rest, the name of the Tenians, who, as Herodotus tells us, succeeded in proving to the satisfaction of their sister states that they deserved inclusion in so honourable a memorial. The history of this column from the fifth century before the Christian era down to the present time is to be read in a long succession of Greek, Roman, mediæval, and modern historians; and as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century the three heads of the serpents were still in their place. But even in its mutilated state there is perhaps no relic of antiquity which can vie in interest with this column, associated as it was in the day of its fashioning with Pausanias and Themistocles, with Xerxes and with Mardonius. We have then to think of it standing for seven centuries in the holiest place of all Hellas, the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. There it was surmounted by a golden tripod, on which sat the priestess who uttered the oracles which, in important crises, prompted the policy and guided the development of the cities of Greece. The column is hollow, and it is possible that the mephitic exhalations, which are supposed to have stupefied the priestess when she was possessed by the god, mounted up the interior of the spiral. The golden tripod was stolen during the wars with Philip of Macedon; Constantine replaced it by another when he brought the column from Delphi to Constantinople. And there, surviving all the vicissitudes through which the city has passed, still stands the column, still fixed to the pedestal upon which Constantine mounted it, many feet below the present level of the Atmeidan, still an object of superstition to Christian as well as to the Turk, and owing, no doubt, its marvellous preservation to the indefinable awe which clings, even in ruin, to the sacred relics of a discredited religion. [Illustration: THE SERPENT OF DELPHI. FROM GROSVENOR’S “CONSTANTINOPLE.” ] To the Hippodrome itself there were four principal entrances. The gate of the Blues was close by the Carceres or Mangana, on the western side, with the gate of the Greens facing it. At the other end, just where the long straight line was broken and the building began to curve into the sphendone, was a gate on the eastern side which bore the ill-omened name of the Gate of the Dead, opposite another, the name of which is not known. The gate of the Blues—the royal faction—was the grand entrance for all state processions. Such was the outward form of the famous Hippodrome, and Mr. Grosvenor justly dwells on the imposing vastness and beauty of its external appearance.