Constantinople did not cease to be the theatre of the frightful deeds of violence that war brings in its train. Amidst the sanguinary sports of victory, the Latins, to insult the effeminate manners of the Greeks, clothed themselves in long flowing robes, painted of various colours; they fastened to the heads of their horses linen hoods with their silken cords, in which the Orientals dress themselves; whilst others paraded the streets carrying in their hands, instead of a sword, some paper and an ink-horn; thus ridiculing the conquered, whom they termed scribes and copyers. The Greeks had on all occasions insulted the ignorance of the Latins; the knights, without seeking to retort upon the quiet occupations of peace. With these dispositions it was not likely they should spare the monuments that decorated the public places, the palaces, or the edifices of Byzantium. Constantinople, which to this period had stood erect amidst the ruins of several empires, had collected within its walls the scattered relics of the arts, and was proud to exhibit the masterpieces that had been saved from the destruction of barbarous ages. The bronze, in which breathed the genius of antiquity, was cast into the furnace, and converted into money, to satisfy the greedy soldiers. The heroes and gods of the Nile, those of ancient Greece and of ancient Rome, the masterpieces of Praxiteles, Phidias, and the most celebrated artists, fell beneath the strokes of the conquerors. Nicetas, who deplores the loss of these monuments, has left us a description, from which the history of art may derive some advantage.[136] The historian of Byzantium informs us that in the Place of Constantine stood, before the siege, the statue of Juno, and that of Paris offering to Venus the prize of beauty, or the apple of discord. The statue of Juno, which had formerly adorned the temple of the goddess at Samos, was of so colossal a size, that when it was destroyed by the Crusaders, eight harnessed oxen were required to drag the gigantic head to the palace of Bucoleon. In the same place was erected an obelisk of a square form, which astonished the spectator by the multitude and variety of the objects it presented to his view. On the sides of this obelisk the artist had represented, in basso-relievo, all sorts of birds saluting the return of the sun, villagers employed in their rustic labours, shepherds playing on their pipes, sheep bleating, lambs bounding on the grass; further on, a tranquil sea and fishes of a thousand sorts, some taken alive, others breaking the nets and regaining their deep retreats; at the back of the landscape, naked cupids playing and throwing apples at each other; at the top of the obelisk, which terminated in a pyramidal form, was the figure of a woman that turned with the least breath of air, which was called _the attendant of the winds_.