ponderous and shapeless mass of brickwork, with an appearance appropriate, perhaps, to a barrack or a barn, instead of being a civic ornament of light and beauty. The Romans had the secret of a form of construction other than the continued entablature, and were attached to the method of sustaining superimposed masses by means of the arch, akin to which was the dome, which they probably adopted after their arms had penetrated to the East. On the Tiber, there-*fore, the straight entablature began to be displaced by a series of arches; and vaulted roofs were occasionally seen under the first emperors. In the new Byzantine architecture, which originated, or, at least, came to maturity under Justinian, both these methods of building were developed to the fullest extent. Among the lost arts at Constantinople about this time, seems to have been the skill to sculpture capitals after the Corinthian or Ionic patterns, the place of which was taken by clumsy inverted pyramids, quadrangular and truncated, which were used to effect a junction between the pillars and the superimposed structure.[1] It is possible, as suggested,[2] that this device may have been first adopted to support the roof in the obscurity of an underground cistern, but it was afterwards transported to the upper air and employed, as at St. Sophia, to complete the columns in the most decorative edifices. In these positions it was necessary to abolish the crudeness of such capitals, and, as there was a partial revival of art under Justinian, this object was ac-*
- ↑ A century or so before Justinian, however, very fine capitals of a Corinthian type were being sculptured at Thessalonica; see the pictorial exposition of the churches in that city by Texier and Pullan. Some of those done in the sixth century are represented, and seem to be very inferior, as are those at St. Vitale.
- ↑ See p. 539.
