Why Constantine the Great Used To Say, “Serdica Is My Rome”?
Why Constantine the Great Used To Say, “Serdica Is My Rome”?

Summary/Abstract: It is my intention in this article to look for possible causes that provoked Constantine’s phrase “Serdica is my Rome,” which has regularly been quoted by scholars but rarely commented on, and when so, completely outside the context of the history of Serdica. The basic approach in the study is a consistent presentation of the urban appearance of Serdica at the time of Constantine and identification of the possible emotional, political, strategic, polemic, etc. motifs that caused not only that utterance, but also the intention of the Emperor, sufficiently attested to by archaeological evidence and written sources, to establish his New Rome first in Serdica (the choice of Troy and Byzantium, according to the sources, was a later one, and Chalcedon, made reference to alongside the first two, is nothing but a rhetorical duplication of Constantinople, Chalcedon being so close to Byzantium, that today it is Istanbul’s suburb (Kadıköy).

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