The column was made of brick, and covered with brass plaques. The column stood on a marble pedestal of seven steps, and was topped by a colossal bronze
equestrian statue of the emperor in
triumphal attire (the "dress of
Achilles" as
Procopius calls it), wearing an antique-style
muscle cuirass and a helmet with a plume of
peacock feathers (the
toupha), holding a
globus cruciger in his left hand and stretching his right hand to the East. There is some evidence from the inscriptions on the statue that it may actually have been a reused earlier statue of
Theodosius I or
Theodosius II. The column survived intact until late Byzantine times, when it was described by
Nicephorus Gregoras, as well as by several Russian pilgrims to the city. The latter also mentioned the existence, before the column, of a group of three bronze statues of "pagan (or
Saracen) emperors", placed on shorter columns or pedestals, who kneeled in submission before it. These apparently survived until the late 1420s, but were removed sometime before 1433. The column itself is described as being of great height, 70 meters according to
Cristoforo Buondelmonti. It was visible from the sea, and once, according to Gregoras, when the
toupha fell off, its restoration required the services of an acrobat, who used a rope slung from the roof of the
Hagia Sophia. By the 15th century, the statue, by virtue of its prominent position, was actually believed to be that of the city's founder,
Constantine the Great. Consequently, its fall from the statue's hand, sometime between 1422 and 1427, was seen as a sign of the city's impending doom.
Pierre Gilles, a French scholar living in the city in the 1540s, gave an account of the statue's remaining fragments, which lay in the
Topkapi Palace, before being melted to make cannons: The appearance of the statue itself with its inscriptions is preserved, however, in a 1430s drawing made by
Giovanni Dario at the behest of Cyriacus of Ancona. ==References==