In 286 CE, the Roman Emperor Diocletian (right) struggled to containwhat is known as the “Crisis of the Third Century”, when Rome came under ferocious attack along its northern and eastern frontiers. In response to these threats, Diocletian instituted a massive reform in Roman government. He split the power that resided in the office of Emperor into four, creating two senior Emperors, or Augustus (Diocletian and Maximian), and two junior Emperors, or Caesars (Galerius and Constantius, father of future Emperor Constantine the Great).

Diocletian assumed responsibility for the Roman East, establishing his capital at Nicomedia. It would remain the capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire under Diocletian and subsequently, under Constantine the Great until Constantine moved the capital across the Bosporus to Byzantium in 330CE (though Constantine would eventually die in Nicomedia seven years later in 337).

Nicomedia, a city lost in time, or at least lost to Western minds, remains a thriving metropolis, now known as Izmit.

And under the streets of Izmit, the Roman city still lies, proof of which surfaced during routine work to recover from a devastating earthquake in 1999. Builders who discovered the headless Hercules in 2001 (pictured below) treated the Roman remains as garbage for fear that their construction work would be stopped by local authorities. Fortunately, that is precisely what happened and the site is now under protection from the local museum and a proper dig to excavate the unearthed remains of Nicomedia begin this month. Archaeologists now believe that that the headless Hercules once sat in Diocletian’s palace which
still rests meters below street level, waiting to be uncovered.

Remarkable stuff, and as surprising as the discovery may be to us, to many local residents it is just as novel. As one of the lead archaeologists on the soon to begin dig stated: “[M]any people living here are unaware that they have been living on a huge palace for centuries,”

For more see the Turkish paper Hurriyet.