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This webpage reproduces an article in
The Art Bulletin
Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar. 1959), pp39‑57.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

 p39  Theodosius or Justinian?
A Renaissance Drawing of a
Byzantine Rider​*

Phyllis Williams Lehmann


[image ALT: missingALT]

Drawing of Imperial Rider.
Budapest University Library, MS. 35, fol. 144v

In this Web transcription, I found it more convenient for the reader
to present all the other figures separately on their own page, which will open in another window.

Among the manuscripts presented to the Budapest University Library in 1877 by Sultan Abd ul‑Hamid II was a fifteenth century codex containing excerpts from miscellaneous classical authors.​1 On the next to the last folio, 144v, it has been embellished with a full-page sketch of an equestrian figure drawn in sepia ink, its heavily shaded contours and inscriptions executed with a pen, its broader areas washed in with a brush (Fig. 1).​2 An imperial rider sits astride a quaint steed, his right hand raised in a gesture of greeting or admonition, his left supporting an orb topped by a cross. He wears a cuirass and a military cloak over his short chiton, half-boots, and a mighty crown of feathers rising from his diadem. His eager horse has neither harness nor cloth but bears traces of a now reinless bridle.

Even before it passed to Budapest, this singular drawing had been discussed and reproduced by the Sultan's librarian, P. A. Dethier,​3 who saw in it a sketch of that most celebrated of monuments, the colossal bronze statue of Justinian erected in 542 or 543 to commemorate action against the Persians and placed on a lofty column in the forecourt of the Great Church.​4 As the sole equestrian statue in Constantinople that had survived the centuries, weathering the onslaught of Crusaders and Infidels, it had become the greatest marvel of the New Rome, evoking the wonder  p40 and admiration of generations of European and Arab travelers​5 until the dark day in the sixteenth century when Pierre Gilles saw it consigned to a furnace to be made into cannon.​6 But throughout the fifteenth century it remained upright, looming large in the many replicas of Buondelmonti's lost plan of the city where it either appears as a brassy horseman towering above Hagia Sophia (Fig. 2) or is indicated by an inscription above or beside the column (Fig. 3).​7 It is still the solitary statue visible in the views of Constantinople in both the Latin and German editions of Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum printed in Nuremberg in 1493 and, thanks to this volume, is known to have been intact and in place at least as late as 1490. For on fol. CCLVII r (Fig. 4), statue and column alike bore the full fury of a fearful storm that swept over the city on July 12 of that year according to the reports of Venetian merchants quoted in the text.​8 Perhaps it was this  p41 storm that ultimately destroyed the statue by loosening its attachments at a time when no Byzantine Emperor could have it lovingly repaired as so many had done in the past.

Dethier's interpretation of the Budapest drawing has been accepted without question by writers on Byzantine history, art, literature, and topography for nearly a century. Of the two drawings after the fifteenth century original that he published, the earlier and faultier has been widely reproduced via the first copy of it, which appeared in 1891 in A. D. Mordtmann's Esquisse topographique de Constantinople (Fig. 5).​9 Acceptance of this interpretation has always rested on the analogy between the drawing and the lengthier late antique or mediaeval descriptions of Justinian's equestrian statue, in particular, that of Procopius. For that most reliable of contemporary writers, after marveling at the extraordinary column erected in the Augusteum continues:

And on the summit of the column stands a gigantic bronze horse, facing toward east, a very noteworthy sight. He seems about to advance, and to be splendidly pressing forward. Indeed he holds his left fore foot in the air, as though it were about to take a forward step on the ground before him, while the other is pressed down upon the stone on which he stands, as if ready to take the next step; his hind feet he holds close together, so that they may be ready whenever he decides to move. Upon this horse is mounted a  p42 colossal bronze figure of the Emperor. And the figure is habited like Achilles, that is, the costume he wears is known by that name. He wears half-boots and his legs are not covered by greaves. Also he wears a breastplate in the heroic fashion, and a helmet covers his head and gives the impression that it moves up and down, and a dazzling light flashes forth from it. One might say, in poetic speech, that here is the star of Autumn. And he looks toward the rising sun, directing his course, I suppose, against the Persians. And in his left hand he holds a globe, by which the sculptor signifies that the whole earth and sea are subject to him, yet he has neither sword nor spear nor any other weapon, but a cross stands upon the globe which he carries, the emblem by which alone he has obtained both his Empire and his victory in war. And stretching forth his right hand toward the rising sun and spreading out his fingers, he commands the barbarian in that quarter to remain at home and to advance no further.​10

Clearly Procopius was describing a monument remarkably similar to the one depicted in the Budapest drawing. But was it identical? One may brush aside his emphasis on the horse's hind feet "held close together," unlike those in the drawing, "so that he may be ready whenever he decides to move" as easily, if needlessly, altered by the draftsman. But what of the "helmet" covering the rider's head? Even if this was the legendary toupha, the helmet crested with feathers, worn by the Emperor on the great lost gold medallion of which a replica is preserved in the British Museum (Fig. 8),​11 it differs radically from the majestic, swaying crown of peacock feathers springing from a royal diadem upon which the draftsman has lavished such detail (Fig. 7).​12 The term of a later writer, Georgius Pachymeres, confirms Procopius' characterization of the Emperor's headgear as a helmet, indeed, as a helmet tipped with gilded  p43 feathers.​13 Both Pachymeres and Nicephorus Gregoras mention still other features of the lost statue that do not tally with the horseman on the drawing: the horse's startled head turned to one side, his long tail falling to his feet; the rider's mantle billowing out behind him, that mantle spangled with symbols of heaven and earth.​14 Pachymeres adds a further disquieting detail. At his time, in the fourteenth century, the horse no longer retained the bridle that careful inspection revealed it once had worn.​15 Surely the reinless bridle of the drawing was not a contemporary repair. And what of the iron chains that Clavijo saw crossing the horse's body early in the very same fifteenth century, those chains needed to hold it in place now that its original fastenings had weakened?​16 Did the draftsman eliminate them as an unsightly encumbrance? Finally why was this presumed drawing of Justinian's colossal statue labeled with the name of his great predecessor as defender of the faith, Theodosius? For the word Theodosi and the phrase gloriae perennis are plainly visible, if strangely placed, on this supposedly sole representation of Justinian's lost monument (Figs. 16).17

The majority of writers concerned with the Budapest drawing have passed over these awkward words in silence, neglecting to mention their very existence. But a few, unable to ignore them, have dismissed them as a late addition to the drawing.​18 On the contrary, they are contemporary with it, executed with the same pen and sepia ink as that employed for the horse and his rider.​19 What is more, they are the most telltale element in the entire drawing, for they can have but one meaning: they form the phrase gloriae perennis Theodosi, a phrase that can only be  p44 interpreted as the legend of a coin or medallion. The Budapest drawing is a careful copy not of Justinian's lost equestrian statue but of an equally lost gold medallion of Theodosius the Great!

During the last years of his reign, between 392 and 395, the mints of Constantinople, Cyzicus, Nicomedia, Antioch, and Alexandria issued small bronze coins bearing on their reverse an equestrian figure of Theodosius facing toward the right (Figs. 9, 10).​20 Like the Budapest drawing, they show the Emperor mounted on a horse seen in pure profile, a horse characterized by a small head, by one raised and one solidly planted leg, by similarly placed, widely spaced hind legs, by a three-quarter length tail and by the same lack of harness, saddle cloth and, in some instances, of bridle. Although this specific numismatic type was by no means the source of the Budapest drawing,​21 it reflects conventions common to numismatic iconography and present in the drawing such as the omission of the horse's gear. However, the most striking feature shared by the drawing and coins is the singular right hand of the Emperor, that right hand not only raised palm outward in the same ritual gesture but remarkable for its disproportionate size and the extreme emphasis given its exaggeratedly long fingers.​22 These diminutive coins did not afford space for the rich detail characteristic of the Budapest rider's costume — indeed, they even omit the Emperor's left arm. Such details could only be rendered on large medallions. But still earlier, under Valens and the Valentinians, gold solidi and multiples had been issued bearing an equestrian imperial figure.​23 From the time of Diocletian on, gold multiples had become a prime feature of imperial display.​24 These great presentation pieces, useful as gifts with which to impress a barbarian ally, were more often than not unique, like Justinian's lost medallion and a host of other known examples. Their intrinsic value has, in time, equally often led to their later disappearance.​25 Hence the fact that no gold medallion of Theodosius the Great representing the Emperor as an equestrian figure is preserved in no way weakens the hypothesis that such a medallion could have existed or alters the fundamental fact that no detail of the Budapest drawing would be incompatible with such a numismatic proto­type. Even the all‑important orb surmounted by a cross appears on the Emperor's gold coinage.26

Like the coins, these gold medallions bear legends — legends in which the concept of glory, even of perpetual glory, recurs. Constantine's medallion with the reverse legend gloria Constantini Aug or his gloria perpetua Aug N come close to the Gloriae Perennis Theodosi of the  p45 drawing.​27 Still closer, insofar as they are also cast in the genitive case, are such reverse legends as Constantini Caes, Maximini Aug, or DD NN Iovii Licinii invict Aug et Caess and DN Constantini Max Inv Aug.​28 But closest of all, in this respect, was the legend on the precious gold medallions sent by Tiberius Constantinus to the Frankish king Childebert and described by Gregory of Tours:

He [Childebert] showed me also gold coins each of a pound's weight sent by the emperor having on one side the likeness of the emperor and the inscription in a circle: Tiberii Constantini Perpetui Augusti and on the other a four-horse chariot and charioteer with the inscription Gloria Romanorum.​29

Needless to say, these pieces, too, have all perished and would be unknown were it not for Gregory's description.

Thus although the exact formula Gloria Perennis is not otherwise preserved on Roman coins or medallions, in content and grammatical structure the isolated phrase Gloriae Perennis Theodosi, "of the perennial glory of Theodosius," is not only appropriate for an imperial commemorative legend but, because of its very character, is only comprehensible in a numismatic context. What is more, this phrase would have been peculiarly appropriate on a medallion struck by Theodosius the Great.

The concept of perennitas seems to have held a strong attraction for this emperor. Among the equestrian statues that he put up in memory of his father, Flavius Theodosius, as magister equitum was one in Canosa on the base of which he himself is proclaimed as perennis princeps and perpetuus Augustus.​30 In the inscription on the base of the obelisk erected in the Hippodrome in 390 to celebrate his victory over Maximus and Victor, his sons, too, partake of this quality, having become his "perennial offspring."​31 The very historians describing Theodosius' deeds, the very professors teaching in his time share in the reflected glory of his perennitas according to Pacatus​32 and Ausonius. In fact, it was reserved for the professors of Bordeaux not only to attain glory through their achievements but, in the words of Ausonius, to attain gloria perennis!​33 Surely it cannot be by accident that this phrase associated with the name of Theodosius on the Budapest drawing occurs only once in the whole of Latin literature,​34 and that one time in the writing of a poet admired by none other than the Emperor himself, at whose specific request he issued a  p46 new edition of his collected poems toward the year 390.​35 Under the circumstances, a more fitting legend for a medallion in honor of Theodosius the Great could scarcely be conceived. The peculiar appropriateness of this legend to Theodosius I coupled with the absence of any equestrian type on the coinage of his later successor of the same name rules out the otherwise conceivable alternative that the Emperor hailed in the drawing and its proto­type was the long ruling Theodosius II.36

If both the iconographic type of our equestrian figure and the primary inscription accompanying it appear to have been derived from a numismatic proto­type, what of the singular second inscription found over the horse's rump, the letters fon (Figs. 16)? Obviously, they reflect a mint mark and, like many mint marks whether on coins or medallions, it was either corrupt or illegible. The gold medallions struck from Diocletian's period on were customarily mint marked​37 and, as on normal coinage, these brief indications of the city in which a coin or medallion was issued were placed in the exergue on their reverse. Very frequently such abbreviated references to a given city were accompanied by an additional letter or letters further indicative of the specific officina where the coin or medallion had been struck. No such mint mark as fon is known; but one, and only one, ending in the letters on is con, one of the symbols of Constantinople, the city that issued the fourth largest number of the gold and silver medallions that have come down from late antiquity.​38 And occasionally, on the coins issued by this mint, the letters con stand alone, unaccompanied by any reference to an issuing officina.​39 Precisely this simple form con occurs, for example, on the gold and silver coinage of Theodosius the Great.​40 That not only mint marks but primary legends containing commonplace words, not to say the very name of an emperor, were at times misspelled is a long noted, if astonishing, fact.​41 So numerous are examples of bungled or barbarous Latin legends even on such exceptional commemorative pieces as Justinian's lost gold medallion,​42 that it is entirely possible that the proto­type of the Budapest drawing bore the garbled legend fon in place of the correct form con. But another equally plausible alternative exists, namely, that the mint mark on this hypothetical medallion, in spite of having been correctly struck, was difficult to read, difficult to the point of illegibility, to the point where it was unintelligible to any save an experienced eye. If so, it would, by no means, have been unusual but have shared a defect common to innumerable worn, cracked, or other imperfect specimens, including gold medallions like the splendid piece in the Freer Gallery in Washington (Fig. 11), a piece sufficiently cherished by some unknown sixth century owner to have been mounted in the characteristic fashion of the day in order to serve as the pendant of a magnificent pectoral.43  p47 As we shall see, the Budapest drawing was executed with the aid of advice from an amateur numismatist, an antiquarian consulted, it may well be, because of the difficulty of deciphering this enigmatic word. Hence, it is probable that the letters fon reflect a misread or misinterpreted, rather than a misstruck, mint mark. But a mint mark they surely must be.

