"The Traveled Horses."

The four horses, of gilded bronze, over the principal portals of St. Mark's are called "the traveled horses." They are five feet in height, and each weighs 1932 pounds. They were long ascribed to the Greeks of Chios, and to the school of Lysippus; but all that seems certain, now, is that the Emperor Augustus removed them from Alexandria to Rome, and placed them on a triumphal arch; that they were transferred to arches of their own by Nero, Domitian, Trajan and Constantine. That Constantine took them to adorn his new capital of Constantinople; that "blind old Dandolo," after taking Constantinople, in 1204, brought them to Venice and placed them as trophies above the vestibule portal of St. Mark. In 1797, when Napoleon I. took Venice, they were carried off to Paris to adorn the summit of the triumphal arch in the Place Carrousel. In 1815, after the downfall of Napoleon, they were brought back to Venice by the Emperor Francis and restored to their present position. These four horses are supposed to have been attached originally to a quadriga (a chariot of four horses abreast), and they are preeminently valuable as the sole specimens of the kind which have come down to us uninjured.

"The Hall of the Biga" (Vatican, Rome) is so called from its containing a white marble chariot (a biga) drawn by two horses. The chariot and the horse on the right are ancient, the remainder is a restoration.

"But is not Doria's menace come to pass," refers to the 16th of August, 1379, when, after the battle of Pola, the Venetians were reduced to the utmost despair. They finally sent an embassy to the conquerors, with a blank sheet of paper, praying them to prescribe what terms they pleased, only to leave Venice her independence. The Prince of Padua was inclined to listen to these proposals, but the Genoese (their allies), inflamed with victory, shouted, "To Venice!" "To Venice!" determined to annihilate their rival. Therefore Peter Doria, their commander-in-chief, returned this answer to their suppliants: "Gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the Signor of Padua, nor the commune of Genoa, until we have first put a rein upon those unbridled horses of yours that are upon the porch of your evangelist St. Mark. Wild as we may find them, we will soon make them stand still. And this is the pleasure of us and our commune."

But the danger of their beloved city, and the proud boast of their enemies, gave fresh courage to the Venetians. They made prodigious efforts and many individual sacrifices, until at last Vettor Pisani was put in command of thirty-eight galleys, with which they attacked and defeated the Genoese. Doria was killed, and the Genoese, in their turn, had to sue for conditions; but none were granted and they surrendered at discretion, in Chioggia. An interesting account of this war is found in a work called "The War of Chioza."