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 266 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xl gration, was restored with new magnificence ; and some notion may be conceived of the whole edifice by the vestibule or hall, which, from the doors perhaps or the roof, was surnamed chalce, or the brazen. The dome of a spacious quadrangle was sup- ported by massy pillars ; the pavement and walls were encrusted with many-coloured marbles — the emerald green of Laconia, the fiery red and the white Phrygian stone intersected with veins of a sea-green hue : the mosaic paintings of the dome and sides represented the glories of the African and Italian triumphs. On the Asiatic shore of the Propontis, at a small distance to the east of Chalcedon, the costly palace and gardens of Herseum 103 were prepared for the summer residence of Justinian, and more especially of Theodora. The poets of the age have celebrated the rare alliance of nature and art, the harmony of the nymphs of the groves, the fountains, and the waves ; yet the crowd of attendants who followed the court complained of their incon- venient lodgings, 109 and the nymphs were too often alarmed by the famous Porphyrio, a whale of ten cubits in breadth and thirty in length, who was stranded at the mouth of the river Sangarius, after he had infested more than half a century the seas of Constantinople. 110 Portia- The fortifications of Europe and Asia were multiplied by E d uropl ° Justinian ; but the repetition of those timid and fruitless precau- tions exposes to a philosophic eye the debility of the empire. 111 108 p or the Hersoum, the palace of Theodora, see Gyllius (de Bosphoro Thracio, 1. iii. c. xi.), Aleman. (Not. ad Anecdot. p. 80, 81, who quotes several epigrams of the Anthology), and Dueange (C. P. Christ. 1. iv. c. 13, p. 175, 176). [The palace of Hieria. See Tldrpia KoovffTavTivoviroXeois, iii. 169, ra ttjs 'epeias iraXdrta, p. 268, ed. Preger (cp. p. 270 ra 'epiov) ; Theophanes, A. M. 6245 p. 427, ed. de Boor. The text of Procopius, Anecd. c. 15, has h t<? iwiKaKovfxfvy 'Epiw. For the various forms of the name, as well as for the identification of the place, see Pargoire, Hieria, in the Izviestiia russkago arkheologicheBkago instituta v Konstantinopolie, iv. 2, p. 9 sqq., 1899. He has shown convincingly that Gilles was right (De Bosporo Thracio, iii. 11) in identifying Hieria with Phanaraki (called by the Turks Fener-Bagche) on the promontory of Kadikeui, a little to the south of Chalcedon. It was the 'Hpaia &Kpa of the ancients.] 109 Compare, in the Edifices (1. i. c. 11) and in the Anecdotes (c. 8, 15), the different styles of adulation and malevolence : stript of the paint, or cleansed from the dirt, the object appears to be the same. 110 Procopius, 1. viii. [leg. vii.] 29; most probably a stranger and wanderer, as the Mediterranean does not breed whales. Baltenae quoque in nostra maria pene- trant (Plin. Hist. Natur. ix. 2). Between the polar circle and the tropic, the ceta- ceous animals of the ocean grow to the length of 50, 80, or 100 feet (Hist, des Voyages, torn. xv. p. 289. Pennant's British Zoology, vol. iii. p. 35). 111 Montesquieu observes (torn. iii. p. 503, Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains, c. xx.) that Justinian's empire was like France in the