Thus no single feature of the Budapest drawing, neither its figural type nor its inscriptions, is incompatible with the suggestion that it is a remarkably faithful representation of the reverse of a lost gold medallion of Theodosius the Great. On the contrary, only such a numismatic proto­type can account for the presence of its otherwise baffling and inexplicable inscriptions cast in a form entirely orthodox for a medallion but utterly inappropriate as the explanatory inscription on a colossal statue. Ringed round with the characteristic legend Gloriae Perennis Theodosi, the imperial horseman pranced above one of the typical mint marks of his city, a glorious image of triumphant power.​44 For the one respect in which the Renaissance draftsman has not been faithful to his model is in the placing of its legend and mint mark, a point to which we shall return. Presumably the obverse of this hypothetical medallion bore a portrait head of the Emperor unaccompanied by any descriptive legend, according to the fashion introduced under Constantine the Great for gold and silver multiples.​45 Like so many other analogous pieces, it was no doubt struck to commemorate some great occasion in the Emperor's life, thereby constituting a precious gift worthy to convey to its recipient the splendor and might of the imperial donor.

What more fitting occasion than his momentous victory over Maximus in 388, that victory celebrated by the erection of an equestrian statue near the sculptured column in the Forum Tauri commemorating earlier Danubian successes?​46 Bronze and probably silvered,​47 it portrayed the  p48 triumphant Emperor in the conventional attitude of the Kosmokrator, with one hand raised while in his other he grasped the imperial orb.​48 Once it had been erected on August 1, 394,​49 this equestrian image provided an impressive setting in which to receive foreign ambassadors​50 and long after the terrible fifth century earthquake in which the statue of Theodosius crowning the nearby commemorative column fell to destruction, it remained upright,​51 its proud rider still extending his hand toward the city and seeming to draw attention to the trophies depicted on his storied column.​52 Given the basic analogy between this amply documented equestrian monument of Theodosius the Great and the iconographic type on the reverse of his hypothetical gold medallion, it is tempting to think that the latter may have been issued to celebrate the erection in the New Rome of that famous horseman standing, like Trajan's, in the center of a forum dominated by a triumphal column.​53 If so, the Budapest drawing, although not a direct copy of Justinian's lost statue, is an indirect reflection of the equally lost equestrian monument of his great predecessor, a monument of the highest interest in that it anticipated and conditioned all the essential features of the Augusteum statue save for the toupha introduced by Justinian which replaced Theodosius' plumed diadem.​54 On the other hand, the medallion reflected in the drawing may equally possibly have been struck to commemorate either a triumph on one or another of what have aptly been termed "the imperial comings and goings"​55 rather than in allusion to a specific, however significant, monument.​56 Yet the striking of a gold medallion, even of  p49 a unique piece, in celebration of a great occasion or of the erection of a commemorative monument is sufficiently attested as an imperial practice to warrant the proposal that the horseman of the Budapest drawing may preserve the appearance both of a lost gold medallion of Theodosius the Great and, via it, of his equestrian monument in the Tauros.57

Whatever the historical circumstances underlying the minting of this precious medallion, those attendant upon its having fallen into the hands of two noted Quattrocento personalities are highly evocative. For the very last folio of the Budapest codex, 145v, the page following the drawing of the medallion, bears the signature: Johannes Darius scripsit atramento nimphirii per ipsum Kiriaco Aconitano ad scribendum adducto.​58 Freely translated, this statement, "Johannes Darius wrote [this] with the ink of Nimphirius and with the advice of Cyriacus of Ancona,"​a implies that the lettering on the drawing was written by Johannes Darius with the aid of Cyriacus but that the drawing itself was the work of another hand, presumably of the same Nimphirius whose ink was borrowed for the lettering of the inscriptions.

Before pursuing the implications of this statement further, it may be well to consider the identity of the persons whose names are linked in it. Of Nimphirius nothing whatever is known; indeed, his name is the only word of doubtful legibility in the signature.​59 Nor is it of prime significance in the present context, since clearly someone other than Johannes Darius executed the drawing that he subsequently labeled or the word scripsit would not have been used. This Johannes Darius, as has long been recognized, was none other than the eminent Venetian steam, Giovanni Dario, a man so skilled in diplomacy and so familiar with the Turkish court that he was entrusted with the difficult task of negotiating the treaty of peace concluded with Mehmed on January 26, 1479.​60 His preparation for this role appears to have begun long earlier when, as a young man, he formed part of the entourage of Bartolomeo Marcello, Venetian ambassador to the Sultan immediately after the Conquest in the years 1454 to 1456. And it must have been during this period that Giovanni Dario was thrown with the third person mentioned in the inscription, the celebrated merchant-humanist Cyriacus of Ancona. During the last years of his extraordinary life, this remarkable man, friend of scholars, princes and popes, welcome visitor at both the Palaeologue and Ottoman courts, seems to have occupied a special position as Mehmed's cultural mentor,​61 a singular role for an impassioned Christian humanist unless we are to read into  p50 it the fervor of a missionary dedicated to the cultural conversion of the youthful Conqueror as an act of vital importance for the preservation of the classical heritage of the West. Whatever his motivation, Cyriacus is known to have been intimately associated with the Sultan and a member of his household in 1454,​62 the very year, at the latest, when Giovanni Dario appeared in that same circle. In fact, the drawing must have been executed in that year since, shortly afterward, Cyriacus seems to have abandoned his post as secretary to the Sultan and returned to his native land, where he is reported to have died at Cremona in 1455.63

Why was it necessary for Dario to consult Cyriacus in labeling his drawing — Kiriaco Aconitano ad scribendum adducto? Presumably because of his difficulty in deciphering and interpreting the enigmatic mint mark on the medallion. Even a cultivated Italian of the mid‑fifteenth century might well have been baffled by those letters, especially if they were either worn or misstruck. He could have turned to no more obvious source for advice in the solution of this numismatic problem than his distinguished countryman who had himself collected Greek and Roman coins for decades​64 and was a unique connoisseur of inscriptions. One wonders whether Cyriacus' well-known zeal for interpreting the monuments that came to his attention led him to misread con as fon, because as fon it might be construed as an abbreviation of fons and thus linked with the remaining words of the legend to form a single, unified text: fon (s) gloriae perennis Theodosi.​65 If so, the curious rearrangement of the words of the originally circular numismatic legend found in the drawing could be explained not solely as the result of lack of sufficient space to place them properly on the crowded page (which actually is occupied from margin to margin) but also as the reflection of an interpretation whereby the legend gained clarity and intelligibility and the source of the Emperor's glory, the all‑powerful attribute held in his left hand, received emphasis.

In any case, the signature on fol. 145v proves that the manuscript into which this sketch was entered cannot at the time have belonged to Cyriacus who, accustomed as he was to making his own drawings and transcriptions, would have needed neither a draftsman nor a scribe to record the precious medallion. It has repeatedly been stated that the Budapest drawing was made for — if not commissioned by — the Conqueror.​66 The fact that the manuscript belonged to the Seraglio library before it passed to Budapest and that the drawing has been universally interpreted as an  p51 illustration of Justinian's lost equestrian statue, a monument reputedly saved from destruction by the Sultan's order,​67 as well as the additional association with it of two prominent members of his circle have apparently provided the basis for this statement. It is a captivating idea, especially if the drawing is accepted as a representation not of Justinian but of Theodosius. For Mehmed's interest in the history of Theodosius​68 and his selection of the Forum Tauri, where that Emperor's triumphal column still remained upright, as the site of his future imperial residence would provide further evidence of the highest cogency.​69 If, in addition, we visualize this young man kindled with enthusiasm for Western coins and medals​70 holding in his hand a gold medallion of Theodosius, a medallion very possibly considered to offer explanation of the then-unknown identity of the great bronze statue near Hagia Sophia,​71 and ordering his companions to copy it for him in a manuscript containing excerpts from the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, the two Senecas and Cassiodorus, passages seemingly selected to serve as moral precepts for a ruler,​72 the thought becomes almost irresistible. So well does it accord both with Giacomo Languschi's characterization of him "ogni di se fa lezer historie romane, et da altri da uno compagno d.o Chiriaco d'Ancona, et da uno altro Italo, da questi se fa lezer Laertio, Herodoto, Liuio, Quinto Curtio . . ."​73 and with the other Greek and Latin contents of his private library.​74 Yet the manuscript may equally plausibly have belonged to Giovanni Dario or, given its dialect, to one of the many Anconitans resident in Constantinople before it entered the imperial library.75

It must have been some such unknown owner or reader of the codex who added the final text to the drawing. For although it has hitherto gone unmentioned, a cryptic line has always been wholly or partially visible immediately above the rider's crown in the various reproductions of the page (Fig. 7). Now, thanks to Professor Franz Babinger, it has been deciphered and proves to read: Noto q<uod> In<peratori-Imperatori> Fr<i>d<erico> si<mi>lis. Noto q<uantu>m ve<re> si<mi>lis Fig<urae>76 — a clear allusion to Frederick III, last of the emperors to be crowned in  p52 Rome! Was it the memory of that brilliant occasion in March 1452 that the sight of this equally imperial horseman stirred?​77 Or had the unknown writer of this "marginal note" seen Frederick at another of his ceremonial appearances along the route of his royal progress from Venice to Rome?​77A The answers to these questions, like the identity of the annotator and the precise date at which he penned his comment, cannot now be ascertained. But that he had seen the Emperor dressed in official regalia is obvious, since the similarity that he noted between with the imperial figure in the drawing and his Quattrocento successor must have resided to as great an extent in their regalia as in their facial appearance. The analogy between their features is undeniable. A comparison of the Budapest sketch (Figs. 17) with either the carved effigy on Frederick's great tomb in the choir of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna​78 or the nearby painted image of the Emperor above this epitaph (Figs. 12, 13)79 reveals a pronounced similarity between their squarish, broad-cheeked, clean-shaven faces, their long, prominent noses and emphatic brows. Still, one suspects that it was the richly symbolic regalia borne by the living emperor, the peacock-feathered crown and the golden Reichsapfel, of which the spectator was especially reminded when he looked at Theodosius' plumage and his orb topped by the triumph-giving Cross. For Frederick, as a successor to the Babenberger dukes of Austria, inherited the leaf crown topped by peacock feathers. Of all the crowns represented on his tomb, none is so exotic as this very one worn by the rampant lion bearing the shield of Austria at his lower left.​80 How much more memorable must it have been to one who had beheld it swaying on the imperial head!

The remarkable drawing extended by "Nimphirius" and labeled by Giovanni Dario with the aid of his friend Cyriacus must have been known to still other historical-minded cognoscienti than the writer of this comment, for it seems to have stimulated a far more radical — and less correct — statement: that the venerable rider still visible in the Augusteum was not Justinian but Theodosius!

By the mid‑fifteenth century, the identity of the celebrated statue had become obscure. According to a mediaeval tradition reported by Arab visitors to the city and still rife, the proud horsemen was the ever-legendary Constantine.​81 The fact that a learned contemporary like Codinus recognized  p53 the figure as a Justinian but pointed out that the spot on which it stood had originally been occupied first by a statue of Constantine, later by one of Theodosius and only thirdly by the existing monument of Justinian​82 as well as the older scholar­ly tradition that Justinian's statue was itself a reused earlier monument​83 must have created an intellectual climate in which a new equestrian document closely related in type to the debated statue was seized upon as proof of one specific interpretation. That such was, indeed, the case is proved by the earliest maps of Constantinople, those illustrating the numerous fifteenth century copies of Buondelmonti's Liber insularum archipelagi.

By far the larger number of these manuscripts reflect the second, somewhat abridged version of the text originally dedicated by the Florentine priest to Cardinal Giordano Orsini in 1420 and revised by him in 1422.​84 The majority of these copies of the lost original that contain a full-page illustration of Constantinople to accompany Buondelmonti's brief description of the city follow his text in identifying the equestrian monument near the Great Church as a statue of Justinian (as in Fig. 3). But in two, one in Venice (Marc. MS. Lat. Cl. XIV, 45, p123, here Fig. 14) and one previously in the former Prussian State Library in Berlin but now in the Westdeutsche Bibliothek in Marburg (Hamilton 108, fol. 70, here Fig. 15), the horseman is labeled a bronze statue of Theodosius.​85 That this alteration of the original identification was an intentional "correction"  p54 rather than a lapse on the part of the copyist is proved by the carefully emended text found in the Hamilton manuscript and in two other examples, a second manuscript in Venice (Marc. MS. Lat. Cl. X, 124) and an Italian translation of the original Latin text in the Vatican (Ross. 704). Since these two manuscripts both lack the accompanying illustration of Constantinople while Marc. MS. Lat. Cl. XIV, 45, preserves the illustration but lacks the text, only the Hamilton manuscript today retains both the emended description and its logical, equally "corrected" illustration.​86 According to this emended statement:

Outside, thus, near the church, toward the south on the square, one sees a column seventy cubits high on the top of which is Theodosius, a bronze horseman and, holding an apple with his left hand, he makes a threatening gesture toward the east with his right. And up to the present time, opinion had it, that he was Justinian. But when order had been given to ascend to the top of this very column, it was seen to be inscribed on the man himself and on the bronze horse that he is Theodosius.​87

The source of this statement is obvious. Someone acquainted with the Budapest drawing but not with its model, acquainted, too, in all probability, with the mediaeval tradition that "there were letters written on the statue"​88 jumped to the familiar conclusion that the drawing represented the celebrated statue in the Augusteum. Given that mediaeval tradition and the current diversity of opinion regarding the rider's true identity, this unknown student of the history of Constantinople evidently seized upon the Budapest drawing as the key to the riddle and proposed the "correct" interpretation of the disputed monument, which found its way into those variations  p55 on the standard Buondelmonti text and illustration that identify it as a Theodosius.​89 Justinian's proud memorial must once have borne a conventional dedicatory inscription, no doubt on its base; that such an inscription can ever have been engraved on the statue itself is inconceivable, if only because the lofty position of the horseman would have rendered it invisible and, had it existed, it could not have escaped the sharp eye of Nicephorus Gregoras, a century earlier, when he recorded the extensive repairs made to the statue under Andronicus I. Like the workmen engaged in making those repairs, this meticulous historian mounted the temporary stairway constructed around the column to facilitate their work, measured the statue limb by limb and reported his observations in a description remarkable for its detail and precision.​90 No such conspicuous feature as an inscription lettered on the bodies of both horse and horseman would have failed to attract his attentive scrutiny. But an amateur familiar with the colossal inscriptionless statue might well have drawn the excited conclusion that it portrayed Theodosius, once he had chanced to see the similar figure in the Budapest drawing identified as that emperor, especially if, as an interested amateur, he was aware that the column had been ascended and the statue repaired in the previous century and if, again as an amateur, he was unaware of the explicit testimony of early Byzantine writers. Surely the relation­ship between the Marburg-Venice text and the Budapest drawing is too precise to be the result of coincidence. This variant tradition in the text and illustration of Buondelmonti's description of Constantinople must have been stimulated by a critic directly or indirectly acquainted with the drawing.

