These descriptions are in comparatively sober prose; but besides them we have the ecstatic eloquence of Paul the Silentiary, a court official of highest rank, whose poem was probably recited in 563. This is perhaps the most exact of all the descriptions, but it is far too long for transcription.[56]
A passage, which certainly loses nothing of its poetry in Mr Swainson's flowing translation, is of especial interest for its description of the marble which formed the great glory of the church, next at least to the mosaics, if not surpassing them.
"Yet who, even in the measures of Homer, shall sing the marble pastures gathered on the lofty walls and spreading pavement of the mighty church? These the iron with its metal tooth has gnawed—the fresh green from Carystus, and many-coloured marble from the Phrygian range, in which a rosy blush mingles with white, or it shines bright with flowers of deep red and silver. There is a wealth of porphyry too, powdered with bright stars, that has once laden the river boat on the broad Nile. You would see an emerald green from Sparta, and the glittering marble with wavy veins, which the tool has worked in the deep bosom of the Iassian hills, showing slanting streaks blood-red and livid white. From the Lydian creek came the bright stone mingled with streaks of red. Stone too there is that the Lybian sun, warming with his golden light, has nurtured in the deep-bosomed clefts of the hills of the Moors, of crocus colour glittering like gold; and the product of the Celtic crags, a wealth of crystals, like milk poured here and there on a flesh of glittering black. There is the precious onyx, as if gold were shining through it; and the marble that the land of Atrax yields, not from some upland glen, but from the level plains; in parts fresh green as the sea or emerald stone, or again like blue corn-flowers in grass, with here and there a drift of fallen snow,—a sweet mingled contrast on the dark shining surface."[57]
I think ancient words such as these speak best of this ancient church. Yet something must be added of what we see with modern eyes. S. Sophia strikes the modern at once as unlike the domical churches with which he is familiar. The dome in S. Sophia is the one essential feature of the whole building. Every thing leads to it or from it: every thing is subordinate to it. The effect of immense space is conveyed by this subordination, very different from the Western use where the dome is merely part of the general design, usually at the centre of a cruciform building.
The problem which Anthemius of Tralles set himself to solve was that of "uniting the longitudinal with the central building"; to this is added "the appropriate disposition of space, the grouping of subsidiary chambers and the costliness of mosaic splendours."[58]
Originally the church was approached at the west through an atrium, an outer narthex and a narthex. The atrium cannot now be traced: the exo-narthex and narthex still remain, but it seems probable that the former is not now as it was originally built. The walls and ceiling of the exo-narthex are quite plain. Five doors give entrance into the much larger narthex, the walls of which are covered with marble, and the ceiling has mosaics which have been but little touched.
ORNAMENT ON THE BRAZEN LINTEL ABOVE THE PRINCIPAL DOOR OF S. SOPHIA
Translation of Inscription: