byzantium
During the 7th century BC, the Dorian city-state of Megara sought a colony site. King Nisos sent his son Byzas to find 'the land opposite the city of the blind' after consulting the oracle of Delphi. Byzas arrived where the Sea of Marmara meets the Bosporus, on the border of Europe and Asia, and understood the oracle: the colony of Chalcedon on the Asian shore was the 'city of the blind' because it had not chosen the European shore. Byzas built his new city on the European shore at the southern end of the Bosporus and named it Byzantion. He later married Phidalea, daughter of King Barbizos of Thrace. The inhabitants considered Byzas their founder and honored him with a statue of himself and Phidalea in a prominent place. The colony commanded the entrance to two seas: the Black Sea through the Bosporus and the Aegean Sea through the Sea of Marmaras. The Greek historian Herodotos wrote that the Persian general Megabazus called the people of Chalcedon blind for choosing the worse site.
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