In all probability, he was a Venetian. For not only does the provenance of the two Marciana manuscripts imply their Venetian origin​91 but the Marburg manuscript quite certainly belonged to a Venetian. Its dedicatory page, fol. 1r, is embellished with a wreath containing the letters AV (Fig. 16), the initials of its distinguished owner, Antonio Venier, member of an eminent family long prominent in Venetian annals.​92 His identity emerges from his generous practice of lending this evidently much sought after manuscript to numerous friends and acquaintances, the more eloquent of whom expressed their gratitude in poems addressed to him and inscribed on the opening pages of the volume. These urbane, at times flattering, lines reveal more agreeable aspects of Antonio Venier's personality than the previously known solitary fact that he served as informant against Jacopo Foscari in 1451 in the prolonged struggle over the Doge's son. Senator and jurist, active as praetor in his native Brescia as well as in Verona and Padua, he is praised as an orator whose humanistic tastes in literature and travel allow his fortunate friends to voyage vicariously in Aegean waters. Among these grateful readers was that far better known bibliophile Bernardo Bembo, intimate of the greatest contemporary scholars and men of letters, including his lifelong friend and fellow-Venetian, the publisher, Aldus Manutius.​93 His terse lines appear among the expressions of appreciation on fol. II v (Fig. 17), while the lengthiest and most fulsome, those of Johannes Calphurnius, are penned in a flourishing hand on fol. I v. Calphurnius, a professional scholar born in Brescia, teacher of Greek and Latin in Venice and Padua, writer and editor of  p56 Latin dialogues and comedies, like other members of this cultivated circle was, thus, at home in Venetian territory.​94 Surely it must have been a Venetian acquainted with both the Budapest drawing and the colossal equestrian statue who was responsible for the modification of Buondelmonti's text and plan of Constantinople according to which the colossal figure was reidentified and some, at least, of the innumerable readers and owners of his widely read book were provided with what purported to be the most correct, up‑to‑date information about that conspicuous monument. Whether the unknown proponent of this mistaken theory was a member of Giovanni Dario's original Constantino­politan circle of the 1450's or one whose familiarity with the documents dated from a later time cannot be determined. But that his theory had been launched before October 5, 1481, is evident from the occurrence of this date on fol. II v of the Hamilton manuscript at the end of the grateful remarks written by a Veronese reader.95

It is equally evident that this variant of the standard Buondelmonti tradition is not to be dismissed as the work of a confused copyist.​96 The Venetian provenance or owner­ship of the Latin manuscripts​97 in which it occurs, the eminent and learned Venetian circles in which the Theodosian variant circulated and the probability that this intended correction stemmed from a mistaken interpretation of a drawing undeniably associated with a Venetian statesman prove, on the contrary, that it reflects the opinion of the best informed Renaissance connoisseurs of the monuments of Constantinople.98

If the Budapest drawing was, in fact, a primary factor in the formulation of an incorrect Quattrocento theory about the identity of the imperial rider in the Augusteum, it is the more amusing that its rediscovery in the nineteenth century provoked precisely the opposite set of errors. Once correctly recognized as a reflection of an equestrian monument of Theodosius and mistakenly identified with the great horseman beside Hagia Sophia, it had fostered the misidentification of that horseman as Theodosius. Now, its own true identity ignored, it was reinterpreted as Justinian, thanks to a similar mistaken insistence upon the identity of the two riders and the correct  p57 modern appraisal of the literary sources that assure the identification of the lost columnar statue as Justinian. If these mistaken identities have been sorted out and the Budapest drawing is accepted as a copy of a lost gold medallion of Theodosius — a medallion quite possibly commemorating the erection of an equestrian statue of that monarch, hence, given the traditionalism of official imperial portraiture, characteristically similar to Justinian's lost statue — then this comedy of errors may draw to a close.

Smith College


The Author's Notes:

* It is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness and to express my gratitude to the many individuals quoted in the following notes who have so generously given me a variety of information, advice, and assistance in the preparation of this article. Foremost among them have been the Prefect of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Most Reverend Anselmo M. Albareda, the Director and Vice-Director of the Biblioteca Nazionale di San Marco, Drs. Tullia Gasparrini Leporace and Giorgio E. Ferrari, Dr. W. Gebhardt of the Westdeutsche Staatsbibliothek in Marburg and Dr. H. Boese of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, who have repeatedly answered my queries about the Buondelmonti manuscripts in their collections and supplied me with photographs for study and publication. My special indebtedness to Professor Franz Babinger will be apparent to every reader of this article. It is impossible to thank him adequately for deciphering the hitherto unread text above the Budapest drawing, for providing me with the new photographs of it reproduced in Figs. 1 and 7, and for his kindness in reading my manuscript. I am, as always, no less indebted to my husband, Karl Lehmann, for his constant and invaluable interest and advice.

1 Wilhelm Weinberger, "Beiträge zur Handschriftenkunde. I (Die Bibliotheca Corvina)," Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische Klasse, CLIX, no. 6, Vienna, 1906, pp22‑24. For a brief statement regarding the history and publication of this manuscript see Emil Jacobs, "Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed II," Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XXX, 1929‑1930, p200. I have been unable to obtain Alexander Szilágyi, Catalogus Codicum Bibliothecae Universitatis R. Scientiarum Budapestensis, Budapest, 1881, where, on p17, the manuscript appears as no. 35, or the additional Hungarian references cited by Johannes Kollwitz, Oströmische Plastik der Theodosianischen Zeit (Studien zur spätantiken Kunstgeschichte, XII), Berlin, 1941, p13 n. 1.

Thayer's Note: A detailed catalogue notice of the manuscript and its contents is given at Dumbarton Oaks; see also P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum, IV, Alia Itinera II (Brill, Leiden, 1989), p288, s.v. Ital. 3.

2 I am indebted to Dr. A. Toth, Assistant Librarian of the University Library, for his kindness in sending me microfilm negatives of this page and, as remarked above, to Professor Babinger for providing me with the photographs of it reproduced as Figs. 17. Although the deterioration of the page appears to have progressed still further than the state reflected in the photograph published by G. Rodenwaldt ("Das Problem der Renaissancen," Archäologischer Anzeiger, XLVI, 1931, cols. 328ff., figs. 11‑12), the greater range of tonality in the new press makes it desirable to add this second variant to the only original photograph ever published of this important but not easily accessible page. It may also be useful to quote the technical description of the page with which Rodenwaldt was provided by Dr. Pasteinet since political events have made it impossible for me to check on them myself: "Die Zeichnung in Sepia. Konturen des Kopfputzes, Pupillen, die Arme, unterer Teil des Panzers, Fuss und Schuh des Reiters, weiter Geschirr des Pferdes, Auge, Schwanz und Füsse, sowie Inschriften mit der Feder gezogen. Die übrigen Teile mit dem Pinsel laviert. Das Blatt fleckig. Pergament 27,7 cm hoch, 21,3 cm breit." Ibid., col. 331 n. 3.

3 First characterized in a brief report in Ὁ ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει Ἑλληνικὸς Φιλολογικὼς Σύλλογος, Ἔτος Π, Τόμος 2, 1864, pp103ff., later discussed in an extensive article, "Augusteon," Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, XI, Budapest, 1869, pp1‑60, pls. (the contents of which were made available to me through a translation provided by Mr. John Kintzig of the New York Public Library), and evidently returned to in L'Univers, Revue Orientale, March 1875, pp233‑242. This last reference has, again, been inaccessible to me.

4 For the extensive literary sources alluding to this monument see F. W. Unger, Quellen der byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte (Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der RenaissanceXII), Vienna, 1878, 1, pp137‑146, and the writers cited in notes 568.

5 In addition to those cited by Unger, ibid., see especially: Suidas, s.v. Ἰουστινιανός; Cyriacus of Ancona (Giuseppe Colucci, Delle antichità piceneXV, Fermo, 1792, p65); The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger (trans. by J. B. Telfer), London, 1879, pp79‑80; the Russians Stephen of Novgorod, Zosimus, and an anonymous pilgrim quoted in Itinéraires russes en Orient (Société de l'Orient Latin, sér. géographique, VI, 1), Geneva, 1889, pp115, 202228;º Bertrandon de la Broquière, Le voyage d'Outremer, ed. by Ch. Schefer (Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l'histoire de la géographieXII), Paris, 1892, p159; T. Reinach, "Commentaire archéologique sur le poème de Constantin le Rhodien," Revue des études grecques, IX, 1896, pp66ff.; Giovanni Mercati, Notizie di Procoro e Demetrio Cidone, Manuele Caleca e Teodoro Meliteniota ed altri appunti per la storia della teologia e della letteratura bizantina del secolo XIV (Studi e testiLVI), Vatican City, 1931, pp522f.; Antonio Muñoz, "Descrizioni di opere d'arte in un poeta bizantino del secolo XIV," Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, XXVII, 1904, pp394f.; A. Vasiliev, "Quelques remarques sur les voyageurs du Moyen Age à Constantinople," Mélanges Charles Diehl, Paris, 1930, I, pp293‑298; idem, "Harun-ibn‑Yahya and His Description of Constantinople," Seminarium Kondakovianum, V, 1932, pp149‑163; idem, "Pero Tafur, A Spanish Traveller of the Fifteenth Century and His Visit to Constantinople, Trebizond, and Italy," ByzantionVII, 1932, pp74ff., especially p105;​b Robert of Clari, "The Conquest of Constantinople", trans. by E. H. McNeal (Records of Civilization, XXIII), New York, 1936, pp16f., 107. Other writers such as Manuel Chrysoloras, Epistola ad Ioannem imperatorem (Migne, Patr. gr., CLVI, col. 45B), simply allude to the column without adding or repeating any precise information about it.

6 Petrus Gyllius, De Topographia Constantinopoleos, et de illius antiquitatibus, Leyden, 1562, pp104f. Professor Franz Babinger has called my attention to a second 16th century reference to the statue in which a legendary account of Mehmed the Conqueror's reaction to it is graphically reported: Beschreibung der Reisen des Reinhold Lubenau, ed. by W. Sahm (Mittheilungen aus der Stadtbibliothek zu Königsberg in Pr., IV‑V, 1914), pp141f.

7 Fig. 2, taken from Marciana, MSS. Lat., Cl. X, no. 123, fol. 22r, has previously been reproduced, without specific identification, by Paolo Revelli, L'Egeo, Bergamo-Milan, 1912, p74, and classified by Giuseppe Gerola, "Le vedute di Costantinopoli di Cristoforo Buondelmonti," Studi bizantini e neoellenici, III, 1931, passim. Cf., too, J. Valentinelli, Bibliotheca Manuscripta ad D. Marci VenetiarumVI, Venice, 1873, p297. Fig. 3 illustrates fol. 36v of the Buondelmonti manuscript owned by the Gennadius Library in Athens (MS. 71). I am greatly indebted to Mr. Peter Topping, director of the Library, for his kindness in allowing me to reproduce this hitherto unpublished page. This fine, richly illustrated manuscript of the Liber insularum archipelagi has been incorrectly dated ca. 1520 by Shirley Howard Weber, Voyages and Travels in Greece, The Near East and Adjacent Regions (Catalogues of the Gennadius LibraryII), Princeton, 1953, p22, no. 96a, in spite of the correct 15th century date proposed by its original owner George Gennadius in his typed Catalogue of Manuscripts in The Gennadius Library, London, 1922, p22. For discussion of the conflicting identifications of the statue of Justinian found in both the text and illustrations of the preserved copies of Buondelmonti's description of Constantinople see below p53.

8 See, too, folios CXXIX v‑CXXX r, CCXLIX r, CCLXXIV r, CCXC v of the Latin and folios CXXIX v‑CXXX r, CCLIX r, and CCLVII r of the German edition. For the fact that Schedel adopted a mediaeval interpretation of the statue as Constantine, see below, notes 8198. The importance of this document for the history of the celebrated statue was recognized long ago by V. von Loga, "Die Städteansichten in Hartman Schedels Weltchronik," Jbh. der k.‑preuss. Kunstsamml. IX, 1888, p194, and Théodore Reinach, op. cit., p84 n. 1, pp101, 103, but it has been curiously ignored by the many subsequent writers who have assumed that the statue was destroyed by the Conqueror. Emil Jacobs ("Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehmed II," p200 n. 2), on the basis of a passage in Angiolello, assumed that Justinian's equestrian statue was taken down by Mehmed. But the statue mentioned by that reliable commentator on the Sultan and his surroundings is not only not described as a horseman but is explicitly identified as a figure of St. Augustine. Inasmuch as this statue, too, stood in the Augusteum, and Justinian's monument has occasionally been referred to by the name of the square, Jacobs evidently conjectured that the bronze statue mentioned by Angiolello actually represented the imperial horseman rather than the Church Father. But there is every reason to accept the literal testimony of so well-informed a writer as Angiolello, especially since the anecdote he recounts is no less credible apropos of a now lost statue of that prime Christian, St. Augustine, than of the famous monument of Justinian. Jean Reinhard, the French editor of Angiolello, has also accepted this passage at face value, in his Essai sur J.‑M. Angiolello, Angers, 1913, p167. (For the Italian text see Jacobs, loc. cit.; for Angiolello's career see, in addition to Reinhard, Gotthold Weil, "Ein unbekannter türkischer Transkriptionstexte aus dem Jahre 1489," OriensVI, 1953, pp260ff., and Franz Babinger, Maometto il Conquistatore e il suo tempo, Turin, 1957, passim.) Hence Schedel's text and illustration remain of paramount documentary importance for the history of Justinian's statue. For discussion of the illustrations of the Liber chronicarum, in particular, of the reliability of those depicting Constantinople, cf. Von Loga, op. cit., pp93‑107, 184‑196, and Eugen Oberhummer, Konstantinopel unter Sultan Suleiman dem Grossen aufgenommen im Jahre 1559 durch Melchior Lorichs aus Flensburg, Munich, 1902, pp20f. Cf., too, Rudolf Bernoulli, "Das Weltallbild in Hartman Schedels Weltchronik," Buch und Einband (Aufsätze und graphische Blätter zum 60. Geburtstage von Hans Loubier), Leipzig, 1923, p48.

