“But the arches to east and west are left so that nothing interferes with admiration of their size. Now the arcades of the just mentioned upper chambers are supported from beneath by columns and small arches, which greatly add to the work. In order that the wonder of this building may be more easily grasped, I have here placed in feet the measures of the length, breadth, and height; and of the arches their diameter and height. The length then from the door opposite the holy apse, where is offered the bloodless sacrifice, to the apse itself is 190 feet; the breadth of the nave from north to south is 115. The height from the centre of the dome to the ground is 180 feet. And of the arches, the width of each in feet is [no number given]. And the length from east to west is 200 feet. The width of the opening is 75 feet.[62] There are also to the west two fine porticoes, and everywhere open courts of wonderful beauty.”
Paul the Silentiary.—As this author’s really detailed account of the church is of considerable length, we have reserved it for the next chapter, although it was written before the descriptions just given by Agathias and Evagrius. For the little that is known of the author we are almost entirely indebted to his friend Agathias, who says: “If any one living perchance far from this city, wishes to know and see everything as if present and looking on, let him read what Paulus, son of Cyrus, son of Florus, has written in hexameter verse; he is chief of the Royal Silentiaries, and sprung from a noble race; inheriting ancestral wealth, yet zealously brought up in the study of letters, by which he was the more glorious and famous. He wrote a number of other poems worthy of memory and praise, but it seems to me that that which he wrote on the Great Church is completed with the most skill and labour, even as its subject is more worthy than any other. For you will find in his poem the arrangement of the form, and the nature of the stones explained; the beauty and purpose of the curtains; the lengths and heights, what is curved and what straight, what projects and what is suspended. You will learn, too, how with silver and gold the more sacred part, intended for the divine mysteries, was adorned; as well as whatever ornament great or small is there, which those who frequent the church may see.”
The Silentiaries, of whom Paulus was one, were court officials. Their office was an exalted one, as they ranked with the senators, and were employed on all kinds of service, not unfrequently becoming the historians of the emperor. Paulus belonged to the cultivated and literary circle, who during Justinian’s reign interested themselves in literature, and to him are attributed more than eighty poems in the Anthology.[63]
The description or rather explanation of S. Sophia was most probably written and recited as an Opening Ode at the Encaenia of December 24th, 563. Körtum (in Salzenberg) conjectures that the poem was recited in “a hall of the Imperial Palace,” but Du Cange is probably more correct in assigning only the first eighty lines to the Palace. The succeeding lines he says “were addressed to the clergy in the Patriarch’s Palace,” but we believe, from the antithesis between the Palace of the Emperor and the House of God, that the address to the patriarch was spoken within the walls of the church itself, and that the whole poem, which is divided into three parts, was written to be recited in connection with the opening ceremony mentioned above.
It shows us how much architecture was esteemed by Justinian, that the historian of his wars wrote also a history of his buildings; and the court poet was employed to celebrate the greatest of them in verse. On many accounts the poem is the best ancient architectural description extant. It is exact in accuracy, most orderly in its sequence when read with a knowledge of the building, and must have been written within its walls. A close and careful study written when architectural ideas were in the ascendant—the chief subject of thought in times of peace—it is no futile attempt to explain a work of genius in terms of mechanics and foot-rule measurements, after the manner of an architectural lecture, but it translates the ideas of the artist into the words of the poet. The conceit of Homeric metre and phrasing is almost a charm at this distance of time, the poet’s enthusiasm being quite sufficient to carry off the affectation of attempting an architectural epic. It is not however in its form but in its stimulus to imagination that we see its chief value.
CHAPTER III
THE SILENTIARY’S POEM—PART I
The first eighty lines of the Prelude are an eulogy on the emperor. The succeeding lines were addressed to the clergy. “We come to you, sirs, from the home of the emperor, to the home of the Almighty Emperor, the Deviser of the Universe, by whose grace victory cleaves to our lord. The august head of our state lent a kindly ear to our words, as he sat in the hall; now we see the chief of the sacred priests. May he too favour us, and may none of those who listen carp at our words.”
The poem itself, in long Homeric hexameters, begins by describing the general peace throughout the Roman world at the time of the restoration of S. Sophia. Dr. Körtum notes the following references to events only then recently passed. The rule of the Vandals in Africa had been destroyed by Belisarius (534), and a later insurrection quelled (545); the reign of the Ostrogoths in the West had come to an end (554), and peace had just been concluded with the Persians (561). There is also an allusion to the conspiracy of this same year, when an attempt was made on the emperor’s life.
The poet then, describing the ruin caused by the earthquake (558) at S. Sophia, tells us that “the very foundations of the dome failed, and thick clouds of dust darkened the midday sun. Yet the whole church did not fall, but only the top of the eastern vault, and a portion of the dome above. Part lay on the ground, part open to the light of day, hung suspended in the air.” “But the emperor soon began to build again, the Genius of New Rome by his side.”