The two large white marble lions today placed on either side of the main gate (the Magna Porta, c.1460) of the Arsenal in Venice were brought to their present location in 1687. They were originally made in Greece ca. 360 BCE and by the 1^st or 2^nd c. CE marked the entrance to the port of Piraeus, in Athens. In the second half of the 11th c., while still in Piraeus, the sitting lion received elaborate and decorative Old Norse Runic graffiti containing the Scandinavian names of the inscribers, and commemorating others. The two Scandinavian authors of the inscription were probably members of the Varangian Guard. Continued use of Old Norse language in graffiti of 11^th c. Byzantium indicates that fresh warriors and traders continued to travel there from Scandinavia. They would have followed the well-established Dnieper-Byzantium route, joining locally established Rus (Vikings), Nordic groups who since the late 9th c. had formed settlements north of the Black Sea and whose language had begun to assimilate with that of local Slavic people. The prominence of the two lions, symbolic guards at the entrance to the port for 1300 years, was such that from at least the 14^th c. Piraeus was known as Porto Leone, as we know from a map made by the Genovese Pietro Visconti in 1318 BCE.  This made the lions very significant items of booty for the Venetians to bring home, after success in war against the Ottomans. The other two, smaller lions that are placed to the right of the Piraean statues in the Arsenal were taken from Greece at the same time. There are copies of this lion at the Piraeus Archaeological Museum and at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities. This graffiti is in the form of looped and decorative ‘words on a tape’ (runic bands) typical of Swedish rune stones and known as the lindworm form (a lindworm is a wingless, serpentine dragon, originating in Norse mythology). The shape of the dragon’s head (at the top on the right shoulder) and the shapes of the runic letters identify the inscription as belonging to the second half of the 11^th c. The writing on the lion was not, however recognized as a runic until the last years of the 18^th c., by which time it had already mostly eroded into illegibility.  Attempted reconstructions of the original text have varied greatly, require the addition of many words and phrases to replace lost parts of the inscription, and are highly speculative.