[Footnote 92: If I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas's receipts,
their favorite dishes were boiled buttocks of beef, salt pork and peas,
and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour herbs, (p. 382.)]

Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise
the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins. [93] In the
love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and
real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the works 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. [94] 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, [95]
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 spectators could admire their attitude, and judge of the
resemblance; and of these figures, the most perfect might have been
transported from the Olympic stadium. _2._ The sphinx, 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 really be treated before the decline of the Greek sculpture.
_4._ An eagle holding and tearing a serpent 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 this
talisman, delivered the city from such venomous reptiles. _5._ An
ass and his driver, which were erected by Augustus in his colony of
Nicopolis, to commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium. _6._
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 recognized the figures of
Bellerophon and Pegasus; and the free attitude of the steed seemed to
mark that he trod on