9 Revue de l'art chrétien, ser. IV, vol. II, 1891, pp470‑472 (reprinted separately in Lille, 1892). On p471, Mordtmann reproduced the faulty illustration that accompanied the summary of Dethier's lecture to the Greek Philological Society in Constantinople in 1864 (here Fig. 5), evidently being unaware of the corrected drawing after the original that accompanied Dethier's subsequent Hungarian publication (here Fig. 8). Apart from its most serious flaw, the omission of one word of the inscription applied to the horse, to which I shall return, this drawing is an inaccurate oversimplification of the original in which all trace of modeling is omitted along with characteristic details, for example, of the girdle and boots, while nonexistent cast shadows and a nonexistent incipient rein are introduced. Via Mordtmann's widely read article this unreliable drawing was further reproduced by: N. V. Pokrovsky, "The Byzantine Shield Found in Kertsch," Materials for Russian ArchaeologyVIII, 1892, p35 (in Russian); T. Reinach, op. cit., p84, fig. 6; Charles Diehl, Justinien, Paris, 1901, p27, fig. 11; S. Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, IV, Paris, 1913, p336, no. 4; Jean Ebersolt, Constantinople byzantine et les voyageurs du Levant, Paris, 1918, pp29‑30, fig. 6; idem, Les arts somptuaires de Byzance, Paris, 1923, p126, fig. 59; and Otto von Simson, "The Bamberg Rider," Review of ReligionIV, 1940, p269, pl. III, fig. 2. (Evidently the reconstruction of Justinian's equestrian monument proposed by E. M. Antoniades, Ἔκφρασις τῆς Ἁγίας Σοφίας, Athens, 1907, I, p59, fig. 7, is partially derived from Mordtmann's illustration.) Dethier's identification of the drawing has also been accepted by J. B. de Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, Rome, 1888, p374; O. Wulff, "Die sieben Wunder von Byzanz und die Apostelkirche nach Konstantinos Rhodios," Byzantinische ZeitschriftVII, 1898, p318; E. Babelon, "Deux Médaillons disparus de Domitien et de Justinien," Revue numismatique, ser. IV, vol. III, 1899, p5; Eugen Oberhummer, "Constantinopolis," in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, IV, Stuttgart, 1902, col. 987; Cornelius Gurlitt, Antike Denkmalsäulen in Konstantinopel, Munich, p7 (Since I have been able to obtain this article only in a reprint given to the Gennadius Library in Athens, I am unaware of the journal in which it appeared. Apparently it was after 1907); Warwick Wroth, Catalogue of the Imperial Byzantine Coins in the British Museum, London, 1908, I, pp. XC f.; O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology, Oxford, 1911, p124; Oskar Wulff, Altchristliche und byzantinische Kunst, Berlin, 1918, I, p159; Jean Ebersolt, Mélanges d'histoire et d'archéologie byzantines, Paris, 1917, p68 n. 4; P. E. Schramm, "Das Herrscherbild in der Kunst des frühen Mittelalters," Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, II, 1922‑1923 p154; Charles Diehl, Manuel d'art byzantin, 2nd ed., Paris, 1925, I, p280; W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology (The Loeb Classical Library), V, London, 1926, p192 (where it appears in illustration of the different equestrian type represented on Justinian's lost gold medallion mentioned below in spite of Unger's remarks, Quellen, p325 and "Ueber die vier Kolossal-Säulen in Constantinopel," Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, II, 1879, p134; Wilhelm Schubart, Justinian und Theodora, Munich, 1943, p202, has perpetuated this confusion by introducing the same epigram alluding to still another equestrian statue of Justinian into his discussion of the monument in the Augusteum which he, too, accepts as represented in an unidentified "Federzeichnung aus dem 14. Jahrhundert" that can only be the Budapest rider); Jacobs, op. cit., p200; Constantin VII Porphyrogénète, Le Livre des Cérémonies (ed. A. Vogt), Paris, 1935, p113; A. M. Schneider, Byzanz (Istanbuler ForschungenVIII), Berlin, 1936, p80; André Grabar, L'Empereur dans l'art byzantin (Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, fasc. 75), Paris, 1936, pp46‑47; R. Janin, Constantinople Byzantine (Archives de l'Orient ChrétienIV), Paris, 1950, pp78f.; Franz Babinger, Mehmed der Eroberer und Seine Zeit, Munich, 1953, p506; idem, Maometto il Conquistatore e il suo tempo, pp684f. (references to this volume hereafter will be solely to the later Italian edition); Guido Libertini, "Un gruppo marmoreo da Melos del Museo di Atene e la scultura equestre Romana," Annuario della scuola archeologica di Atene e delle missioni italiane in Oriente, XXX‑XXXII, 1952‑1954, p381 n. 3. Down to the mid-20th century, all the authors cited above, with the exception of Jacobs and Babinger, have labored under the false impression that this repeatedly discussed manuscript was still in the Séraglio Library. (For the equally remarkable inaccuracy with which the drawing has been dated, see below, note 63.) But in 1931, an actual photograph of the drawing was published for the first time by G. Rodenwaldt, op. cit., figs. 11‑12, whence it has been reproduced as the frontispiece to Procopius, VII, Buildings, trans. by H. B. Dewing (The Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, 1940, by Kollwitz, op. cit., Beilage 2, by Siegfried Fuchs, "Bildnisse und Denkmäler aus der Ostgotenzeit," Die AntikeXIX, 1943, fig. 8, p118, and by H. P. L'Orange, Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World, Oslo, 1953, p147, fig. 104. These writers, as well as Glanville Downey in his appendix to Dewing's edition of Procopius, pp395‑398, and his later articles ("Justinian as Achilles," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, LXXI, 1940, pp69ff. and "Notes on the Topography of Constantinople," Art Bulletin, XXXIV, 1952, p235) have continued to accept the Budapest drawing as a representation of Justinian's statue in the Augusteum.

10 VII. I.ii.5ff. The translation is Dewing's loc. cit., pp33‑37.

ἐν δὲ τοῦ κίονος τῇ κορυφῇ χαλκοῦς ἕστηκεν ὑπερμεγέθης ἵππος, τετραμμένος πρὸς ἕω, θέαμα λόγου πολλοῦ ἄξιον. ἔοικε δὲ βαδιουμένῳ καὶ τοῦ πρόσω λαμπρῶς ἐχομένῳ. ποδῶν τῶν προσθίων ἀμέλει τὸν μὲν ἀριστερὸν μετεωρίζει, ὡς ἐπιβησόμενον τῆς ἐπίπροσθεν γῆς, ὁ δὲ δὴ ἕτερος ἐπὶ τοῦ λίθου ἠρήρεισται οὗ ὕπερθέν ἐστιν, ὡς τὴν βάσιν ἐκδεξόμενος· τοὺς δὲ ὀπισθίους οὕτω ξυνάγει ὡς, ἐπειδὰν τὸ μὴ ἑστήξειν αὐτοῖς ἐπιβάλλοι, ἐν ἑτοίμῳ εἶεν. τούτῳ δὴ τῷ ἵππῳ χαλκῆ ἐπιβέβηκε τοῦ βασιλέως εἴκων κολοσσῷ ἐμφερής. ἔσταλται δὲ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἡ εἰκών · οὕτω γὰρ τὸ σχῆμα καλοῦσιν ὅπερ ἀμπέχεται. τάς τε γὰρ ἀρβύλας ὑποδέδεται καὶ τὰ σφυρά ἐστι κνημίδων χωρίς. εἶτα ἡρωϊκῶς τεθωράκισται καὶ κράνος αὐτῷ τὴν κεφαλὴν σκέπει δόξαν ὡς κατασείοιτο παρεχόμενον, αἴγλη τέ τις ἐνθένδε αὐτοῦ ἀπαστράπτει. φαίη τις ἂν ποιητικῶς εἶναι τὸν ὀπωρινὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀστέρα. βλέπει δὲ πρὸς ἀνίσχοντά που τὸν ἥλιον, τὴν ἡνιόχησιν ἐπὶ Πέρσας, οἶμαι, ποιούμενος. καὶ φέρει μὲν χειρὶ τῇ λαιᾷ πόλον, παραδηλῶν ὁ πλάστης ὅτι γῆ τε αὐτοῦ καὶ θάλασσα δεδούλωται πᾶσα, ἔχει δὲ οὔτε ξίφος οὔτε δοράτιον οὔτε ἄλλο τῶν ὅπλων οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ σταυρὸς αὐτῷ ἐπὶ τοῦ πόλου ἐπίκειται, δι’ οὗ δὴ μόνου τήν τε βασιλείαν καὶ τὸ τοῦ πολέμου πεπόρισται κράτος. προτεινόμενος δὲ χεῖρα τὴν δεξιὰν ἐς τὰ πρὸς ἀνίσχοντα ἥλιον καὶ τοὺς δακτύλους διαπετάσας ἐγκελεύεται τοῖς ἐκείνῃ βαρβάροις καθῆσθαι οἴκοι καὶ μὴ πρόσω ἰέναι.

For comment on the phrase "habited like Achilles," see Downey, ibid., pp395ff., "Justinian as Achilles," loc. cit., and "Paganism and Christianity in Procopius," Church History, XVIII, 1949, p39, as well as M. P. Charlesworth, "Pietas and Victoria: The Emperor and the Citizen," Journal of Roman Studies, XXXIII, 1943, pp1‑10.

11 Wroth, op. cit., 1, frontispiece, p. xci, n. 1, and p25. For additional bibliography on and discussion of this unique piece found in Caesarea in Cappadocia in 1751, stolen from the Cabinet des Médailles in 1831, and today known only from the electrotype in the British Museum, see, especially, E. Babelon, loc. cit., p5, and Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Roman Medallions (Numismatic Studies, no. 5), New York, 1944, pp177, 183, 224, 226, pl. XLIX, 3. (Schramm, loc. cit., p154 n. 26, has multiplied confusion by assuming that the reverse of this lost medallion as well as the Budapest drawing reflect the same proto­type — Justinian's equestrian statue in the Augusteum — in spite of their obvious differences.) I am indebted to Dr. J. P. C. Kent, Assistant Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals, for his kindness in permitting me to reproduce the above photograph of this electrotype and, especially, for allowing me to consult him in regard to numismatic problems.

Unger (Quellen, p325) has correctly drawn attention to the analogy between this equestrian portrait of Justinian preceded by Victory and the epigram on the base of a statue of the same Emperor in the Hippodrome recorded in the Greek Anthology, XVI.62 (Paton, loc. cit., p192).

12 Ebersolt (Mélanges, p68 n. 4, and Les arts somptuaires, p126) as well as Wulff and Vogt (ll. cc.) and Schramm (op. cit., p161 n. 55) assumed that the drawing illustrated the appearance of the toupha. But, as both Grabar (op. cit., pp46f., 131) and Kollwitz (op. cit., p13 n. 3) have observed, this is not the case. For the Persian toupha (according to Ioannis Tzetzes, Historiarum variarum Chiliades, Leipzig, 1826, VIII, 305ff.) introduced into Constantinople by Justinian and seemingly represented on the lost gold medallion was not a simple circlet of gold surmounted by plumes but a variety of plumed helmet. (Rodenwaldt, op. cit., col. 335 n. 1, has confused the issue further by defining the toupha as "einem mit einem Busch von Straussenfedern geschmückten, aus Tiara und Diadem zusammengesetzten Helm," while it is generally agreed that the essential feature of this richly symbolic Persian headgear is its peacock feathers. Cf., for example, Von Simson, op. cit., p269.) Both Grabar and Kollwitz concluded that the draftsman responsible for the Budapest drawing misunderstood what they assumed to be his model, the genuine toupha on Justinian's statue, although Kollwitz also considered the possibility that the original toupha might have been replaced by the feathered crown of the drawing in a later restoration of the statue. The fact remains that the two headdresses are not the same and that every effort to equate them in order to adjust both statue and drawing to the literary texts, hence to make one a reflection of the other, is doomed. For remarks on the varied meanings of the word toupha see Jacobus Gretser's commentary on Codinus, De officiis, Ch. III, p45C (Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae, Bonn, XII, 1839, p227 [hereafter cited as CSHB], as well as the comments of Ducange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, Niort, X, 1882, p82).

13 Georgius Pachymeres, Ἔκφρασις (Descriptio Augusteonis) in A. Banduri, Imperium orientale sive Antiquitates Constantino­politanae, Paris, 1711, I, p116. Leo Grammaticus, Chronographia, p456B (CSHB, XXVII, 1842, p227) offers no evidence on this score in spite of his reference to the rider's toupha.

14 Ibid., pp115f., and Nicephorus Gregoras, Historia Byzantina, VII, 12, ser. 4 (CSHB, XIX, 1829, p275f.)

15 Loc. cit., p115.

16 Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, Historia del gran Tamorlan, 2nd ed., Madrid, 1782 (Coleccion de las cronicas de Castilla, III.2), p58. Cf., too, Nicephorus Gregoras, loc. cit.

