This article is about the city. See also Byzantine Empire. Byzantium (Greek: ?????????) was an ancient Greek city, which, according to legend, was founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas (????? or ???????? in Greek). The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion. The city is what later evolved to be the center of the Byzantine Empire, (the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages) with the name Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, the city became known as Istanbul to the Ottoman Turks, but that didn't become the official name of the city until 1930. History The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. The traditional legend has it that Byzas from Megara (a town near Athens), founded Byzantium, when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. Byzas had consulted