ses now at Venice formed a part. They were carried from
Alexandria to Rome by Augustus, who placed them on his triumphal arch.
Afterward Nero, Domitian and Trajan, successfully transferred them to
arches of their own.

When Constantine removed the capital of the Roman empire to the ancient
Byzantium, he sought to beautify it by all means in his power, and for
this purpose he removed a great number of works of art from Rome to
Constantinople, and among them these bronze horses of Lysippus.

In the early part of the thirteenth century the nobles of France and
Germany, who were going on the fourth crusade, arrived at Venice and
stipulated with the Venetians for means of transport to the Holy Land.
But instead of proceeding to Jerusalem they were diverted from their
original intention, and, under the leadership of the blind old doge,
Dandolo, they captured the city of Constantinople. The fall of the city
was followed by an almost total destruction of the works of art by
which it had been adorned; for the Latins disgraced themselves by a
more ruthless vandalism than that of the Vandals themselves.

But out of the wreck the four bronze horses were saved and carried in
triumph to Venice, where they were placed over the central porch of St.
Mark's Cathedral. There they stood until Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797
removed them with other trophies to Paris; but after his downfall they
were restored, and, as Byron says in "Childe Harold":

"Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria's menace come to pass?
Are they not bridled?"--

Apropos of the last two lines I have quoted, I must tell you an
incident of history.

During the middle ages, when so many of the Italian cities existed as
independent republics, there was a great deal of rivalry between Genoa
and Venice, the most important of them. Both were wealthy commercial
cities; both strove for the supremacy of the sea, upon which much of
their prosperity depended, and each strove to gain the advantage over
the other. This led to many wars between them, when sometimes one would
gain the upper hand, and sometimes the other. At length, in the year
1379, the Genoese defeated the Venetians in the battle of Pola, and
then took Chiozza, which commanded, as one might say, the entrance to
Venice. The Venetians, alarmed beyond measure, sent an embassy to the
Genoese commander, Pietro Doria, agreei