"Eh, Zotick," cried Gnyphon to an old slave who was raking horse-dung into a basket, "come with me to clean the temple of Dionysus! You're a master in these things! I'll pay you three obols for it." "Of course I will," answered Zotick. "Just a moment to trim the lamp for the goddess, and I'm at your service." The goddess was Atalanta, patron of grooms, dunghills, and stables. Coarsely carven in wood, and looking little more than a smoky log, Atalanta figured in a damp corner. But Zotick, who had been bred among horses, used to worship her, often praying with tears in his eyes, arraying her coarse blockish feet with sweet violets, in the belief that she healed all his ills, and would preserve him in life and in death. Gnyphon went out into the open space, the Forum of Constantine, which was circular, and adorned with colonnades and triumphal arches. In the midst a gigantic porphyry column rose from a massive pedestal, and bore on its summit, at a height of a hundred and twenty cubits, a bronze statue of Apollo by Phidias, which had been carried off from a Phrygian city. The head of the Sun-god had been broken, and, with barbaric taste, the head of the Christian Emperor, the apostolic Constantine, had been fitted in its stead to the neck of the image. His brow was surrounded by gilt rays. In his right hand Apollo Constantine held the sceptre, and in his left the globe. At the foot of the colossus was lodged a little Christian chapel, a kind of palladium, in which worship was still offered in the time of Constantine. The Christians defended the practice by the argument that in the bronze body of Apollo, within the Sun-god's very breast, a talisman was hidden--a piece of the Most Holy Cross brought from Jerusalem. The Emperor Julian closed this chapel. Gnyphon and Zotick proceeded along a narrow and lengthy street, which led straight to the Chalcedonian stairs, not far from the fortress. Many public edifices were being built, and others were rebuilding, for so hastily had they been erected to please Constantius that they already were crumbling away. Inquisitive gazers were wandering in this street, stopping at merchants' shops; porters were passing by, slaves following their masters. Overhead, hammers resounded; cranes were creaking, and saws grinding the white stone. Labourers were heaving at the end of ropes huge timbers, and blocks of marble glittered against the blue. A smell of damp plaster came from the new houses, and a fine white dust fell on the heads of passers-by. On this side and that, between the dazzling white walls steeped in sunlight, the smiling blue waves of the Propontic, trimmed with galley-sails like the wings of sea-gulls, shone at the end of narrow alleys. Gnyphon heard, as he went by, a conversation between two workmen who were weighing mortar into a sack-- "Why did you become a Christian?" asked one of them.