According to Benedict, the supposed author of Mirabilia Urbis Romae, the statues are of two young men named Praxiteles and Phidias during the time of Emperor Tiberius. The Emperor respected their wisdom and kept them in his palace. One day Emperor Tiberius asked his young sages why they were always naked. They responded “Because all things are naked and open to us. We hold the world of no account, therefore we go naked and possess nothing.” They told him as well that whatever he devised in his chamber, whether by day or by night, they would know. The following day they told the Emperor exactly what he had been thinking that night and he made a memorial to them, as they had requested one as their only payment. The statues he made are the ones you see at the top of the stairs leading to the Capitoline Hill. “The naked horses which trample on the earth, that is on the mighty princes of the world that rule over the men of this world. And there shall come a very mighty king who shall mount the horses, that is, upon the might of the princes of the world. Meanwhile there are two men half-naked, who stand by the horses with their arms raised high and with fingers bent who tell of the things that are to be, and they are naked as all world knowledge is naked and open to their minds” (The Marvels of Rome 19). Under a Christian lens, the prophecy of the mighty King who shall mount the horses that trample the earth is a foretelling of the coming of Christ. What is fascinating, however, is that if you look up the name Dioscuri in the dictionary you will see it comes from the Greek Διός κούροι meaning the sons of Zeus. This appellation normally refers to Castor and Pollux who make up the Gemini constellation. They are often associated with horses and are the patrons of the equites which were a Roman order of Mounted knights whose membership was originally based on wealth, birth, and education.