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with variegated hangings and purple and silver ornaments. The long Middle Street, through which the triumphal train would pass, from the Golden Gate of victory to the place of the Augusteon, was strewn with flowers. The prisoners, the trophies and the spoils of war preceded the Emperor, who rode on a white horso cupurisoned with jewelled harness; a tiara was on his head; he wore a sceptre in his hand, and a goldembroidered tunic framed his breastplate. Beside him, on

? another white steed similarly equipped, rode the Cuesar Alexios, wearing a corslet, sleeves, and gaiters of gold, a helmet and gold headband, and poising a golden spear. At a short distance from the triumphal gate the Emperor dismounted and made three obeisances to the east, and, when he crossed the threshold of the city, the Praepositus, the Magister, and the Prefect, now relieved of their extraordinary authority, presented him with a crown of gold, which he carried on his right arm. The demes then solemnly acclaimed him as victor, and the procession advanced. When it reached the milestone at the gates of the Augusteon, the senators dismounted, except those who, having taken part in the campaign, wore their armour, and, passing through the gates, walked in front of the sovran to the Well of St. Sophin. Here the Emperor himself dismounted, entered the church, and, after a brief devotion, crossed the Augusteon on foot to the Bronze Gate of the l'alace, where a pulpit had been set, flanked by a throne of gold, and a golden organ which was known as the Prime Miracle. Between these stood a large cross of gold. When Theophilus had sented himself and made the sign of the cross, the demes cried, “There is one Holy." The city community * then offered him a pair of golden armlets, and wearing these he acknowledged the gift by a speech, in which he described his military successes.

Amid new acclamations he remounted his horse, and riding through the l'assages of Achilles and past the Baths of Zeuxippus, entered the Hippodrome and reached the Palace at the door of the Skyla. On the next 1 σκαραμαγγια.

ood Folltevua, the whole body of ? (med pikov (ep. Ducange, s.v.

the citizens of the capital, of whom Awpian). The tunic was posó Borpus :

the prefect of the city was the does this monu thint the design repre:

"fatliur." llo and his subordinntes sented roses and bunches of grapes ?

were lιο πολιτάρχαι.

• Delivered ovidently from the pul. 3 πρωτόθαιμα.

day, at a reception in the Palace, many honours and dignities were conferred, and horse-races were held in the Hippodrome, where the captives and the trophies were exhibited to the people.

§ 2. Buildings of Theophilus The reign of Theophilus was an epoch in the history of the Great Palace. He enlarged it by a group of handsome and curious buildings, on which immense sums must have been expended, and we may be sure that this architectural enterprise was stimulated, if not suggested, by the reports which reached his ears of the magnificent palaces which the Caliphs had built for themselves at Baghdad."

His own pride and the prestige of the Empire demanded that the residence of the Basileus should not be eclipsed by the splendour of the Caliph's abode.

At the beginning of the ninth century the Great l'alace ? consisted of two groups of buildings—the original Palace, including the Daphne, which Constantine the Great had built adjacent to the Hippodrome and to the Augusteon, and at some distance to the south-east the Chrysotriklinos (with its dependencies), which had been erected by Justin II, and had superseded the Daphne as the centro of Court life and ceremonial. It is probable that the space between the older Palace and the Chrysotriklinos was open ground, free from buildings, perhaps laid out in gardens and terraced (for the ground falls southward). There was no architectural connexion between the two Palaces, but Justinian II. at the end of the seventh century had connected the Chrysotriklinos with the Hippodroine by means of two long halls which opened into one another—the Lausiakos and the Triklinos called after his

These halls were probably perpendicular to the Hippodrome, and formed a line of building which closed in the principal grounds of the Palace on the southern side."

Seo below, Chap. VIII. $ 2. of Japan at Kyoto, described by F. ? Puluce suggests to us a single block Brinkley, Japan, its llistory, Arts, and of building, and is so far misleading, Literature, vol. i. 198.199 (1901). though it can hardly be avoided. The 3 The castorn door of the Lausinkos Byzantino residenco rosembled the facod tho wostorn portico of the oriental"place's " which consistud of Chrysotriklinos ; its western door many detached hially und buildings in opened into the Triklinos of Justinian, burge grounds. Compare, for instance, on the west of which wins the Skyla the residence of thoʻlloin Emperors which opened into the Hippodromo.

1

name,

3

к

It is probable that the residence of Constantine bore some resemblance in design and style to the house of Diocletian at Spalato and other mansions of the period. The descriptions

" of the octagonal Chrysotriklinos show that it was built under the intluence of the new style of ecclesinstical architecture which was characteristic of the age of Justinian. The chief group of buildings which Theophilus added introduced a now style and marked a third epoch in the architectural history of the Great Palace. Our evidence makes it clear that they were situated between the Constantinian l'alace on the northwest and the Chrysotriklinos on the south-east.?

