Horse Tamers

The colossal pair of marble "Horse Tamers"—often identified as Castor and Pollux—have stood since antiquity near the site of the Baths of Constantine on the Quirinal Hill, Rome.

The Mirabilia confidently reported that these were "the names of two seers who had arrived in Rome under Tiberius, naked, to tell the 'bare truth' that the princes of the world were like horses which had not yet been mounted by a true king.

"[1] Between 1589 and 1591, Sixtus V had them restored[2] and set on new pedestals flanking a fountain, another engineering triumph for Domenico Fontana, who had moved and re-erected the obelisk in Piazza San Pietro.

An interpretation of their subject as Alexander and Bucephalus was proposed in 1558 by Onofrio Panvinio,[3] who suggested that Constantine had removed them from Alexandria, where they would have referred to the familiar legend of the city's founder.

In St Petersburg, the Anichkov Bridge has four colossal bronze Horse Tamer sculptures by Baron Peter Klodt von Urgensburg (illustration, left).