«2 Essay vpon the Art of the Foundry 



speaks of a car with four horses, which was antiently in the 

 place called Milium. These four horses were gilt : they 

 seemed to he at full gallop, and as if drawing the statue of 

 the Sun. Constanline caused .this chariot, accompanied by 

 its guards, to be transported into the hippodrome, or grand 

 circus*, in order to celebrate the festival of the Fortune of 

 Constantinople, which he represented by the statue of the 

 Sun. After this solcnmity the chariot was carried back with 

 the same escort to its antient stalicn. This chariot with 

 four horses has nothing in it similar to the four gilt horses 

 which the same author speaks off when he specifies all the 

 jTionuments in the hippodrome or circus ; the latter were 

 placed upon the barriers, and not yoked to any chariot ; and 

 Theodosius the younger had them brought from Ohio to 

 Constantinople. They were the only horses that were iu 

 the Circus j for had there been other quadrigre, Codinus 



* Codinus, Origines Constantinopoiitana:, p- 10. 



f Codinus, lib. C. p. 58. Oi Cs riffira^ii xi^^utra/iwin W'TTci, e'l uXiiphv n-at r.ay 

 KiXXut iei>\u.r,voi £» tjij Xijw iixaffiv irri eiohiTiou ra //.axnm. Kaiiy.iy.}.oi, are what the 

 Romans call carceres. It means the place where the horses were confined be- 

 fore they started in the race. A passage of Nicetas Choniatcs, where these 

 6ame horses are mentioned, deserves to be mentioned here ; he informs us 

 that one Agaremis proposed to fly from one end of the hippodrome to the 

 other : " Sua sponie hipjjodromi litrrim consrenJit, sub ipia carceres sunt unde 

 rmittanlur eijut ; suyra {carceres) vera quatuirr equi aurali slant, collis incurvis 

 obversi sibi invicem, alacrUalis ad cursum plein seijue sladium iransvolaturum, 

 jaclat." The attitudes are here so distinctly described that they cannot be 

 mi.'staken. — Xolc by the Author. \ 



On the contrary, in my opinion, the very attitudes furnish the best reasons 

 fbr doubting that the four horses now in the Thuilleries were really those of 

 Chio. Their step appears cornposcd, and not at lull gallop ; they do not throw 

 up their heads like £ery steeds : from all which circumstanpes, although the 

 passages of Codinus, Nicetas, and other authors of the lower empire have been 

 eilrcmely well known, no person can take upon him to assert in a positive 

 manner, as the author has done, that these horses are the same as those 

 of Chio. In no view v.hatever can we suppose that they were yoked to 

 a chariot, and we know from the report of Nicetas, that there were several 

 figures of horses in the hippodrome. This is the reason why M. Heyne, — in 

 his elegant dissertation Prisca Jrlis Opera qute Coiistantinopoli fuisse memc- 

 rnnliir. Memoirs of the GSttingen Academy, vol. ix. p. 36", — also thought 

 that these horses are not those from Chio: this, however, has not been de- 

 monstrated any more than the other proposition. The opinion of M. Seitz, 

 the author of this memoir, with respect to it, has a good deal of probability, 

 and it is developed with much iutertst.— A'o/e bi^ M.MilUn, 



would 