These edifices were grouped round the Trikonchos or Triple Shell, the most original in its design and probably that on which Theophilus prided himself most. It took its name from the shell-like apses, which projected on three sides, the larger on the cust, supported on four porphyry® pillars, tho others (to south and north) on two. This triconch plan was long known at Constantinople, whither it had been imported from Syrin; it was distinctively oriental. On the west side a silver loor, flanked by two sidlo doors of burnished bronze, opened into a hall which had the shape of a half moon and was hence called the Sigma. The roof rested on fifteen columns of many-tinted marble. But these halls were only the upper storeys of the Trikonchos and the Sigma. The ground floor of the Trikonchos" had, like the room above it, three apses, but differently oriented. The northern side of this hall was known as the Mysterion or Place of Whispers, See niy

Great Palace in B.2. XX. tailed description of the buildings. (1911), where I have shown that Their situation is determined by comi. Labarte's assumption that the Lausi. bining the implications in this account ikos was purpendicular to the Triklinos with data in the ceremonial descripof Justinian is not justified and has tions in Cer. I have slown (op. cil.) entailed many errors.

It has been that the Trikonchos was north of the alopted by l'aspates and Ebersolt and Chrysotriklinos (not west as it is placed has not been rejected by Bieliacv. by Labarte, Ebersolt, etc.). That the line of these buildings was 3 So-called “Roman" stone, really perpendicular to the Hippodrome can- Egyptian (Cont. Th. 327) : red not be strictly proved. It is bound up porphyry with white spots (Anna with the assumption that the cast. Comnena, vii. 2, cd. Reillerscheid, i. west orientation of the Chrysotriklinos p. 2330). Cp. Ebersolt, 111. was perpendicular to the axis of the + From Dokimion in Phrygia, ncar Hippodrome.

Synnada. The stone in these quarries See Ebersolt, Le Grand Palais, presents shades of “violet and white, 160 999., whose plan of the Con. yellow, and the more familiar brec. stantinian palace, however, cannot be ciated white and rose-red" (Lethby maintained ; cp. my criticisms, op. cit. and Swainson, Sancta Sophia, 238).

? Cont. Th. 139 899. gives the de. o known as the Tetraseron.

because it had the acoustic property, that if you whispered in the eustern or in the western apse, your words were heard distinctly in the other. The lower storey of the Sigma, to which you descended by a spiral staircase, was a hull of nineteen columns which marked off a circular corridor. Murblo incrustations in many colours formed the brilliant decoration of the walls of both these buildings. The roof of the Trikonchos wus gilded.

The lower part of the Sigma, unscreened on the western sido, opened upon a court which was known as the Mystic Phialo of the Trikonchos. In the midst of this court stood a bronze fountuin phiule with silver margin, from the centre of which sprang a golden pine-cone. Two bronze lions, whose gaping mouths poured water into the semicircular area of the Sigına, stood near that building The cereniony of the sua imodleximon, at which the racehorses of the Hippodrome were reviewed by the Emperor, was held in this court; the Blues and Greens sat on tiers of steps of white Proconnesian marble, and a gold throne was placed for the monarch. On the occasion of this and other levées, and certain festivals, the fountain was filled with almonds and pistacchio nuts, while the cone offered spiced wine to those who wished.

4 Passing over some minor Buildings, we must notice the hall of the Pearl, which stood to the north of the Trikonchos. Its roof rested on cight columns of rose-coloured marble, the floor was of white marble variegated with mosaics, and the walls were decorated with pictures of animals.

The same building contained a bed-chamber, where Theophilus slept in

summer; its porticoes faced enst and south, and the walls and root displayed the same kind of decoration as the l'earl. To the north of this whole group, and fronting the west,' rose the Karianos, a house which the Einperor destined as a residence for his daughters, taking its name from a flight of steps of Citrian marble, which seemed to flow down from the entrance like a broad white river.

In another quarter (perhaps to the south of the Lausinkos) the Emperor laid out gardens and constructed shelters or " sunneries," if this word may be perunitted as a literal rendering of heliuku. Jere he built the Kamilas, an apartment? whose roof glittered with gold, supported by six columns of the green marble of Thessaly. The walls were decorated with a dado of marble incrustation below, anal above with mosaics representing on a gold ground people gathering fruit. On a lower foors was a chamber which the studious Emperor Constantine VII, afterwards turned into a library, and a breakfast-room, with walls of splendid marble and floor adorned with mosaics. Near at hand two

it other houses, similar yet different, attested the taste of Theophilus for rich schemes of decoration. One of these way remarkable for the mosaic walls in which green trees stood out against a golden sky. The lower chamber of the other was called the Musikos, froin the harmonious blending of the colours of the marble plaques with which the walls were covereil — Egyptian porphyry, white Carian, and the green riverstone of Thessaly,— while the variegated floor produced the effect of a flowering meadow."

If the influence of the luxurious art of the East is apparent in these halls and pavilions which Theophilus adiled to his chief residence, a new palace which his architect Patrikes built on the Bithynian coast was avowedly modelled on the palaces of Baghdad. It was not far from the famous

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i Tlie harianos faced the Church of thie Lorul (Cont. Th. 139), which was in the extreme north of the palace grounds, near to the south-east corner of the Angusteon and to the gate Jedding into the grounds of the Magnitira.

The hamilas and the two adjacent houses are described as cubicula (Cont. 7%. 141).

Meobratov, not the ground floor, but the entresol (as Ebersolt renders, 116). From here one had, through a kloußlov, railing or balustrade (enn. celli, cp. Ducange, 3.V. kdoßos), a view of the Chrysotriklinos.

+ The Musikos had only two walls, east and north ; on the other sides it was columneil and open (Cont. Th. 1.16). It was thus a holiakon.