represent. But it is not in the city of Constantine, nor in the
declining period of an empire, when the human mind was depressed by
civil and religious slavery, that we should seek for the souls of Homer
and of Demosthenes.

During the siege of Byzantium, the conqueror had pitched his tent on the
commanding eminence of the second hill. To perpetuate the memory of his
success, he chose the same advantageous position for the principal
Forum, which appears to have been of a circular or rather elliptical
form. The two opposite entrances formed triumphal arches; the porticos
which inclosed it on every side were filled with statues; and the
centre of the Forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated
fragment is now degraded by the appellation of the _burnt pillar_. This
column was erected on a pedestal of white marble twenty feet high, and
was composed of ten pieces of porphyry, each of which measured about ten
feet in height and about thirty-three in circumference. On the summit of
the pillar, above one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, stood the
colossal statue of Apollo. It was of bronze, had been transported either
from Athens or from a town of Phrygia, and was supposed to be the work
of Phidias. The artist had represented the god of day, or as it was
afterwards interpreted, the Emperor Constantine himself with a sceptre
in his right hand, the globe of the world in his left, and a crown of
rays glittering on his head. The Circus, or Hippodrome, was a stately
building about four hundred paces in length and one hundred in breadth.
The space between the two _metae_ or goals was filled with statues and
obelisks; and we may still remark a very singular fragment of
antiquity--the bodies of three serpents twisted into one pillar of
brass. Their triple heads had once supported the golden tripod which,
after the defeat of Xerxes, was consecrated in the temple of Delphi by
the victorious Greeks. The beauty of the Hippodrome has been long since
defaced by the rude hands of the Turkish conquerors; but under the
similar appellation of Atmeidan, it still serves as a place of exercise
for their horses. From the throne whence the Emperor viewed the
Circensian games, a winding staircase descended to the palace: a
magnificent edifice which scarcely yielded to the residence of Rome
itself, and which, together with the dependent courts, gardens, and
porticos, covered a considerable extent of ground upon the banks of
the P