Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/432

 410 THE DECLINE AND FALL reverence the woi'ks of their ancestors, which they could not imitate ; and, in the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine historian. ^ We have seen how the rising city was adorned by the vanity and despotism of the Imperial founder ; in the ruins of paganism some gods and heroes were saved from the axe of superstition ; and the forum and hippodrome were dignified with the relics of a better age. Several of these are described by Nicetas/^- in a florid and affected style ; and from his descriptions I shall select some interesting particulars. 1. The victorious charioteers were cast in bronze, at their own or the public charge, and fitly placed in the hippodrome ; they stood aloft in their chariots, wheeling round the goal ; the spec- tators could admire their attitude, and judge of the resemblance ; and of these figures the most perfect might have been trans- ported from the Olympic stadium. 2. The sphynx, river-horse, and crocodile denote the climate and manufacture of Egypt and the spoils of that ancient province. 3. The she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus : a subject alike pleasing to the old and the new Romans, but which could rarely be treated before the decline of the Greek sculpture. 4. An eagle holding and teari.ig a ser- pent in his talons : a domestic monument of the Byzantines, which they ascribed, not to a human artist, but to the magic power of the philosopher Apollonius, who, by his talisman, delivered the city from such venomous reptiles. 5. An ass and his driver, which were erected by Augustus in his colony of Nico- polis, to commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium. . An equestrian statue, which passed, in the vulgar opinion, for Joshua, the Jewish conqueror, stretching out his hand to stop the course of the descending sun. A more classical tradition recognised the figures of Bellerophon and Pegasus ; and the free attitude of the steed seemed to mark that he Jtrode on air rather than on the earth. 7. A square and lofty obelisk of brass : the sides were embossed with a variety of picturesque and rural m Nicetas was of Chonse in Phrygia ([near] the old Colossce of St. Paul) ; he raised himself to the honours of senator, judge of the veil, and great logothete ; beheld the fall of the empire, retired to Nice, and composed an elaborate history, from the death of Ale.ius Conmenus to the reign of Henry. [See above, vol. 5, Ap- pendix, p. 507.] 11- A manuscript of Nicetas, in the Bodleian library, contains this curious frag- ment on the statues of Constantinople, which fraud, or shame, or rather careless- ness, has dropt in the common editions. It is published by Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 405-416), and immoderately praised by tlie late ingenious Mr, Harris of .Salisbury (Philological Inquiries, p. iii. c. 5, p. 301-312).