17 As previously noted, the most serious flaw in Dethier's first reproduction of the drawing (here Fig. 5) was its omission of the word perennis inscribed on the horse's neck. This omission proved especially unfortunate since it was this drawing alone that was easily accessible to scholars via Mordtmann's and Diehl's republication of it until Rodenwaldt's publication of an actual photograph of the drawing. Previously, only T. Reinach had been at pains to obtain a copy of Dethier's Hungarian article. The omission of one word of the seemingly enigmatic inscription on or near the horse's body may have contributed to the tendency to ignore it by rendering it still less intelligible. S. Reinach (Répertoire, IV, p336 no. 4) has reduced this already simplified drawing still further by eliminating all the words save Theo‑dos (sic)!

18 Dethier, Ὁ ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει . . . Σύλλογος, p104, mistakenly quoted the total inscription as fon (s) gloriae perennis Theodosius. Referring to a note found inserted in the codex on a slip of paper written in a 17th century Greek hand in which the rider was identified first as Aristotle and, later, after erasure of the word Aristotle, as Alexander, Dethier drew the additional, false, conclusion that the inscription on the horse, too, must have been added two hundred or two hundred and fifty years later, that is, at a time when the identity of the by then lost statue of Justinian needed explanation, an explanation unnecessary in the 15th century when it was still the only such monument upright. According to this view, the inscription was, therefore, a later misinterpretation of the true identity of the rider. In his subsequent study, "Augusteon," p18, Dethier slightly modified this view, narrowing the age of the troublesome inscriptions to a period only eighty years later than the drawing. Oppressed by the allusion to a Theodosius and the known existence of equestrian statues in honor of both the emperors bearing this name, he eliminated them as possible sources of the drawing by relying on the fact that in the 15th century no other monument of this character save Justinian's was still upright. Amusingly enough, Dethier characterized the lettering of these inscriptions as pure Latin writing of the Renaissance unlike the "Gothic" writing of the text.

Mordtmann (op. cit., p471), noting that in view of Constantinople in a manuscript of Buondelmonti in Venice (Marc. Lat. Cl. XIV, 45) the column before Hagia Sophia had been labeled as bearing a statue not of Justinian but of Theodosius (a theory echoed by Pokrovsky, loc. cit.), explained both this fact and the reference to Theodosius on the drawing as the result of Zonaros' statement, Epitome historiarum, XIV.6, p11, 63C (Teubner, Leipzig, 1870, III, p274) that Justinian's monument was erected on the spot previously occupied by a column bearing a statue of Theodosius. By implication, therefore, he considered the inscriptions of both the drawing and the Buondelmonti plan a mistaken interpretation but he did not characterize them as additions. For discussion of the relation­ship between the Budapest drawing and this variant tradition in Buondelmonti see below, p53. T. Reinach (op. cit., p83) repeated this observation of Mordtmann but, on the whole, followed Dethier's modified statement. Wulff and Kollwitz are the only other writers who have considered these inscriptions. The former (Altchristliche und byzantinische Kunst, p159), changing his own earlier opinion that the inscription represented a mistaken conjecture regarding the statue's identity, suggested that conceivably Justinian's statue had originally represented Theodosius before being converted to a secondary use. Kollwitz, too, pp14f., adopted this view and, linking it with a further observation regarding the text of Buondelmonti, suggested that the inscriptions on the drawing might reflect an old inscription on the statue itself. For further reference to these points, including the possibility that Justinian's statue was a reused earlier monument see below p53.

19 According to the explicit statement, quoted above in note 2, of the only expert who has examined the manuscript in Budapest.

20 Cf., for example, Harold Mattingly, C. H. V. Sutherland and R. A. G. Carson, The Roman Imperial CoinageIX (Valentinian I-Theodosius I by J. W. E. Pearce), London, 1951, pp. xxxii, 236, no. 89, a‑c, 238, 247, no. 29, a‑c, 263, no. 47, a‑c, 294, no. 69, a‑e, 304, no. 22, a‑c. Aes. III.: dn Theodo-sius pf aug. Emperor pearl diademed, draped and cuirassed to right. Rev.: gloria-Romanorum. Emperor on horseback to right, raising right hand. Varying mint marks. The type was also issued in other mints as well as by Arcadius and Honorius. Pearce relates its issue by Theodosius to Honorius' accession to the throne.

Fig. 10 is taken from pl. XVI, 23 of this volume, an example in the British Museum from the mint of Cyzicus. Fig. 9 is a similar piece from the mint of Antioch belonging to the American Numismatic Society in New York. I am indebted to Mrs. Aline A. Boyce for her great courtesy in allowing me to examine and have photographed numerous coins of interest in this connection and for permission to reproduce this example.

21 If for no other reason than that it shows the right foreleg of the horse raised rather than the left, as in the drawing. For additional still more cogent reasons see below.

22 The example issued by Arcadius illustrated by J. Sabatier, Description générale des monnaies byzantines frappées sous les empereurs d'orient (depuis Arcadius jusqu'à la prise de Constantinople par Mehmed II), reprinted, Leipzig, 1930, I, pl. IV, 15, illustrates this feature particularly graphically.

23 Cf., for example, Pearce, op. cit., pp15, no. 8, 50, no. 37, 75, no. 1, 94, no. 1, 275, no. 14, 276, no. 18, and idem, "The Coinage of the Valentinian and Theodosian Periods," Numismatic Circular, XXXIX, 1931, and XL, 1932, passim, for both these gold coins and the bronzes cited in note 20. Pearce's later article, "The Gold Coinage of the Reign of Theodosius I," Numismatic Chronicle, ser. 5, vol. XVIII, 1938, pp205ff. makes it clear that no equestrian type occurs on the gold coinage of this emperor.

24 See, for example, Miss Toynbee's remarks, op. cit., pp22, 24, 125f., and Pearce, op. cit., p. xxvii.

25 See the statistics accompanying Pearce's catalogue, passim, and Miss Toynbee's statement regarding the larger gold medallions (op. cit., p22), "one example, or at the most two or three known examples, of any given type is the general rule." This point is illustrated, for example, by the unique gold medallion of the Emperor Justin belonging to the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris and illustrated by Hayford Pierce and Royale Tyler (L'art byzantin, II, Paris, 1934, p94, pl. 72, E‑F), which also has an equestrian type on its reverse, while the loss of such unique pieces is again cited by Miss Toynbee (op. cit., p102 n. 65, p198), to mention only a few instances.

26 For example, Pearce, op. cit., pp78, no. 11 a‑c, 81, no. 23 a‑c, 84, no. 37 a‑c, 232, no. 75 a‑c.

27 For the former see E. Babelon, "La trouvaille de Helleville (Manche) en 1780," Revue numismatique, ser. IV, vol. X, 1906, p173, no. 9, pl. IX, fig. 9, Jules Meurice, Numismatique constantinienne, Paris, I‑III, 1908‑1912, II, pp366, 477f., pl. X, no. 24 (cf., too, the same legend, p395, pl. XII, no. 3, on an early medallion in honor of Crispus and Constantius II), Francesco Gnecchi, I medaglioni romani, Milan, 1912, I, p17, no. 20, pl. 7, no. 4, and Toynbee, op. cit., pp168, 181, pl. XXXIV, 1, 2; for the latter, Henry Cohen, Description historique des monnaies frappées sous l'empire romain, 2nd ed., 1892, VIII, p388, and Toynbee, op. cit., p82 n. 79, pl. XIII, 5. Cf., too, the legend gloria perpet. on small commemorative bronzes issued by the mints of Rome and Trier under Constantine, Meurice, op. cit., I, 1908, pp214, X, 410, XI.

28 The first on the reverse of gold coins struck at Trier under Constantine II (Meurice, op. cit., I, p139, pl. XII, no. 6), the second on the reverse of gold coins struck at Antioch by Maximinus Daza (ibid., III, p181), the third and fourth on the bronze coinage of Licinius and Constantine (ibid.II, p572 and Cohen, op. cit., p377). Numerous other legends such, for example, as Aeternae memoriae, Concordiae aeternae, Concordiae Augustorum, Concordiae exercitus, Providentiae Caess, Victoriae Laet Princ Perp, listed by Cohen, loc. cit., pp361, 370, 425, 448, may, however be dative as well as genitive.

29 VI.2 (History of the Franks by Gregory Bishop of Tours, ed. by Ernest Brehaut, New York, 1916, p145). For comment on the much cited passage cf. Babelon, "La trouvaille de Helleville," pp187ff.; Wroth, op. cit., p105; and Toynbee, op. cit., pp24, 117f.

30 R. Egger, "Der erste Theodosius," Byzantion, V, 1929‑1930, p27. It is interesting to note that according to Miss Toynbee (op. cit., p178) perpetuus does not appear on the obverse of medallions as an imperial epithet until the time of Constantius II and Constans.

31 Gerda Bruns, Der Obelisk und seine Basis auf dem Hippodrom zu Konstantinopel (Istanbuler ForschungenVII), Istanbul, 1935, pp30‑32, figs. 33, 34. Evidently through a typographical error, the text is incorrectly given as omnia Theodosio cedunt subolique parenni but the correct form perenni is plainly visible in the photograph, fig. 33a.

32 Panegyricus Theodosio Augusto Dictus, Ch. 44, Par. 4 (XII Panegyrici latini, ed. W. Baehrens, Leipzig, 1911, p128).

33 Ausonius, V.xxvi.6. Valete, manes inclitorum rhetorum: / valete, doctores probi, / historia si quos vel poeticus stilus / forumve fecit nobiles, / medicae vel artis dogma vel Platonicum / dedit perenni gloriae: (Ausonius, tr. by Hugh G. Evelyn White, The Loeb Classical Library, London, 1951, I, p138). Cf. the introduction, pp. viii ff., for biographical remarks, including a brief statement on Ausonius' relation­ship to Theodosius. I am indebted to my husband for knowledge of this invaluable passage.

34 Thesaurus linguae latinae, s.v. gloria and perennis.

35 Ausonius' lifelong association with the imperial court, his gloom upon the death of his pupil Gratian at the hands of Maximus, his jubilation over Theodosius' subsequent victory over the usurper in 388 are too well known to require elaboration. Indeed, it is tempting to consider that he may himself have contrived an epigram for the dedicatory inscription of the equestrian statue erected to commemorate this major victory in which the cherished phrase occurred again, to be quoted later on a medallion reflecting that statue. But with this suggestion, we enter the inviting realm of historical speculation.

36 Cf. Sabatier, op. cit., passim, and Hugh Goodacre, A Handbook of the Coinage of the Byzantine Empire, pt. 1, London, 1928, passim. Theoretically, a medallion bearing an equestrian type and dating from the reign of Theodosius II may be found in the future. Hence it is the special relevance of the legend to his predecessor's attitudes in conjunction with his use of such a numismatic type of a period of several years that is of particular significance.

37 Toynbee, op. cit., pp48, 51, 53.

38 Ibid., p54. The mint mark con was only used otherwise by Arles, where it was invariably preceded by one of the letters p, s, t, or q in allusion to the issuing officina. Cf. L. Laffranchi, "Constantina e Constantia," Historia, III, 1929, pp277‑285; Pearce, op. cit., pp308‑310.

39 On gold and silver coins. For example, ibid., pp234, nos. 84, 85; 210, no. 6.

40 Cohen, op. cit., VIII, p160, no. 45; Pearce, op. cit., p234, no. 85a, pl. XII, 19, and, especially, Gnecchi, op. cit., I, p81, no. 4, and pl. 36, no. 8.

41 See the obverse legend of Fig. 8: Iustinii-anus and the similar mistake cited by Pearce, op. cit., p92, note to XVI b.

42 To mention simply a few examples: dn flic‑tor for vic‑tor (ibid., p69, n29 b); victori‑a Auguste, on a semi-solidus issued in Constantinople bearing the mint mark con! (ibid., p210, no. 6); gloira for gloria, again, from the time of Theodosius I (ibid., p235, no. 88a and passim); the incorrect mint marks cited by Madden, "On the Coins of Theodosius I and II," p176 n. 1; and Toynbee, op. cit., pp100f.

43 I am indebted to Mr. A. G. Wenley, director of the Freer Gallery, for permission to illustrate this rare piece, well published and illustrated by Walter Dennison, "A Gold Treasure of the Late Roman Period from Egypt," Studies in East Christian and Roman Art (University of Michigan Studies, XII, pt. II, 1918), pp117ff., pls. I, X, XI. Cf., too, Toynbee, op. cit., p187 n. 263, pl. XXXVI.

For a few other random instances of gold medallions or silver coins having legends difficult to decipher (especially if not known from other examples), cf. ibid., pl. XXXIV, 6; Pearce, op. cit., p234, nos. 84, 85, pl.XII, nos. 18, 19.

44 The fact that in the drawing the horse's rear hooves create so marked and curving a line suggests that on the lost proto­type the exergue was not set off from the remainder of the field by a horizontal bar, as is so often the case, but that the mint mark, too, was disposed in a slight curve, hence linked aesthetically with the circular form of the primary legend as, by this slight adjustment of the line of the hooves, the horse, too, would be better adapted to the circular field. If this suggestion is correct, it constitutes another minor confirmation of the fact that the immediate proto­type of the Budapest horseman was not a statue.

45 Toynbee, op. cit., p178. Cf., for example, the previously cited and characteristic gold medallion of Constantine (Gnecchi, op. cit., I, p17, no. 20, pl. 7, no. 4). The fact that the drawing preserves only the reverse of this lost gold medallion precludes the possibility of a satisfactory comparison of the Emperor's features with other representations of him. But the basic features of the drawing are compatible with the relevant heads illustrated by Richard Delbrueck, Spätantike Kaiserporträts von Constantinus Magnus bis zum Ende des Westreiches (Studien zur spätantiken KunstgeschichteVIII), Berlin, 1933, pp200ff, pls. 15, 94, 95, 98.

