2. The navigator Byzas, who was styled the son of Neptune,
founded the city 656 years before the Christian era. His
followers were drawn from Argos and Megara. Byzantium was
afterwards rebuilt and fortified by the Spartan general
Pausanias. See Scaliger, Animadvers. ad Euseb. p. 81.
Ducange, Constantinopolis, 1. i. part i. cap. 15, 16. With
regard to the wars of the Byzantines against Philip, the
Gauls, and the kings of Bithynia, we should trust none but
the ancient writers who lived before the greatness of the
Imperial city had excited a spirit of flattery and fiction.