The Serpent Column (Greek Τρικάρηνος Όφις (trans. Trikarenos Ophis), Turkish, Yılanlı Sütun) — also known as the Serpentine Column, Delphi Tripod or Plataean Tripod — is an ancient bronze column at the Hippodrome of Constantinople (known as Atmeydanı "Horse Square" in the Ottoman period) in what is now Istanbul, Turkey. It is part of an ancient Greek sacrificial tripod, originally in Delphi and relocated to Constantinople by Constantine I the Great in 324. It was built to commemorate the Greeks who fought and defeated the Persian Empire at the Battle of Plataea (479 BC). The serpent heads of the 8-metre high column remained intact until the end of the 17th century (one is on display at the nearby Istanbul Archaeology Museums).
Read more about Serpent Column: In Ancient Writers, In Gibbon, In Other Sources, Current Status, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words serpent and/or column:
“Hell in a horn of sulphur and the cloven myth,
All heaven in a midnight of the sun,
A serpent fiddled in the shaping-time.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)