46 The primary sources referring to this equestrian monument are Georgius Cedrenus, Historiarum Compendium, pp323B, 353A, (Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae, VI, Bonn, 1838, pt. 1, pp566, 618): Ὅτι τὸν τοῦ ταύρου κίονα ἔστησεν ὁ μέγας Θεοδόσιος, τρόπαια καὶ μάχας ἔχοντα κατὰ Σκυθῶν καὶ βαρβάρων τοῦ αὐτοῦ. ἔχει δὲ οὗτος ἔνδοθεν καὶ ὁδὸν ἄνω φέρουσαν. καὶ ὁ κατὰ τὸ ἄμφοδον δὲ ἑστὼς ἱππότης αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ μέγας Θεοδόσιος, χεῖρα τείνων δεξιὰν πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, καὶ δεικνὺς τὰ ἐγγεγραμμένα τῷ στύλῳ τρόπαια.

Τῷ δ’ ἐπεὶ ἐγένετο σεισμὸς φοβερὸς ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει, μηνὶ Σεπτεμβρίῳ κε´, καὶ ἔπεσον ἐκκλησίαι πολλαὶ καὶ οἰκίαι καὶ ἔμβολοι ἕως ἐδάφους, κατεχώσθη δὲ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἀναρίθμητον. ἔπεσε δὲ καὶ ἡ σφαῖρα τοῦ ἀνδρίαντος τοῦ φόρου, καὶ ἡ στήλη τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοδοσίου ἡ εἰς τὸν κίονα τοῦ Ταύρου, καὶ τὰ ἔσω τείχη περὶ διάστημα ἱκανόν. (Cf., too, Theophanes, Chronographia [ibid., XXXIX, pp110, 229] A.M. 5878, 5970 and Leo Grammaticus, Chronographia, p121 [loc. cit.]; Georgius Codinus, De antiquitatibus Constantino­politanis, p24b (ibid., XIII, 1843, p42): Ὅτι ἐν τῷ Ταύρῳ στήλη τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοδοσίου ἵσταται. ἦν δὲ πρώην ἀργυρᾶ. ἔνθα τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἥκοντας ἐδέχετο ἐκεῖσε. καὶ πρώην παλάτιον ὑπῆρχε καὶ ξενοδοχεῖον τῶν Ῥωμαίων, δηλονότι, εἰς τὸ καλούμενον Ἁλωνίτζιον (Cf., too, the following passage of uncertain author­ship quoted in the same volume, p186: Δέον γινώσκειν ὅτι ἡ καλουμένη Ταῦρος Θεοδόσιος ἐστιν ὁ μέγας. ἐν ᾖ  ποτε ἐδέχετο ὁ βασιλεὺς τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν δυνάστας. ἀργύρεα δέ τις ἦν πρώην ὡς ὁ Σωζομενὸς διδάσκει); Chronicon Paschale, O1.293, 3 (ibid., IX, pt. 11, p565) Ἰνδ. ζ´. ϛ´. ιϛ´. ὑπ. Ἀρκαδίου τὸ γ´ καὶ Ὁνωρίου τὸ β´.

Ἐπὶ τούτων τῶν ὑπάτων ἐστάθη μέγας ἀνδρὶας Θεοδοσίου Αὐγούστου ἐν τῷ Θεοδοσιακῷ φόρῳ μηνὶ λῴω καλάνδαις αὐγούσταις. Patria Konstantinoupoleos, II.47 (T. Preger, Scriptores originum Constantino­politanarum, II, Leipzig, 1907, p175): Περὶ τοῦ Ταύρου. ὅτι ἐν τῷ Ταύρῳ στήλη τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοδοσίου ἵσταται. ἦν δὲ πρώην ἀργυρᾶ. ἔνθα τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἥκοντας ἐδέχετο. ἐκεῖσε δὲ πρώην, παλάτια ὑπῆρχον καὶ ξενοδοχεῖον τῶν Ῥωμαίων, δηλονότι εἰς τὸ καλούμενον Ἁλωνίτζιν. and Constantinus Rhodius, ll. 219ff. (Emile Legrand, "Description des oeuvres d'art et de l'église des Saints Apôtres de Constantinople. Poème en vers iambiques par Constantin le Rhodien," Revue des études grecques, IX, 1896, p43): Καὶ τόνδε τὸν φέριστον ἱππότην μέγαν / ἑστῶτα, Θεοδόσιον ἄνδρα τὸν ξένον, / αὐτοῦ πρὸς ἀκρόβαθμον ἄμφοδον μέγα / αὐτὸς πάλιν ἔστησεν ἔμπνοον τάχα, / τοῦ πατρὸς ἆθλα καὶ πόνους τιμῶν ξένους, / ὡς ἐκ μάχης ἥκοντά πως νικηφόρον, / ὅταν καθεῖλε Μαξίμου τυραννίδα / καὶ τοὺς Σκύθας ἤλασεν ἐκ Θρᾴκης ὅλους / οὗ τὸ φρύαγμα καὶ τὸν ἵππον ὁ βλέπων / χαλκῷ παγέντα πλαστικῆς τέχνης βίᾳ, / φρίττοντα χαίτην καὶ σοβούντα τὰς τρίχας, / καὶ τὸν χαλινὸν ἐνδακόντα τῷ θράσει, / τὸν αὐχένα προύχειν τε πύργον ὡς μέγαν / σοβαρότητι καὶ φρυάγματι ξένῳ, / ὁπλὴν ποδός τε προσδοκᾶν κινουμένην, / ἵππον νομίζειν χρεμετίζειν ὡς τάχα / καὶ ζῆν, φέροντα δεσπότην νικηφόρον, / τὸν ἱππότην τε γαῦρον ὄμμά πως φέρειν, / καὶ χεῖρα τείνειν δεξιὰν πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, / τρόπαια δεικνύουσαν ἐγγεγραμμένα / πρὸς ὅνπερ αὐτὸς ἥδρασε στῦλον μέγαν, / φόνους Σκυθῶν τὲº καὶ σφαγὰς τῶν βαρβάρων.

47 Codinus and Patria, ll. cc., as T. Reinach (op. cit., pp77f.) has observed. Kollwitz' rejection of this testimony and of Reinach's remarks (op. cit., p8 n. 8) on the assumption that these authors have confused the equestrian statue with another silver figure of Theodosius, is not persuasive.

48 Although the statue is not explicitly described as having held an orb in one hand, the fact that it did hold this attribute must be inferred from the statements of Cedrenus, Theophanes, and Leo Grammaticus, ll. cc., who all mention that the "sphere" of the statue fell in a severe earthquake variously dated within the decade 470‑480 (cf. Unger, Quellen, p94).

For discussion of the implications of these gestures cf., especially, von Simson (loc. cit., pp263, 269), L'Orange (op. cit., pp139ff.), Kollwitz (op. cit., p9), Paul Friedländer (Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius, Leipzig and Berlin, 1912, pp64‑65), and E. H. Kantorowicz ("The 'King's Advent' and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina," Art BulletinXXVI, 1944, pp207 ff.).

49 Chronicon Paschale, loc. cit.

50 Codinus, Patria, ll. cc.

51 Cedrenus, Theophanes and Leo Grammaticus, ll. cc. Although this statue may well have remained upright until the Latin conquest, the explicit statement to this effect by Kollwitz (op. cit., p8) results from his assumption that the equestrian monument, variously identified by Byzantine writers as Joshua or Bellerophon (Codinus, op. cit., p42; Patria, loc. cit.; Nicetas Choniates, De rebus post captam urbem gestis and De signis Constantino­politanis [CSHB, XXXI, pp848f., ll. 13ff. and 857f.]), which also stood in the Tauros was identical with the equestrian statue of Theodosius I. This, however, was decidedly not the case since, whatever their other iconographic similarities, they differed in one important respect: the presence of a kneeling barbarian beneath one foreleg of "Joshua's" horse, a feature characteristic of a well-known but by no means identical type. The same mistaken assumption appears in Schneider (op. cit., p19) and von Simson (op. cit., pp269ff.) in spite of the fact that T. Reinach (op. cit., p77 n. 2) had already correctly differentiated these statues.

52 Cedrenus, Constantinus Rhodius, ll. cc. As T. Reinach (op. cit., pp77f.) long ago pointed out, this gesture, coupled with Cedrenus' phrase κατὰ τὸ ἄμφοδον, is more than sufficient to prove that Theodosius' equestrian monument stood in the Forum below the column and is to be differentiated from his portrait statue standing on top of that column. The sources cited in note 51 confirm this fact. It is the more surprising that Unger (Quellen, p172, "Ueber die vier Kolossal-Säulen in Constantinopel," pp110, 118) confused these explicit statements and concluded that the column of Theodosius was surmounted by the equestrian monument of the Tauros, a confusion still implicit in the statements of Gurlitt (Antike Denkmalsäulen, p8, and Die Baukunst Konstantinopels, p17) in spite of his conviction that the column could not actually have supported an equestrian figure, in the remarks of L'Orange (op. cit., p145), and of Libertini (op. cit., p381 n. 3), who has transposed this monument to a nonexistent column of Theodosius II! Fortunately, Schneider (op. cit., p19), Kollwitz (op. cit., p4), and Janin (op. cit., p69), have upheld Reinach's correct interpretation. It may be useful to remark here that Unger's text (Quellen, p252), has added to the confusion by translating Codinus, op. cit., p38, as referring to still another equestrian statue of Theodosius the Great in another part of the city, whereas the Greek text explicitly refers to Θεοδοσίου τοῦ μικροῦ.

53 Schneider (op. cit., p21 n. 13) and Kollwitz (op. cit., pp7f.) have pointed out this emulation of the Trajanic scheme. Cf., too, Sextus Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus (ed. Teubner, Leipzig, 1911), 48, 1, 8.

54 As we have seen, this difference in headgear between the two riders constitutes the primary iconographic feature setting one apart from the other. Regarding this point, cf., too, note 83.

55 Toynbee, op. cit., pp103ff.

56 Cf. Miss Toynbee's remarks and examples (ibid., pp20, 75f., 96, 100ff., 223) in reference to gold as well as to bronze medallions. As is well-known, commemorative coins and medallions were at times issued considerably before or after the event celebrated. This point should possibly be kept in mind in connection with the previously mentioned small bronze coins having as their reverse type an equestrian figure and that most general of legends, Gloria Romanorum, issued by Theodosius and his sons from May 15, 392, till January 17, 395 (above, p44). Conceivably they, too, allude in a loose fashion to the Emperor's equestrian statue in the Tauros and to the great victory it commemorated. Pearce's implied view (op. cit., p. xxxii), that these coins refer to the elevation of Honorius to the rank of Augustus in January, 393, is not convincing given the extent of time during which they were issued, their legend, and the fact that they were struck by all three of the imperial rulers. (Curiously enough, Kollwitz, op. cit., p9, does not refer to Theodosius in his list of emperors who issued coins having an equestrian type.)

57 Actually it has been suggested not only that the equestrian monument praised in Anthologia Palatina, XVI.65 (Paton, op. cit., p194) was Theodosius' statue in the Tauros (Unger, Quellen, p172, and "Ueber die vier Kolossal-Säulen," p119), but also that this poem was its dedicatory inscription (Schneider, op. cit., p85; Kollwitz, op. cit., p8; Janin, op. cit., p69). But the poem is clearly a typical literary description of a work of art and quite inconceivable as the dedicatory inscription of an imperial monument. Whether it alludes to the Tauros statue cannot be established since its generalized language contains no reference to specific features, such as the gestures of the figure, that would allow it to be identified, while the term κεκορυθμένος could be used for either a crested cuirass or a feathered crown.

58 The text cited here, preceded by the formula IH̅S, is the reading of Jacobs (op. cit., p200), a reading made from a photograph of the original. He considered it certain save for the word nimphirii. The text originally published by Dethier, Ὁ ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει . . . Σύλλογος, p103, Johannes Darius scripsit atramento, Nimphirius pinxit; Kyriaco Aconitano ad scribendum adducto (and repeated and reproduced, still with minor divergences and incorrectnesses of spelling, as Anconitano for Aconitano in "Augusteon," p9) explicitly defined Nimphirius as the draftsman as did Mordtmann's truncated version of Dethier's text (op. cit., p472), in which all trace of Johannes Darius has vanished, thanks to the omission of the four words preceding Nimphirius. T. Reinach (op. cit., p83 n. 2) retained Dethier's full text (with the minor presumed correction "Ciriaco Anco[n]itano"), making the additional suggestion that Johannes Darius was the copyist of the manuscript. Later writers, with the exception of Kollwitz (op. cit., p12, where scripsit has become scripset), have contented themselves with paraphrasing either Dethier's or Jacobs' text. Jacobs' statement, "Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed II," loc. cit., pp200f. (followed by Rodenwaldt, op. cit., col. 331, and Downey, Procopius, p395, and "Justinian as Achilles," loc. cit., p69), that the drawing was made "auf Veranlassung des Cyriacus," is contrary to the explicit testimony of the text.

59 According to Jacobs, loc. cit. Previously, no one doubted that Nimphirius or Nymphirius had executed the drawing given Dethier's reading pinxit.

60 Johannes Darius' identity with the Venetian secretary of state was tentatively proposed by T. Reinach (loc. cit., p83 n. 2). For Giovanni Dario's activity as a Venetian diplomat see Babinger, Maometto, pp175f., 546, 549ff.

61 This facet of Cyriacus' many-sided personality has been explored in particular by Emil Jacobs and Franz Babinger. I am greatly indebted to Professor Babinger for having brought to my attention his edition of Jacobs' previously unpublished and long earlier lecture "Mehemmed II, der Eroberer, seine Beziehungen zur Renaissance und seine Büchersammlung" in Oriens, II, 1949, pp6‑30, in which Cyriacus' role as advisor to Mehmed is placed in the larger context of certain of the Sultan's cultural attitudes and connections. See, too, Jacobs' later article "Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed II," loc. cit. and Babinger, Maometto, pp60‑64, 83f., 127, 137, 176, 184, 550, 624f., 684f., 729ff.

