Chron. Paschale I, 527-30: Under these consuls² the illustrious Emperor Constantine, having come from Rome and being resident at Nicomedia (the metropolis of Bithynia), paid repeated visits to Byzantium. He renewed the original walls of the city of Byzas and made many additions to them which he joined to the ancient walls,³ and he called the city Constantinople. He also completed the Hippodrome⁴ which he decorated with bronze statues and other embellishment, and made in it a loge for the emperor to watch [the games from] in imitation of the one in Rome. He built a big palace near the said Hippodrome and connected it with the loge of the Hippodrome by an ascending [staircase] called cochlias. He also constructed a big and very beautiful forum and set up in the center of it a tall column of purple Theban stone worthy of admiration. At the top of this column he set up a big statue of himself with rays on his head,⁵ which bronze statue lie had brought from Phrygia. The same Emperor Constantine removed from Rome the so-called Palladium and placed it in the forum that he had built underneath the column [bearing] his statue: this is stated by some inhabitants of Byzantium who have heard it by way of tradition. He also offered a bloodless sacrifice and conferred the name Anthousa on the Tyche of the city he had renewed.⁶

The same Emperor built two beautiful porticoes from the entrance of the palace to the forum which he adorned with statues and marble, and he called the place of the porticoes Regia. Nearby he built a basilica with a conch, outside of which he set up huge columns and statues, and this he called the Senate. He named that place Augustaion because he had erected opposite [the Senate] the statue of his own mother, our Lady the Augusta Helena, upon a porphyry column. Furthermore, he completed the public bath called Zeuxippus⁷ and decorated it with columns, different kinds of marble and bronze statues. ...

In the year 301 after Our Lord's Ascension to heaven and the 25th of his reign, Constantine ... having built an immense, splendid and felicitous city, named it Constantinople. ... He conducted the first circus games and was the first to wear a diadem decorated with pearls and precious stones. He celebrated a big feast and ordered by his sacred decree that on this day, the 11th of Artemisios,⁸ be observed the birthday of his city, and that the public bath of Zeuxippus (which is close to the Hippodrome and the Regia [and] the palace) should be opened. He made another statue of himself of gilded wood, holding in his right hand the Tyche of this City, also gilded, and he decreed that on the day of the birthday games this wooden statue should be brought in under escort of soldiers wearing cloaks and boots, everyone holding white tapers, and that the chariot⁹ should go round the upper turning-post¹⁰ and come to the Stama,¹¹ facing the imperial loge, and that the reigning emperor should arise and pay homage to the statue of the emperor Constantine and the Tyche of the City.

¹ An almost identical passage is to be found in Malalas, pp. 319-22. For an account from the pagan point of view see Zosimus II, 30-31 trans. J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome, Sources and Documents in the History of Art Series (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 212-13.
² Januarinus and Justus (328). In fact, the construction of Constantinople was started in 324, immediately after the defeat of Licinius.
³ A more coherent account of the Constantinian walls is given by Zosimus.
⁴ Begun more than a century earlier by Septimius Severus.
⁵ Malalas, p. 320, specifies that there were seven rays.
⁶ Constantinople was dedicated with pagan rites and was therefore placed under the protection of a tutelary Fortune.
⁷ Also begun by Septimius Severus,
⁸ May.
⁹ I.e. the chariot upon which the wooden statue was placed.
¹⁰ The arena of the Hippodrome was divided lengthwise by a low wall (Lat. spina, Gr. Euripus) at each end of which was a turning post (Lat. meta, Gr. kampton or kamptêr) in the form of three cones placed on a semicircular pedestal.
¹¹ The text of both Chron. Pasch. and Malalas read skamma, but stama was the correct form. It designated the part of the arena immediately in front of the imperial box, which was also the finishing line for chariot races.

Mango, Cyril. The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1972. pp. 7-10.