To the south of Santa Sophia is all that remains of the Hippodrome which, in its heyday of splendor, was regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Modeled after the Circus Maximus of Rome, it served as a forum, as a race course, and a museum in which were collected the choicest sculptures of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. Here were statues of Phidias and Praxiteles and other master sculptors of the ancient world. Among them were an exquisite statue of Helen of Troy, “whose beauty of form and feature drove brave men distraught,” and the famed bronze horses of Lysippus--which were carried off by Dandolo to Venice, where they now adorn the cathedral of San Marco--and countless other masterpieces of scarcely less value and beauty. Besides serving as a race course the Hippodrome, which had, it is estimated, a seating capacity of a hundred and twenty thousand people, was used for every purpose that could attract a large multitude of people. The _Spina_--a low wall dividing the Hippodrome into two sections--was, in common parlance, “the axis around which the Byzantine world revolved.” It was the favorite place for athletic sports and for the exhibition of wild animals. It was here that distinguished emperors and generals, like Heraclius and Nicephorus and Belisarius, celebrated their victories over the enemies of the empire. It was here that were witnessed not only the pride, the power, and the glories of New Rome, but also its tragedies, its massacres, its decadence, and ruin. In the acme of its magnificence this historic circus, with its forty tiers of marble seats and its superb promenade which surmounted all, was resplendent with the most beautiful works of Greek and Roman art--spoils from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Mauritania. Of this marvelous Hippodrome only a part of the site is now visible, while of its ornaments but three are still extant. These are a bare column of masonry once covered with bronze plates which caused it “to gleam like a column of light”; an Egyptian obelisk that antedates the time of Moses, and one of the most ancient relics of Greece. This is the Serpent column from Delphi which, with the bronze Wolf of the Capitol in Rome, “may count as the most precious metal relic which remains from the ancient world.” It bears witness to the final defeat of Xerxes at Platæa, the first great triumph of the West over the East. For eight centuries it served as a pedestal for the golden tripod of the priestess of the god, and during long centuries it was for the Greeks an object of pilgrimage. When, nearly two thousand years later, the East, under Mohammed the Conqueror, was victorious over the West, this secular monument was permitted to remain on the base which has supported it for sixteen centuries that it might continue “to bear witness to the link of New Rome with Old Greece” and endure as a vivid reminder of the pomp of Byzantine rule and of the continuity of civilization.