Note 262 — Chapter I · CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY[3]

Also in evidence at the present day; see Grosvenor’s photographs of the three, pp. 320, 380. It is mentioned by Herodotus (ix, 80); and by Pausanias (x, 13), who says the golden tripod was made away with before his time. Some of the Byzantines, however, seem to aver that Constantine had regained possession of that memorial; Eusebius, Vit. Const., iii, 54; Codin., p. 55; Zosimus, ii, 31, etc. It appears that the defacement of this monument was carried out methodically during a nocturnal incantation under Michael III, c. 835. At the dead of night “three strong men,” each armed with a sledge-hammer, stood over it (Ἐν τοῖς εἰς τὸν εὔριπον (see p. 62) τοῦ ἱπποδρομίου χαλκοῖς ἀνδριᾶσιν ἐλέγετό τις εἶναι ἀνδριὰς τρισὶ διαμορφούμενος κεφαλαῖς) 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.