That Heavenly Relic

Mar 29, 2023

Lysippus’ Hercules was melted for its bronze; so was Bellerophon on his flying horse; the Servant of the Winds was wrenched from her pillar, and all the copper sheathing was stripped from Constantine’s column. The she-wolf of Rome, the ox-head of Pergamon, were thrown into the cauldron for their metals, and Nicetas’ Helen of Troy, that heavenly relic of the Golden Age, was never seen again.

— The Venetian Empire, Jan Morris