The year 667 BCE marks the traditional founding of Byzantium by Byzas, a king from Megara. He sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea to establish this new settlement. Herodotus provides the authority for this date, stating the city was founded seventeen years after Chalcedon. Eusebius wrote almost eight hundred years later and offered different dates, suggesting 656 BCE or slightly earlier. Constantine the Great celebrated the thousandth anniversary between 333 and 334 CE, favoring Herodotus's timeline. This location at the Black Sea's only entrance made it a vital trading hub. The city eventually conquered Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. Persian forces took control during Darius I's Scythian campaign in 513 BCE. Sparta seized the city in 411 BCE to cut off grain supplies to Athens. Athenian troops retook Byzantium in 408 BCE after Spartans withdrew.
Etymology And Naming Conventions
Scholars remain uncertain about the true origin of the name Byzantium. One theory suggests Thracian roots derived from the personal name Byzas meaning he-goat. Pliny the Elder mentions an earlier name Lygos corresponding to a Thracian settlement. Ancient Greek texts used Byzántios to describe the inhabitants as both an ethnonym and family name. During the Middle Ages, Byzántion served as a synecdoche for the entire eastern Roman Empire. The Latin form Byzantinus evolved into English terms like besant and byzant by the twelfth century. These words originally referred to gold coinage before becoming common names for the empire itself. Historian Hieronymus Wolf introduced Byzantium as a term for the east Roman state in 1555. This occurred one hundred years after the last remnants of the empire ceased to exist. Inhabitants continued calling their polity the Roman Empire until its final collapse.