62 According to a letter addressed to the Sultan by Francesco Filelfo on March 11, 1454, in which Cyriacus was referred to as, at the time, his secretary (γραμματεύς). Cf. Jacobs, "Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed II," p201.

63 Ibid., p202. The majority of recent writers have dated the drawing correctly in the 15th century save for those who, like Janin (op. cit., p79) have continued to follow Dethier's original mistake of dating it in 1340 as it was perpetuated and disseminated by Mordtmann, loc. cit., p472 (Grabar's 17th century date, op. cit., pp46f., must be the result of a typographical error). Dethier's revised date of 1425 ("Augusteon," p5), accepted by T. Reinach (op. cit., p23 n. 2), reappears in Von Simson (op. cit., p269 n. 52).

Jacobs' essentially correct statement ("Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed II," p200) that the entry on fol. 145v could not have been made later than 1454 or the drawing earlier than 1453 should be slightly modified if Giovanni Dario's presence in the Sultan's entourage cannot be documented before the appearance there of the new Venetian bailo, Bartolomeo Marcello in 1454 (cf. Babinger, Maometto, pp175f.). Hence my proposed date of 1454. The vexing problem of whether Cyriacus' role as compagno to Mehmed began shortly before or immediately after the Conquest, i.e., of precisely how Giacomo Languschi's famous characterization of the Conqueror and his mentor is to be evaluated chronologically, given its appearance on a sheet dated 1452‑1453, and the conceivable possibility that Giovanni Dario, too, may have formed part of this entourage as early as 1450, seem not to have been resolved although Cyriacus' presence at Mehmed's side has been interpreted as already established before the Conquest. Cf., especially, Jacobs, "Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed II," pp192ff.; idem, "Mehemmed II, der Eroberer," pp11ff.; and Babinger, Maometto, pp127, 175ff, 184, 550ff., 624, 731. Since the precise date of the Budapest drawing can only be derived from the association of Cyriacus and Dario, the most reliable and conservative date for it, for the time being, is 1454. Whether it was drawn in Constantinople or in Adrianople, which remained the Sultan's residence for some years (ibid., pp164ff., 171ff., 196, 202, 206f., 212, 215, 226, 228 and, especially, 230f., 249), it is impossible to say.

64 See, for example, Erich Ziebarth, "Cyriacus von Ancona also Begründer der Inschriftenforschung," Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum Geschichte und deutsche Litteratur, IX, 1902, p224.

65 Dethier, "Augusteon," p10, restored the inscription on the drawing as fon(s) gloriae perennis Theodosi(us). Cf. Karl Lehmann-Hartleben ("Cyriacus of Ancona, Aristotle, and Teiresias in Samothrace," HesperiaXII, 1943, pp116ff., 120) for a striking example of Cyriacus' willingness to replace or supplement actual observation by conjecture.

66 Jacobs, "Mehemmed II, der Eroberer," p17; Babinger, Maometto, pp684f.

67 Cf. notes 6 and 8 regarding the post-Conquest history of the statue. The statement that the Budapest drawing was made for the Sultan is, of course, based not only on the assumption that it reflects the lost equestrian statue in the Augusteum but also on the incorrect view that it was drawn after the statue had been removed from its lofty position by the Sultan. For comment on this position see, especially, note 8.

68 Attested by the contemporary writer Georgios Sfrantzes. Cf. Jacobs, "Mehemmed II, der Eroberer," pp9f.

69 Babinger, Maometto, pp177f.

70 Ibid., pp80, 545f., 565, 577f., 747f., 794.

71 See below, p53.

72 According to the table of contents published by Dethier, "Augusteon," pp6‑9.

73 Quoted by Zorzo Dolfin in his Cronaca delle famiglie nobili di Venezia e della stessa città dalla sua origine sino l'anno 1478, partially edited by Thomas, "Die Eroberung Konstantinopels im Jahre 1453 aus einer venetianischen Chronik," Sitzungsberichte der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, philosophisch-philologische Classe, 1868, p7. The pertinent passage has been reprinted by Babinger, Maometto, p176.

74 Itemized by Jacobs, "Mehemmed II, der Eroberer," pp27ff.

75 It seems unwise to speculate further on this tantalizing topic until the text, dialect, and script of this Italian manuscript have been more adequately published. An expert comparison of the hands in which the various remarks made on fols. 144v and 145v are written and the script of the text of the manuscript might throw light especially on the problem mentioned in note 76. In his authoritative summary of Cyriacus' activities, De Rossi, loc. cit., mistakenly reports that the manuscript is in Cyriacus' own hand. This is the source of the similar statement by Paul MacKendrick, "A Renaissance Odyssey, the Life of Cyriac of Ancona," Classica et Mediaevalia, XIII, 1952, p141, as the author kindly informs me.

76 In the same letter of August 14, 1957, in which Professor Babinger sent me his own transcription of this line, he also included two alternative readings, the first proposed by Dr. Luigi Lanfranchi, director of the Venetian State Archives, the second by Count Raimondo Morozzo della Rocca, to both of whom I express my gratitude for their help in the solution of this problem. 1. Noto qualiter Friderico similis. Noto ergo in verosimili figura. 2. Noto qui imperatori Friderico similis. Noto ergo imperium vere simile. Figura. Although these readings differ in detail, they concur in establishing one central fact: that the writer of the light pointed out the similarity in appearance between the figure represented in the drawing and the contemporary ruler Frederick III.

Professor Babinger is of the opinion that the handwriting of this line is not Cyriacus'. But since it is assumed that Cyriacus was present at Frederick's coronation, it is conceivable that he might have remarked on the similarity in appearance of the two imperial personages in the hearing of the unknown writer of the manuscript who, in turn, may then have entered this comment onto the drawing. Theoretically, this owner could have been Giovanni Dario; yet Professor Babinger, again, finds the long-later handwriting of Dario's testament dissimilar. The language of the note precludes Mehmed as its author, since the Sultan did not know Latin. Hence, if the manuscript was already in his possession when this note was inscribed, the writer must have been a friend of the Sultan or member of his entourage. On the other hand, if it was added before the codex passed into his library, it would provide clear proof that the drawing was not made at Mehmed's request, as has been suggested, but that he became its owner at a somewhat later time.

77 Cf. the brief discussion of Frederick's reign in The Cambridge Medieval History, New York, 1936, VIII, pp 136ff., 172ff.

77a Cf. Johannes Martens, Die letzte Kaiserkrönung in Rom 1452, Leipzig, 1900, for an account of Frederick's princely reception and journey to Rome via Venice, Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, and Florence. I am indebted to Professor Babinger for knowledge of this reference.

78 Cf., especially, Friedrich Wimmer and Ernst Klebel, Das Grabmal Friedrichs des Dritten im Wiener Stephansdom (Österreichs KunstdenkmälerI), Vienna, 1924, pls. 57‑59 and passim; and, for the tomb in general, Hans Tietze, Geschichte und Beschreibung des St. Stephansdomes in Wien (Österreichische KunsttopographieXXIII), Vienna, 1931, pp440‑468.

79 Wimmer and Klebel, op. cit., p31, no. 160, pl. 64 and Tietze, op. cit., fig. 574. The short hair worn by the Emperor in this portrait greatly enhances his resemblance to the drawing. Cf., too, the additional portraits of Frederick III reproduced by Max Kemmerich, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige im Bilde, Leipzig, 1910, pp52‑54, especially the medallion in the Germanic Museum illustrated on p53. I owe my knowledge of this reference to Professor Babinger.

80 Cf., especially, Wimmer and Klebel, op. cit., pl. 62. According to Dr. Bruno Thomas, director of the Wappensammlung of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, this crown, the royal leaf crown with peacock feathers, first occurred in 1245 on a seal of Frederick II, the last of the Babenbergers, as Duke of Austria, in preparation for a kingdom of Austria that never materialized. It was assumed by his successors, the Hapsburgs, who inherited Babenberger territory. Hence, according to Dr. Thomas, "it is very well assumable that the Emperor Frederick III possessed his own personal leaf crown with peacock feathers to be worn personally or to be carried before him on ceremonial occasions." I am greatly indebted to Dr. Thomas for his kindness in providing me with this important information and for his assistance in procuring the photographs reproduced in Figs. 12, 13. The very same crown is borne by the shieldbearers accompanying Albrecht III and Rudolf IV on the jambs of the lateral portals of St. Stephen's. For illustration of these figures see Tietze (op. cit., pp138ff., 147ff.), and R. Ernst and E. Garger (De früh- und hoch-gotische Plastik des Stephansdoms, Munich, 1927, pls. 60, 67, 73, 82). It is interesting to note that the crown of peacock feathers figures as the ninth among those worn by the pope in the 12th century Libellus de caerimoniis aulae imperatoris (P. E. Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio [Studien der Bibliothek WarburgXVII]), Leipzig-Berlin, 1929, I, p196, II, p94, and that according to a mediaeval German prescription, a sovereign's representative was required to sit on a horse and wear a crown of peacock feathers in a ceremonial entrance (cf. Von Simson, op. cit., p276 n. 83. I have, unfortunately, not had access to F. J. Bodmann, Rheingauische Alterthümer, Mainz, 1819, p626, the source of this statement).

81 Cf. Vasiliev, "Quelques remarques sur les voyageurs du Moyen Age à Constantinople," pp294ff.; idem, "Harun-ibn‑Yahya and his Description of Constantinople," p160 n. 57; idem, "Pero Tafur," p105; Bertrandon de la Broquière, loc. cit., and Diehl, "Un voyageur espagnol," p323. Hartman Schedel, loc. cit., still preserved this tradition at the very end of the century.

82 Loc. cit., p187. Cf. Zonaras' similar statement, loc. cit., that Justinian's column and statue were erected on a place previously occupied by a column topped by a silver statue of Theodosius erected by Arcadius. Janin, op. cit., p79, explains the presence of Theodosius' name on the Budapest drawing as a reflection of this tradition.

83 Malalas, Chronographia, XVIII.225 (CSHB, XXXVIII, p482): Καὶ τῷ αὐτῷ χρόνῳ ἀνηνέχθη ἔφιππος στήλη τοῦ βασιλέως Ἰουστινιανοῦ πλησίον τοῦ Παλατίου ἐν τῷ λεγομένῳ Αὐγουστεών, ἥτις στήλη ἦν Ἀρκαδίου βασιλέως, πρῴην οὖσα ἐν τῷ Ταύρῳ ἐν βωμίσκῳ. This unique testimony has not been generally accepted. Unger ("Ueber die vier Kolossal-Säulen," p134), T. Reinach (op. cit., p83), and, after earlier vacillation, Wulff (Altchristliche und byzantinische Kunst, p159) were inclined to believe it, the first because of his assumption that no such colossal statue could have been produced technically in Justinian's time, a point of view reiterated more recently by Kollwitz (op. cit., pp14f.), who has seen in the text of the Budapest drawing corroboration of Malalas' statement. But the allusion to Theodosius in the drawing can scarcely refer to the statue of Arcadius re‑used by Justinian mentioned by Malalas unless we are to assume that Arcadius re‑used a statue of his father which later, its feathered crown now replaced by the newly introduced toupha, served as a Justinian — a sequence of events that is not impossible but for which there is no documentation. Taken by itself, Malalas' statement is of great interest. If Justinian's colossal horseman was, indeed, a re‑used equestrian statue of Arcadius, it is little wonder that the Budapest drawing resembles it in so many essential aspects, for Arcadius' statue evidently repeated the traditional equestrian type employed by his father and reflected in the drawing. Under such circumstances, the original headgear of the statue may well have been replaced by Justinian's much discussed toupha. (But Rodenwaldt's pronouncement in "Das problem der Renaissancen," loc. cit., col. 331, that it is immaterial whether Justinian's statue was a re‑used Arcadius or a new creation of his own time is quite incomprehensible in the context of his argument.)

84 Cf., especially, Giuseppe Gerola, op. cit., pp249‑279; Berengario Gerola, "Le etimologie dei nomi di luogo in Cristoforo Buondelmonti," Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, XCII, 1932‑1933, pp1129‑1174 (and the comments in E. Jacobs' review, Byzantinische-Neugriechische Jahrbücher, XII, 1935‑1936, pp148‑150); Roberto Almagià, Planisferi, carte nautiche e affini dal secolo XIV al XVII esistenti nella Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana (Monumenta cartographica Vaticana, 1), Vatican City, 1944, pp105‑117; and the older articles of E. Jacobs, "Cristoforo Buondelmonti. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Schriften," Beiträge zur Bücherkunde und Philologie August Wilmanns zum 25. März 1903 gewidmet, Leipzig, 1903, pp313‑340, and "Neues von Cristoforo Buondelmonti," Jahrbuch des kaiserlich deutschen archäologischen InstitutsXX, 1905, pp39‑45, as well as G. R. L. de Sinner's edition of the Paris manuscripts, Christoph. Bondelmonti, Florentini, Librum insularum archipelagi, Leipzig and Berlin, 1824; Emile Legrand's edition of a Greek translation of the text, Description des Iles de l'Archipel par Christophe Buondelmonti (Publications de l'École des langues orientales, ser. IV, vol. XIV), Paris, 1897; F. W. Hasluck, "Notes on Manuscripts in the British Museum Relating to Levant Geography and Travel," Annual of the British School at AthensXII, 1905‑1906, pp196ff.; and Maria Roche Belsani, "Un codice del Buondelmonti nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli," Samnium, VI, 1933, pp170‑184. It may be worth noting that a richly decorated 15th century manuscript of both the Liber insularum archipelagi and the Descriptio insulae Cretae was sold at auction in 1931 in a Hoepli sale (Vente Ulrico Hoepli, XXI‑XXII Mai, MCMXXXI, Milan, 1931, p24, no. 65). I am unaware of its present whereabouts. For the Gennadius manuscript see above note 7.

