Just over a century ago the first excavations at the foot of the Serpent Column in the Hippodrome at Istanbul led to the discovery on it of the engraved names of the city-states whose contingents had fought at Plataea, thus confirming the justice of Gibbon's caustic footnote on its authenticity: that “the guardians of the most holy relics would rejoice if they were able to produce such a chain of evidence as may be alleged” from the Classical and Byzantine historians and from the accounts of European travellers.When first set up at Delphi, the monument represented three snakes, whose intertwined bodies formed the column, and whose three heads, with gaping jaws, branched out to make a triangular support for a golden tripod. The tripod did not long survive, but the bronze column with the three heads, transported by Constantine to his new capital, apparently remained undamaged until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. All three heads had, however, disappeared by the time of Gibbon, who alleged that the discrepancies in the travellers' descriptions were “occasioned only by the injuries which [the Column] has sustained from the Turks”, and reproduced Thévenot's story that Meḥemmed II, on his triumphal entry into the city, “as a trial of his strength … shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city.”
Population Health and Graduate Medical Education: Updates to the ACGME's Common Program Requirements
