Niketas Choniates, Historia, tr. J. L. van Dieten, ed. de Gruyter, Corpus fontium historiae byzantinae, XI (Berlin, 1975), 647-55.

Translated by Bente Bjørnholt

[647] OF THE BLESSED MASTER NIKETAS CHONIATES FROM THE SAME HISTORY OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

So that we will not gain thereby more tortuous grief in using too long an investigation we will pass over this, and instead give in brief the following to our account.

For just as our empire had been thrown away to the Franks and similarly the high priesthood had been alotted to the Venetians, the judgements of which the Lord was in charge, the maker and pilot of this worldly ship,[1] there came from Venice as patriarch of Constantinople a certain Thomas by name, of middle age and better fed than a stuffed pig. Also, his chin was shaved smooth with a razor as the rest of his race. His chest-hairs were plucked more accurately than by a pitchplaster and he wore a garment almost woven to his skin and stitched to his wrists on each arm. A ring was twisted around his hand and sometimes he wore protectors on his hands split into fingers and made of leather. The assembly around him dedicated to God was also seen to be attending the hospitable table, of the same make and exactly like their leader in dress, diet and cropping of the beard.

From the start,[2] they displayed their innate love of gold, had in mind a new means of acquiring things and escaping everyone’s notice as they plundered the imperial city. For they opened the tombs of the emperors as many as were located in the [Pantokrator] Heroon established around the sacred precinct of the Holy Apostles. They plundered all of these by night and grasped with utter lawlessness whatever golden ornaments, pearl necklaces, radiant, precious, and pure gems that were still [648] found therein. They also found the body of the emperor Justinian undamaged for many years. They looked at the sight in wonder, but they did not keep themselves off the burial places at all. It is possible to say that the Western people spared neither the living or the dead, but beginning with God and his servants they displayed total indifference and impiety towards everything.

Not long after they also pulled down the ciborium of the Great Church[3] which counted up to several ten thousands minas[4] of pure silver and covered in thick gold.

Since they were short of money (for the barbarian does not know how to satisfy his love of gold) they cast longing glances at the bronze statues and gave them over to the fire.

A completely brazen Hera, the head of which could hardly be transported away to the Great Palace by four yokes of oxen with wheels, was cut into staters and and consigned to the smelting furnace.

After her, Paris Alexander was overturned on his pedestal standing next to Aphrodite handing her the Golden Apple of Discord.

Having cast eyes on it, who has not wondered at the intricacy of the four-sided bronze mechanism rising up and almost rivalling the larger pillars in height standing many places in the city: every melodious bird singing its spring songs was carved there, farmer’s labours, pipes and milk-pails, bleating sheep and bounding lambs were depicted there. Also the open sea was spread out and herds of seals could be seen, some being caught and some overcoming the nets and dashing free back into the deep sea. Groups of two and three Erotes armed against each other, being hit by and throwing apples, and shaking with sweet laughter.

This four-sided object ending in a pointed form like a pyramid had a female figure suspended from above which turned round with the first stirrings of the winds whence it was called Anemodoulion [wind servant].

[649] Even so they gave over this very beautiful work to the smelters, as well as the equestrian man standing on a trapezium-shaped base in the Forum of the Tauri which was heroic in form and great in size. He was said by some to be Joshua, the son of Nun, conjecturing [that] the man by stretching out his hand towards the sun [was] in fact engaged in a journey to towards the West and ordering it [the sun] to stand still upon Gibeon.[5] But the majority thought that he was Bellerophon mounted on Pegasos, born and brought up on the island of Pelops. The horse was unbridled in the same manner as was told of Pegasos who stamped over the plains, spurning every rider like a bird and rushing on foot.[6] An ancient tradition [which] was also passed down to us and was found in the mouths of all [said] that on the front left hoof of this horse was concealed an image. To some he was someone of the Venetian race, to others of another Western nation not in alliance with the Romans or even a Bulgarian. A securing of the hoof had often been made resulting in that the things which it was reckoned it hid inside remaed totally undetected. [After] the horse had been cut open and sent together with its rider to the fire, the brazen form entombed by the hoof was also discovered, wearing a cloak, the sort which is woven from sheep’s wool. The Latins having caring little for the things which appeared on it threw also this into the fire.

These barbarians, haters of the beautiful, did not pass over the destruction of the statues standing in the Hippodrome and other marvellous work.They cut these into coinage, exhanging great things for small ones and things laboured over at great expense for worthless small change.

Also thrown down was Herakles, the one begotten in triple night, mighty in his mightiness,[7] placed in a basket. The lion skin spread over him looked terrifying even in bronze, almost letting out and spreading a roar throughout the helpless crowd standing by. He sat not carrying a quiver, nor carryring a bow, nor having a club in [650] front of him, but stretching out his right foot and his right hand as much as was possible, he bent the left leg at the knee and by resting his left hand on his elbow, and then raising up the rest of his arm, he gently rested his head in the palm of his hand. Full of despondency and thus bewailing his own fate, being annoyed at the labours which Eurystheus had designated for him not from need but rather from envy, [Eurystheus] puffed up at the one who overcame his fate. He was wide in the chest, broad in the shoulders, curly in the hair, fat in the buttocks, strong in the arms, and as much advanced in size as Lysimachos would have supposed the archetypal Herakles to shoot up. [Lysimachos] made as his first and last this man in bronze, an artistic masterpiece of his own hands, so very great that it took the cord extending to the size of the belt of a man to go round his thumb and the shin of his leg was as long as the length of a man. Those who distinguish bravery from the associated virtues, appropriating this to themselves and considering it the most important, did not leave Herakles, as he was, undestroyed.

