Zosimus relates that the statue which held the apple was distant an arrow’s flight from the hippodrome, doubtlessly the “fine square for tilting”, now known as the Meïdan. The magnificent palace wherein receptions were held, and that excited the admiration of Schiltberger, must have been the Boukoleon and Daphna which adjoined the hippodrome (Dethier, _Der Bosphor und Constantinopel_, Wien, 1873, 22). This edifice was greatly neglected during the reigns of the last of the Palæologi, and after his conquest of Constantinople, Mahomet II. ordered its complete destruction.
The other palace noticed was the Blackernes, in which Clavijo (_Hakluyt Soc. Publ._ 29) was received by the emperor Manuel. Near it, Bertrandon de la Brocquière found a “fausse braie d’un bon et haut mur en avant du fossé, qui était en glacis excepté dans un espace de deux cents pas à l’une de ses extrémités près du palais”. This must have been the place where Schiltberger saw a “getüll.”[1]—BRUUN.
(5A.) The statement that the statue was placed on a pillar is corroborated by Cedrenus in his Chronicles, and in the Annals of Zonaras, in which works we find it stated that the great pillar Augusteon was erected in the fifteenth year of the reign of Justinian, the statue being placed on it two years later. When Bertrandon de la Brocquière saw the equestrian statue, which he inadvertently calls that of Constantine, it grasped a sceptre in the left hand. Pierre Gilles, the naturalist and author, sent to the Levant by Francis I. of France, found portions of this statue in the melting house where ordnance were cast, it having been overturned and destroyed in 1523 (_Antiquities of Constantinople_, London, 1729); or in 1525, according to the anonymous author of the Constantiniade. The proportions were colossal, for the leg exceeded the height of a man, and the nose was nine inches in length, as were also the hoofs of the horse. Gilles represents that the statue, which was made of brass, faced the East, as if the emperor was marching against the Persians; the right arm was stretched out, and in the left hand was a globe to signify universal power over the whole world, all success in war being attributed to the cross fixed on the top. He was dressed like Achilles, in a coat of mail and shining helmet.