Fig. 25.—Original state of West Front as built by Justinian.
Outside the present south-west entrance of the court there remained until 1869 a stone inscribed
✚ϹΑϹΘϹΕΝΘΑΔΕΚΑΤΟΙΚΙΜΗΔΕΙ....
Its form suggests that it was a step, or it may have been a lintel from one of the doors into the atrium or the rim from a fountain.[310] The words “The Holy God dwelleth here let no....” may be compared with the inscriptions for fountains and gates given on pages 84 and 264.
This atrium court of S. Sophia was called by the Byzantine authors aule, mesaulion, aithria, and by some late writer, garçonastasion, which Du Cange explains as “the place where pages wait.” The cloistered walk originally surrounded it and formed a quadriporticus; although the eastern walk, the present exonarthex, is inclosed and entirely different from the other colonnaded walks, the atrium is often referred to as “Four-porticoed” (Tetrastoon). It cannot therefore be doubted that the exonarthex with its great piers replaced the original eastern walk, for the sake of greater abutment to the church. This is equally clear from the building itself and the description of the poet. (See Figs. [3], [24], [25], [29]). The “Propylaeum” often spoken of must either be this exonarthex, or the gateways in the atrium.
The cloister walks were vaulted, and the walls covered with marble. One of the capitals remained in the courtyard as lately as 1873, when it was drawn by Canon Curtis; it resembled those in the gallery inside, with deep sculptured dosseret and small volutes below. More than one writer remarks on the great beauty of the marble shafts. They were set in close order, and we may see from Salzenberg that, when we add for their bases, they were some twenty-two feet high, and must have made a fine portico to the west front. In 1852 two of the pillars were represented on the plan of Fossati as still in situ: now every evidence of the atrium has entirely disappeared.
Phiale.—In the middle of the court was placed a fountain, where, according to the Silentiary, was a “bubbling stream leaping into the air from a bronze pipe.” The name given to such a fountain by Greek writers was phiale or colymbethra, and, by the Latins, cantharus or nymphaeum. At S. Sophia it was also called “The Laver of the Atrium” (λουτὴρ μεσαυλίου).[311] The louter or loutron, with its colymbethra, formed a sanctuary for the pursued: we read in Procopius of their “fleeing to the church of S. Sophia, and coming to the holy loutron, and laying hold of the colymbethra which was there.”[312]
According to the Anonymous author, on whom we place no reliance, the phiale had twelve arcades or columns, and lions spouted out the water. Canopied phialae it is true still exist at St. Demetrius at Salonica, and in the monasteries of Mount Athos. The canopy of the phiale at old St. Peter’s was of bronze; under it the great pine cone, which still remains, threw out water in innumerable little threads. On the canopy were probably placed the beautiful bronze peacocks, which also still exist.[313] A very beautiful fountain of this kind, at Constantinople, was placed before the church built by Basil in the palace. The basin was marble, from which rose a pine cone pierced with holes. Above on the cornice were placed cocks, stags, and rams, of cast bronze, from which the water flowed.[314]
In the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra, the basin of the fountain rests on lions, and the water runs away from the fountain in four open streams to the four sides of the cloister. This work was certainly executed under Byzantine influence, and it is curious to find more than one small garden fountain at Constantinople in which the water issues from the mouth of lions. On the other hand it seems probable that the Anonymous imitated the description of the temple of Solomon and the laver, which stood on twelve oxen. The other washing place he describes (see page [141]) with the different kinds of animals represented, seems to be founded on the description of that of Basil’s church.