With this they also destroyed the heavy-loaded and braying ass and the ass-driver following him, which Caesar Augustus placed in Actium, that is Nikopolis in Hellas. When going out by night to reconnoitre the camp of Anthony, Caesar met a man driving an ass and having enquired who he was and where he was going, he heard ‘I am called Nikon [the victorious one] and my ass is called Nikandros [the one who conquers a man] and I am going towards the camp of Caesar.’[8]

Nor indeed did they keep their hands of the hyena and the she-wolf which Romulus and Remus sucked. For a few staters, and what is more, copper, they consigned these ancient and revered objects of the nation to the smelting furnace. Also the man wrestling with a lion and the Nile horse which ended in a tail prickly with scales at the rear of the body. With these, an elephant waving its trunk and the sphinxes, well-shaped like women in front and terrible like beasts in the back and just sa strange as they walk on foot and are carried lightly on wings emulating the great-winged birds. An unbridled horse with erect ears and snorting, putting one [651] foot haughtily and obediently in front of the other. The ancient and evil Skylla appeared in womanly form until the waist, stretching forward, huge-breasted, full of ferocity and thereafter split into beasts of prey and jumping into the ship of Odysseus, gulping down many of his companions.[9]

A bronze eagle by Apollonios of Tyana,[10] a novel method and magnificent trickery of his magic was set up in the Hippodrome. For once he was called by the Byzantines to relieve the bites of serpents from which they suffered badly. Of course, he made use of the filthy lewd rituals as his assistants of which the demons are the instructors and of as many as are leaders of their secret rites. He set up on a column an eagle, a spectacle which instilled pleasure in the soul and persuaded those who delighted in its sight to stand around like those submitted to the spell-binding songs of the Sirens. He divided the wings as for flight and by bending itself backwards into furrows, the serpent underneath the feet prevented the eagle from lifting it up. The ends of its body struck at the wings as though for a bite, but the poisoner achieved nothing. For clasped in its sharp claws its attack was exstinguished and it appeared to be drowsy rather than ready to cling to the wings in order to give battle to the bird. The serpent thus breathing its last kept the poison dying along with it. The eagle looking haughty and almost screeching its victory song hastened to take away the serpent and carry it high in the air, this being revealed by its bright-eyed look and the death of the serpent. Anyone having seen that it had forgotten its coilings and its deadly bite would have said that it had scared off all the serpents in the rest of Byzantium by its own example and had persuaded them to coil up together and stuff themselves into their holes. The image of the eagle was admirable, not only because of what we have said, but it also had the hourly sections of the day in twelve lines scratched on the wings. This was revealed very clearly to those who cast their eyes upon it with knowledge when the sun was not being darkened in its rays by clouds.

[652] What about white-armed Helen, both beautiful-ankled and long-necked who gathered the all-Greek army at Troy and destroyed Troy and who after this ran ashore on the Nile and finally again returned from there back to the customs of the Laconians? Did she charm the hard to charm? Did she soften their iron hearts? Indeed the one who enslaved every spectator by her beauty could not do such a thing at all, although dressed theatrically and appearing dew-like even in bronze and moist for love in a tunic, a head dress, a diadem and braided hair. For her tunic was finer than cob-webs, the head-dress was set up cunningly, the diadem bound her forehead displaying the radiance of gold and precious stones, and the latter [braid] of her hair, flowing and whirling in the wind, was bound together at the back by a head-band and stretched as far as the legs. Her lips were slightly open like a flower-cup appearing as though she would utter a sound. Her lovely smile immediately meeting and filling the spectator with delight, her bright-eyed look, the curve of her brow and the rest of her shapely body were such as cannot be described in words and presented for posterity.

But Helen, daughter of Tyndareus,[11] the very essence of beauty, sprout of love [Erotes], warded by Aphrodite, nature’s most valued gift, contested prize of the Trojans and the Greeks, where is your drug that causes forgetfullness of all ill and frees from sorrow, granted to you by the wife of Thon?[12] Where are your irresistable love-charms? Why you do not use them now as you did long ago? But, I suppose that it had been ordained by the Fates that you should succumb to the heat of the fire and having ceased in your image you should not burn up by love those looking at you. It was said that these Aeneadae condemned you to the flames as retribution for Troy having been laid waste by fire signaled by your merciless passions. But the gold-madness of the men does not allow me to consider and utter such a thing, by which rare and most beautiful works everywhere were given over to complete destruction, [nor] to say that they frequently gave over and sent off their own wives for a few obols, attending the gambling-tables and being engaged in draughts all day long not with intelligent manliness, but rather by exciting each other, engaging in mad and absurd assaults and putting on the arms of Ares.[13] They set up as prize all they call by name [653] and their wedded wives, through which they heard themselves called fathers of children, and moreover the great treasure, the soul, which is inexorable for others and for the sake of which men are very eager to pursue anything. Besides, is there anywhere among the unlettered and illiterate barbarians the ability to read and understand those poems composed about you:

