The stately tomb of Theodoric, round which mediaeval imagination wove legends, as the flowers and the fruits of the earth weave a web of beauty to-day, rises at the end of a wide turf avenue enclosed in hedges of acacia. It stands in a rose-garden with a background of firs and flowering yews; round its sunken pronaos are fruit-trees laden with pomegranates and purple figs; and wistaria and yellow roses have hidden the steps which lead to its upper chamber. Externally, the tomb, which the unfortunate Amalasuntha built for her father, is as unspoiled as the mausoleum of Galla Placidia; its solid masonry of grey limestone has defied the years; and the gaping crevice in its marvellous dome, composed of one huge block of Istrian marble, only serves to give point to mediaeval legends. But inside it has been devastated by his enemies and robbed even of his sarcophagus. Mr. Symonds says, 'in spite of many trials, it seems that human art is unable to pump out the pond and clear the frogs and efts from the chamber where the great Goth was laid by Amalasuntha.' But on the damp September day when we visited the mausoleum its stones were dry, although the little spotted frogs, which fled below the rose-trees at our approach, were shrilling a chorus of mockery at the vanity of tombs.
Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, which has changed its name twice since Theodoric dedicated it to the Saviour, is one of the most beautiful churches in Christendom. Like San Teodoro, its exterior is of the Renaissance. Beside its portico stands one of Ravenna's curious round bell-towers, probably built in the ninth century; but inside we found the riches of Rome and Byzantium gathered together to make a glorious whole. For along the architrave of the nave, supported on antique marble columns, we saw a long procession of Virgins and Martyrs leading from the western doors to the arch of the transept, where the Madonna and the Saviour were enthroned. Above them, and between the windows of the clerestory, were ranged the figures of Saints and Prophets. And above them again were scenes resembling the early mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depicting incidents from the life of Christ. From the technical point of view these little panels indicate the highest art to be found in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. They are the work of Roman mosaicists employed by Theodoric, whereas the lowest zones are by Byzantine artists; they are full of vigour and freedom; while the others, in spite of their magnificence, have the terrible Byzantine stiffness which held Italian art in thrall until the coming of Cimabue and the Pisani.
But how rich, how decorative those jewelled garments of the honourable women, the snowy robes of the Martyrs! Just so the artist of Byzantium may have pictured them against a golden dawn, issuing from the proud city of Classis on the one hand, and from the Palace of Theodoric on the other, to lay their crowns before the Thrones of Heaven. For those Virgins are robed as daughters of the King, and they link the Mother of God in a gold and jewelled chain to the ancient town of Classis, without whose gates the galleys ride, with the wind in their billowing sails. Flowers spangle the grass at their feet, and behind them the red dates hang heavy on the palms; while in the heavenly Court the Three Kings offer their gifts, how eagerly! to the Virgin seated among the angels with the Baby Christ upon her knees.
The beauties of San Vitale and Sant'Apollinare in Classis are too well known to need description, even if it were possible to do any sort of homage to their magnificence in so general a chapter. They were both built by Julian the Treasurer during the reign of Justinian, and they represent the third period of Ravenna's greatness before the temporal power of Rome was eclipsed by that of the Eastern Empire. In San Vitale especially, the glory of Byzantium is reflected as in a mirror. Nowhere else in Italy is there such a perfect illustration of the Courts of the Lord towards the middle of the sixth century. In this great church, whose domed central space and retreating galleries, sustained by the gracious horse-shoe arches of the East, gave the mosque of the coming Arab conquerors its genesis, we have walls enclosed in precious marbles, and pierced and fretted capitals wrought by Oriental craftsmen. And here, below the rich encrusted vault where Christ is enthroned upon the blue orb of the heavens, in such a paradise as Dante may have dreamt of, where white-robed Saints cull flowers as they pass, we have thejewelled splendour of the Court of Byzantium, with the Emperor Justinian among his priests and soldiers, and Theodora with the ladies of her court.
RAVENNA: THE TOMB OF DANTE.
Side by side in the heart of Ravenna are the tomb in which the dead Dante was laid, when the secret of his sepulture had been made known to the Ravennesi, and the old palace of the Polentani in which Francesca of Rimini was born. Near by is the house of that other poet-wanderer, Byron, whose windows overlook the gallery from which it may be that Francesca, seeing the gracious form of Paolo Malatesta coming to woo her for his hunch-back brother, felt the first pangs of love, as well as the sacred tomb whence 'he had so oft, as many a verse declares, drawn inspiration.'
Notwithstanding its withered wreaths, its stuccoed dome, its air of cheap and tawdry Campo Santo sentiment, the people of Ravenna really do come to pay tribute to the sepulchre of the great bard of the Risorgimento. But it is difficult to find anything of the real Dante here. For though Ravenna was his 'ultimo Rifugio,' as it has been the last refuge of many other great ones; and though he finished his Divine Comedy here in the house of Guido Novello Polenta his patron; and dreamed, poor pilgrim, when he wandered through the exquisite beauty of the pine-woods of Classis that he had found paradise, I think his spirit fled at its release to his beloved Florence, 'la bellissima e famosissima figlia di Roma.'