The porphyry stone on the ground at the corner on our left is the Pietra del Bando, from which the laws of the Republic were read to the people.

Thomas Coryat, the traveller, who walked from Somerset to Venice in 1608 and wrote the result of his journey in a quaint volume called _Coryat's Crudities_, adds another to the functions of the Pietra del Bando.

"On this stone," he says, "are laide for the space of three dayes and three nights the heads of all such as being enemies or traitors to the State, or some notorious offenders, have been apprehended out of the citie, and beheaded by those that have been bountifully hired by the Senate for the same purpose." The four affectionate figures, in porphyry, at the corner of the Doges' Palace doorway, came also from the East.

Nothing definite is known of them, but many stories are told.

The two richly carved isolated columns were brought from Acre in 1256.
Of these columns old Coryat has a story which I have found in no other writer.