‘Small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Athenians

should for such a woman long time suffer woes;

wondrously like she to the immortal goddesses to look upon.’[14]

The following should also be added to the account. Set up on a column was a woman young in appearance and in the prime of her life, her hair bound at the back and curled up on both sides of her forehead. It was not raised up [high] but could be touched by those who strecthed out their hands. With no support under it, the right hand of this formation held up on its palm a man mounted on a horse standing on one leg as not even another person could hold a wine-cup. The rider was robust in his boby, encased in armour with greaves covering his legs; simply breathing war. The horse raised his ears as though to a war trumphet, high in the neck, sharp in sight and revealing the charge of his spirit in his eyes. The legs were raised high in the air displaying a war-like leap.[15]

After that figure, next to the Eastern turning-post of the four-wheeled chariot, called the Rousion, statues of charioteers were set up as a public display of their chariot driving skill. All but overtly encouraging charioteers by the disposition of their hands that, when approaching the turning-post is was necessary not to let go of the reins, but to bend inwards by holding back the horses and to use the goad continuously and more vigorously so that when going closely round the turning-post they would let the rival running with them drive the circuitous route and come last, even if he drove faster horses and was seen to be better trained in skill of contest.

Our account will add something else to what has been said, even though it was not intended to describe everything. Most wonderful in skill was a stone base and on this a [654] bronze animal which portrayed a not undisputed bull in that it was short tailed and did not let down a deep throat such as the Egyptian bulls grow, nor was it equipped with hoofs. This gripped in its jaws another animal crushing to throttle it, the whole of its body covered with scales so prickly that even in bronze they caused pain to the person touching. It seemed that one appeared to be a basilisk whereas the other was an asp being grasped in its mouth. To not a few people it seemed that one was a Nile bull and the other a crocodile.

The diversity of opinion is of no concern to me, but to mention the effect of some strange struggle of them both doing it in turn and suffering terribly, each by the other, killing and being killed, over-powering and being over-powered, both conquering and being conquered, and being overthrown by each other. For the so-called basilisk was all swollen from the head to the soles of his feet, and the skin stretching down all of his body was greener than frog-colour, the poison running through the whole system of the animal having stained him to the point of death. Then collapsing to his knees, his eyes were exstinguished, the life-force having faded away. In fact he caused those viewing to suppose that he would have turned over dead long ago if the bases of his feet had not supported and held him in an upright posture. The other one gripped by the jaws hardly struggled with its tail and [the bull] gaped widely to throttle with the compression of its grinder teeth. He [the crocodile] seemed to be straining and trying to slip out through the barrier of his teeth to pass through the open mouth, but he did not have the strength because the part immediately behind the shoulders, the front feet and whatever parts of the body were attached to the tail were held in the gap of his [the bull] mouth fixed on his jaws.

Thus they were killed by each other. Common to both was the struggle and the defence and equal the victory, the accompaniment also death. It occurs to me to say that the destruction and the leading of each other to death, is not only possible to portray in images, or even that this should also happen among the stronger of the [655] animals, but also happens among nations such as those who have marched against us Romans: killing each other and being killed and being destroyed by the power of Christ who scatters nations who want war and does not rejoice in bloodshed,[16] who also shows justice coming upon the basilisk and the asp, trampling down the lion and the dragon.[17]

Bibliography

H. Hunger, Byzantinisches Geisteswelt (Baden-Baden 1958) 198-201.

O. Morisani, F. Gagliuolo, A. de Franciscis, edd. De Signis (Naples 1960)

A. Cutler, 'The De Signis of Nicetas Choniates: a reappraisal', AJA 72(1968) 1113-

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[2] gramm» denotes the starting or winning point in the Hippodrome. Being used here therefore adds to the notion of contest and struggles which Niketas presents throughout his account.

[3] katapštasma means curtain, but Nikolaos Mesarites uses the term as ciborium in Description of the church of the Holy Apostles, ‘Nikolaos Mesarites: in Description of the church of the Holy Apostles’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S., 47 (1957), 855-924, 891-2; and in Die Palastrevolution des Johannes Komnenos, ed. A. Heisenberg (Würzburg, 1907), 35. It is therefore probable that Niketas does the same also considering the physical description of the object.

[8] Plutarch, Anthony, ch. 65. The Parastaseis mentions a similar group, describing the man as being naked save for a helmet. This group was called Perichytes (bath-attendent), Parastaseis, ch. 64 and commentary, 258.

[10] See George Cedrenos, Compendium historiarum, ed. I. Bekker, CSHB (Bonn, 1838), I, 346; John Tzetzes, Historiarum variarum chiliades 2.928 sqq.

[11] According to Greek mythology Helen was fathered by Zeus, her mother being married to Tyndareus, The Oxford companion to classical literature, ed. M. C. Howartson (Oxford, 1989).