Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/86

 *munities can still be read engraved on the folds of the snakes. Adjacent is a lofty pillar bearing the figure of a nymph with flowing robes, who holds forth a mail-clad knight mounted on horseback with one hand. Near the south end is a fountain or bath with a central statue, known as the Phial of the Hippodrome. Contiguous is an aedicule raised on four pillars, in which is displayed the laurelled bust of the reigning Emperor. Above the obelisk, on a column, is a celebrated statue of Hercules Trihesperus by Lysippus; the hero of

"three strong men," each armed with a sledge-hammer, stood over it ([Greek: En tois eis ton euripon] (see p. 62) [Greek: tou hippodromiou chalkois andriasin elegeto tis einai andrias trisi diamorphoumenos kephalais]) prepared to knock off the respective heads on the signal being given by an unfrocked abbot. The hammers fell, two of the heads rolled to the ground, but the third was only partly severed, the lower jaw, of course, remaining; Theoph., Cont., p. 650; Cedrenus, ii, p. 145. On the capture of the city in 1453 the fragment left was demolished by Mahomet II with a stroke of his battle-axe to prove the strength of his arm on what was reputed to be a talisman of the Greeks; Thévenot, Voyage au Levant, etc., 1664, i, 17, "la maschoire d'embas." So history, as it seems, has given itself the trouble to account for the mutilation of this antique. I must note, however, that neither Buondelmonte, Gyllius, Busbecq, Thévenot, nor Spon, has described the damages it had sustained at the time they are supposed to have contemplated the relic. See also Grosvenor, op. cit., p. 381, whose account is scarcely intelligible and is not based on references to any authorities.]*
 * [Footnote: nocturnal incantation under Michael III, c. 835. At the dead of night