Neither the two Buondelmonti manuscripts in the University Library in Padua, nos. 1605‑1606, nor MS. 673 in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, nor MS. Gadd. 60 (Formerly Gadd. 320) in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana nor MS. Cl. XIII, 7, in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, MS. 673, contain views of Constantinople, while the illustration in MS. A.219 inf. in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan is incomplete. I am indebted to the directors of these libraries for information regarding these manuscripts.

85 Marc. MS. Lat. Cl. XIV, 45: Theodosi(us) in eq(uo) ereo; Hamilton 108: T(h)eodosi(us) i(n) eq(uo) ene(o). For the San Marco and Vatican manuscripts, see, especially, Gerola, op. cit., pp250ff. (where the manuscript is mistakenly cited as Marciano XIV, 25 instead of 45), Almagià, op. cit., pp105, 113ff. (where, again, Marc. XIV, 45, is consistently misquoted as 25), and Eugen Oberhummer, Konstantinopel unter Sultan Suleiman dem Grossen, p20. The former has been illustrated by Gerola (without plate number) and reproduced after a simplified drawing by Mordtmann, op. cit., p479 (where the legend is incorrectly transcribed), C. N. Sathas, Documents inédits relatifs à l'histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, III, Paris, 1882, frontispiece, and Alexander Van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople, London, 1899, frontispiece; the latter, too, appears in a simplified version in Mordtmann, op. cit., p371. For comparison of certain variations in the basic text and legends regarding Justinian's statue see the charts of Giuseppe Gerola, op. cit., pp266ff.

The plan of Constantinople in Hamilton 108 has, so far as I am aware, never before been illustrated, nor has this version of Buondelmonti's lost archetype figured in discussions of the Liber insularum archipelagi save in Jacobs' brief reference to the manuscript, "Cristoforo Buondelmonti," pp319 and 335 n. 1. I am, therefore, particularly grateful to Dr. W. Gebhardt of the Westdeutsche Bibliothek in Marburg for allowing me to reproduce it here and for his great kindness in sending me photographs of the important opening pages of this manuscript discussed below. I am greatly indebted to Dr. H. Boëse, director of the Manuscript Division of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin for his courtesy in providing me with information regarding the original provenance of the manuscript and its present whereabouts.

Mordtmann (op. cit.), p371, reproduced what he described as "Plan de Constantinople de Buondelmonti, photographié sur l'original conservé au Vatican" and provided this plan with a list of legends supposedly transcribed from the original, including the following: "In hoc visus imp(erator) Teod(osius) equo sedens = colonne avec la statue équestre de Justinien." This information, repeated by F. W. Hasluck in his note to the frontispiece of Alexander Van Millingen, Byzantine Churches in Constantinople, London, 1912, implies the existence of still another example of the variant "Theodosian" version of the Buondelmonti plan. But a comparison of Mordtmann's illustration with the pertinent Vatican manuscripts makes it clear that his plan is a reduced version of the map of Constantinople found on fol. 131v of Urb. Lat. 277, the beautiful manuscript of Ptolemy's Geographia written in 1472, which is obviously dependent on the Buondelmonti tradition and where the actual text differs radically from Mordtmann's quotation, reading: In hac iustinian(us) i(n) eq(u)o eneo sede(n)s. Mordtmann's mistaken reading, leading to Hasluck's incorrect citation, should be discarded. For Cod. Urb. Lat. 277 cf. Almagià, op. cit., pp99f.; Giuseppe Gerola, loc. cit., pp252, 266; and C. Stornajolo, Codices Urbinates Latini, Rome, I, 1902, pp253f.

86 The fact that the two Venice manuscripts cited here supplement each other, one preserving the text, the other the illustration, needs emphasis since Gerola's discussion, op. cit., p258, implies that Marc. XIV, 45, also contains the text. I am grateful to Dr. Ferrari for having confirmed these facts for me.

87 extra igitur ad ecclesiam ad meridiem in platea columpna LXX cubitorum alta videtur cuius in capite Theodosius eneus equester habetur et pomum cum leva tenens ad orientem cum dextra minatur et usque in hodiernum fuit oppinio ut esset Iustinianus sed capto ordine ascendendi ad verticem ipsius columpnae visum est scriptum in ipso homine et equo eneo esse Theodosium. This passage in Hamilton 108, fol. 67v, recurs in virtually identical form in Marciana X, 124, fol. 336v and in the following Italian text in Vat. Ross. 704, fol. 58 r: Et per fine allu di hodierno è stato opinione che quello que era incima de la Colonna fosse Justiniano imperatore, ma con ingegno fo salito incima de quella et fo conosciuto esser Theodosio per lettere scripte et sculte nellu cauallo. (Quoted from Almagià, op. cit., p114 n. 3, who has discussed this manuscript, written at the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, at so length, pp105, 113ff., and admitted that its basic text, in this case, of 1430, contains additions made by a tardivo rimaneggiatore after the Conquest — indeed, as late as 1470. His statement that the passage quoted here must antedate the Conquest reflects the view that Justinian's monument was dismantled at that time. On the contrary, this revised statement is surely one of the numerous later additions to the text.) For comment on the relation­ship of specific illustrations of the Liber insularum to their given texts, cf. especially, Giuseppe Gerola, loc. cit., passim, and, particularly, p260.

88 Robert of Clari, loc. cit. Cf., too, Bertrandon de la Broquière, loc. cit. These passages suggest that the original inscription on the base of the monument may conceivably have been made of bronze letters. Once they had been stripped from it by the Latin invaders, along with the sheathing of the column, only the holes for their attachment would have remained, holes obviously unintelligible to either visitors or their guides but nonetheless indicative of the original presence of an inscription.

89 As has been pointed out in note 18, both Mordtmann and T. Reinach were aware of this variant tradition in the Buondelmonti manuscripts and of its seeming reoccurrence in the Budapest drawing. Pokrovsky's statement, loc. cit., that the Budapest drawing was intended for a plan of Constantinople in which both Justinian's statue and the site of Theodosius' column were indicated on the same spot, hence that the inscription refers not to the statue but to the previous column, is a variation of Mordtmann's interpretation. Cf., too, Kollwitz, op. cit., p14 n. 10.

90 Loc. cit.

91 I am greatly indebted to Dr. Ferrari for the following information. MS. Lat. Cl. X, 124: provenance, San Michele di Murano; MS. Lat. Cl. XIV, 45: provenance, Archbishop Fontanini, an 18th century clergyman who resided in Friaul and Rome. In Dr. Ferrari's opinion, both these manuscripts were probably written in Venice, the marginal notes in XIV, 45 suggesting, in addition, that it was actually in that city late in the 15th century. For MS. Lat. Cl. X, 124, cf. Valentinelli, op. cit., pp300ff.

92 Cf., especially, W. C. Hazlitt, The Venetian Republic, London, 1900, I, p717,º II, pp104ff.

93 V. Cian, "Per Bernardo Bembo. Le sue relazioni coi Medici," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, XXVIII, 1896, pp348‑364; idem, "Per Bernardo Bembo. Le relazioni letterarie, i codici e gli scritti," ibid., XXXI, 1898, pp49‑81. For Bernardo Bembo's library see, too, Pierre de Nolhac, La bibliothèque de Fulvio Orsini (Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études, fasc. 74), Paris, 1887, passim.

94 S.v. Calphurnius in Christian Gottlieb Jöcher, Allgemeines Gelehrtenlexikon, Leipzig, I, 1750, cols. 1579‑1580. I am indebted to Professor Erwin Panofsky for knowledge of this valuable work.

95 The remarks of Agostino Capelli, presumably a member of the eminent Venetian family of that name (s.v. Capello, Enciclopedia italiana, VIII, Rome, 1930, cols. 833‑834), on the same page are dated 1500, an indication that at least until that year Antonio Venier was alive and continuing to lend this codex to interested readers. Among the other borrowers whose names are discernible was Marco Antonio Averoldi, again, presumably a member of the well-known Brescian family.

96 Cf., for example, Wulff, "Die sieben Wunder von Byzanz," p318, and Giuseppe Gerola, op. cit., p255. But note the latter's comment, pp260f., on the character of the additions made to the text and plan by late copyists.

97 The Italian translation, Ross. 704, has been ascribed to "un marchigiano," by Almagià, op. cit., p114 n. 2, who points out that the latest additions to the original text of Buondelmonti in this manuscript, including reference to events of the year 1470, suggest that it dates from the late 15th or early 16th century. Ibid., pp113ff. See above note 87.

98 Distinction should be made between the errors of mediaeval popular legend and the learned, if mistaken, theories held in better informed circles regarding the bronze rider's identity. The notion that he was the Emperor Heraclius quoted by road of Clari, loc. cit., falls in the former category. The latter includes not only the Theodosian variant discussed above but a second, also reflected in the Buondelmonti views of the city, according to which the column supported a statue of Constantine. Cf. the references cited in note 81 and the echo of this theory preserved, for example, in another Vatican manuscript, Chigi F. V. 110, fol. 43v, where the legend reads: Hic Co(n)sta(n)tinus i(n) eq(u)o ereo.

I wonder whether the celebrated horseman near Hagia Sophia is not echoed still another time in the left background of Carpaccio's Presentation of the Virgin painted for the Scuola degli Albanesi in Venice (cf.  Pompeo Molmenti — Gustav Ludwig, The Life and Works of Vittorio Carpaccio, London, 1907, fig. 172) but now in Milan in the Brera. The bronze equestrian statue mounted on a colossal column, standing to the left of a domed structure in the vicinity of two meta-like obelisks suggestive of a hippodrome in this scene, is so strikingly similar in basic scheme and context to the representation of Justinian's monument in Buondelmonti's view of Constantinople as to suggest that one or another, probably Venetian, version of the manuscript was known to Carpaccio and the source of his juxtaposition of analogous types of monuments in spite of the fact that he has transposed them from one famous city of the East to another. For discussion of Carpaccio's quotations from views of exotic cities, for example, of Reuwich's drawings, see the summary and bibliography given by Hans Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries, New York, 1944, no. 615, pp152f., especially the references to the statements of Colvin, Gilles de la Tourette, Fiocco, and Popham. In their investigation of the sources of this aspect of Carpaccio's art, students of Italian painting do not seem to have considered the Buondelmonti illustrations at all. Yet I suspect, again, that examination not only of the view of Constantinople in the finest, most richly illuminated copies of the Liber archipelagi but also of the pages illustrating other much visited places like Candia, Rhodes and Chios, to mention a few, might prove richly rewarding in connection with such problems of setting and architectural background in Venetian painting.


Thayer's Notes:

a A different translation has appeared in print (Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice & Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past, Yale University Press, 1996, p89):

Johannes Darius wrote [this] with the ink of Nimphirius when Cyriacus of Ancona had been persuaded by his [Dario's] advice to draw [it] .

To my mind this translation is somewhat better, not least on technical grounds since the inscription is no longer "Freely translated", per ipsum being translated rather than passed over. Brown further notes that various suggestions have been made that Nimphirius might be a person, a place, or a type of ink.

It will be noted that if we adopt this translation we would undercut Lehmann's argument to an extent, since Cyriacus is no longer the adviser but the draftsman. But scribendum is not a normal word for "to draw"; if Cyriacus drew the figure, we would expect pingendum. A literal translation throws the difficulties into full relief:

Johannes Johannes Darius Darius scripsit wrote atramento with ink nimphirii of nimphirius per by (thru) ipsum himself Kiriaco Kiriacus A[n]conitano of Ancona ad scribendum to write adducto. having been persuaded.

After revolving this a while on my own, my tentative conclusion is that what this means is Giovanni Dario persuaded Cyriacus of Ancona to write this out (presumably, just as Lehmann says, because he couldn't make heads or tails of it, but knew that Cyriacus could, being an expert in such things), and then Dario made a fair copy in ink.

This leaves "nimphirii" up in the air; I'm really sorry not to have been able to find a facsimile of Dario's text anywhere, since this hapax doesn't leave me at all convinced. *Nimphidius (Nymphidius) would be an attested personal name — Tac. Hist. I.5, Sid. Ap., Ep. V.2, although it might not have survived another millennium thru to Dario's time — and *Nimphaeus would refer to Nymphaea, one of two possible Aegean islands (Pliny, N. H., V.134, 135), to Nymphais, an island offshore of Lycia (Pliny, N. H., V.131), or to Nymphaeum, the Illyrian cape and port (Pliny, N. H., III.144, Caes., B. C. III.26, Liv. XLII.36) — all of which were in the Byzantine orbit at the time — as well as to several other less likely places.

b Vasiliev's article enters the public domain only in 2024, so we'll have to wait till then before I put it online; but it is cited by the author of our article only for its verbatim quote of the relevant passage of Tafur's text — as translated by Malcolm Letts, Pero Tafur: Travels and Adventures (1435‑1439) (New York, London: Harper & Brothers 1926) in The Broadway Travellers series edited by Sir E. Denison Ross and Eileen Power — which can be found at Silk Road Seattle. The passage is as follows:

 [p140] As we came out we saw at the door of the church a great column of stone, higher than the great chapel itself, and on the top is a great horse of gilded brass, upon which is a knight with one arm raised, pointing with the finger towards Turkey, and in the other he holds an orb, as a sign that all the world is in his hand. One day it was blown down in a great storm, and the orb fell from the hand, and they say that it is as large as a 15gallon jar, but from below it looks like an orange, so that one can judge how high the statue is. They say that to secure that orb, and to fasten the horse with chains, to prevent its being blown down in the high winds, cost 8000 ducats. This knight, they say, is Constantine, and that he prognosticated that from that quarter which he indicated with his finger would come the destruction of Greece, and so it was.

[Vasiliev notes that "orb" is the word used in the English translation, where the original Spanish text (which I have not seen) has mançana = apple; and that "15 gallons" is a translator rendering of "cinco arrobas", the arroba being a very variable liquid measure.]


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