The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories by Edward Hollis Page A

Philip, showed Alexander a horse running wild on the plain.
    “No one can tame this horse,” said the king to his son.
    “I shall,” said Alexander.
    “Well, if you can, you can keep him,” his father replied.
    And so Alexander went out into the field. He walked up to the horse, and whispered in its ear, and stroked its neck; and to the amazement of the royal court, Alexander mounted the steed and rode up to his father as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Alexander named the horse Bucephalus, and the steed became his constant companion, down through the narrow mountain passes into Greece, through the plains of Asia Minor, the deserts of Syria and Egypt, the marshes of Mesopotamia, and the hills of Persia, all the way to the jungles of India.
    When Alexander had conquered the world, he had his portrait taken by the sculptor Lysippus. This Lysippus was skilled in marble and in bronze, and was commissioned to undertake many works, including several
quadrigae
. The Venetians said—and they must have heard it from the Constantinopolitans, and they from the Romans—that their quadriga was among these.
    Lysippus was skilled in bronze, but more skilled still in transforming the likeness of the barbarian prince into something transcendent and beautiful. Upon seeing his work, Alexander refused to have his portrait made by any other. United in Lysippus’s image of Alexander were both the wild youth, who had conquered Bucephalus and then the world, and the philosopher king, the pupil of Aristotle and the sages of India. Alexander’s head twisting in warlike action called to mind Achilles as he dragged the body of Hector around the walls of Troy; and Alexander’s thoughtful eyes were those of Apollo as he rode through the sky in the chariot of the sun, heading to his home with the muses on Mount Parnassus.
    Apollo’s home—the sanctuary at Delphi on Mount Parnassus—housed both the oracle of the god and a bewildering array of votive gifts that had been given to him in gratitude, supplication, or fear. Before Apollo’s temple stood a column of three twisted snakes, given to him by all the Greeks in thanksgiving for their victory over the Persians at the Battle of Plataea; it had been cast from the armor and weapons stripped from that vanquished Asiatic horde. Beneath the temple was a mysterious cave that spewed forth noxious vapors, underwhose influence the priestesses of the sanctuary spoke with the voice of the god. The cave had been stolen, the legend ran, by Apollo from a serpent who had dwelled there since the beginning of the world. It is in such dark caves, filled with poisonous smoke, that myths and legends find their origin.
    There were also games held at the sanctuary of Delphi; and just as cities victorious in war gave images to Apollo, so did the athletes and the charioteers who competed in the stadium. Only one of these images is left: a tall, slim charioteer cast in bronze, who stands with his arms outstretched and his reins in his hands. His horses have disappeared. It would be quite tempting to imagine that two millennia later they ended up in Paris.
    Not that there is any surviving evidence for such a claim. The starting point of the journey of the
quadriga
—from Greece, to Rome, to Constantinople, to Venice, and to Paris—is unknown for a simple reason: the horses have always been stolen goods. Their presence at all the triumphs from Rome to Paris was invariably under duress. They were not the victors but the vanquished, and history is written only by the victors. All we know about the four horses are the stories their rustlers used to tell about them.

     
    S OME SAY THE horses were taken by the consul Sulla when he ravaged Greece in the days of the Roman Republic; others say that the
quadriga
was taken by Augustus, the first Roman emperor, when he did the same. They say he placed them atop his mausoleum in the Field of Mars, associating himself in death with Alexander, and decorated his