So
important a scheme of reconstruction had probably never been forced upon
a government since the great fire in Rome under Nero. Justinian, whose
early training had been of the most economical kind, and whose
disposition seemed to be rather inclined to parsimony than extravagance,
now came out in his true character. For various reasons he had hitherto
studiously concealed his master-passion; but this catastrophe of the
fire, which seemed at first so disastrous, was really a stroke of
fortune. It afforded the hitherto frugal sovereign the chance he had
long waited for of spending without stint the hoarded savings of his two
miserly predecessors, and gratifying his own tastes for magnificent
architecture and splendour of apparel.
Not only Asia, with its wealth of gold and gems, but all the known world
capable of supplying material for the reconstructions, were called upon,
and ivory, marbles, mosaics, lamps, censers, candelabra, chalices,
ciboria, crosses, furniture, fittings, pictures--in short, everything
that his own taste and the experience of four or five of the ablest
architects of the time could suggest--administered to the gorgeous, the
unspeakable splendour of the new edifices and their furniture.
Paul the Silentiary, an eye-witness of the whole proceeding, has left a
description in verse, and the accurate Du Fresne in prose, which enable
us easily to trace how the Roman city of Constantine became transformed
into the semi-oriental Byzantium of Justinian.
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