Serpent Column - in Gibbon

In Gibbon

In his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89), Edward Gibbon refers to the Serpentine Column both in Chapter 17 (on the founding of Constantinople) and in Chapter 68 (on the triumphal entry of Mehmet II, the Conqueror into Constantinople on 29 May 1453):

The Circus or Hippodrome was a stately building about 400 paces in length and 100 in breadth. The space between the two metae or goals was filled with statues and obelisks; and we may still remark a very singular fragment of antiquity, the bodies of three serpents twisted into one pillar of brass. Their triple heads had once supported the golden tripod which, after the defeat of Xerxes, was consecrated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, by the victorious Greeks.”

... and again...

From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth hour of the same day, when the Sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizars, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was as robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed in satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents, and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace or battleaxe the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city.