Emperor Justinian, the
destroyer of the State which Theodoric founded.

But almost between the Church of St. Sophia and the Imperial Palace lay
in old times the Great Hippodrome, centre of the popular life of the
capital, where the excited multitudes cheered with rapture, or howled in
execration, at the victory of the Blue or the Green charioteer; where
many a time the elevation or the deposition of an Emperor was
accomplished by the acclamations of the same roaring throng. Of this
Hippodrome we have still a most interesting memorial in the Atmeidan
(the Place of Horses), which, though with diminished area, still
preserves something of the form of the old racecourse. And here to this
day are two monuments on which the young hostage may have often gazed,
wondering at their form and meaning. The obelisk of Thothmes I., already
two thousand years old when Constantinople was founded, was reared in
the Hippodrome, by order of the great Emperor Theodosius, and some of
the bas-reliefs on its pedestal still explain to us the mechanical
devices by which it was lifted into position, while in others
Theodosius, his wife, his sons, and his colleague sit in solemn state,
but, alas! with grievously mutilated countenances. Near it is a spiral
column of bronze which, almost till our own day, bore three serpents
twined together, whose heads long ago supported a golden tripod. This
bronze monument is none other than the votive offering to the temple of
Apollo at Delphi, presented by the confederated states of Greece, to
celebrate the victory of Plataea. The golden tripod was melted down at
the time of Philip of Macedon, but the twisted serpents, brought by
Constantine to adorn and hallow his new capital by the Bosphorus, bore
and still bear the names, written in archaic characters, of all the
Hellenic states which took part in that great deliverance.

All these monuments are on the first of the seven hills on which
Constantinople is built. On the second hill stands a strange and
blackened pillar, which once stood in the middle of the Forum of
Constantine; and this too was there in the days of Theodoric. It is
called the Burnt Column, because it has been more than once struck by
lightning, and is blackened with the smoke of the frequent fires which
have consumed the wooden shanties at its base. But

"there it stands, as stands a lofty mind,
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd".

It was once 150 feet high, but is now 11