Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/250

 BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. "So fair a church as this had Venice none: The walls were of discoloured Jasper stone Wherein was Christos carved ; and overhead A lively vine of green sea agate spread.' — Chaucek. I. INFLUENCES. i. Geographical. — Byzantium (renamed Constantinople by Constantine) occupies the finest site in Europe, standing on two promontories at the junction of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. It was called "New Rome" by the Turks of Asia, and, like the other Rome in Italy, it rests on seven hills. It occupies an important commercial site, standing at the inter- section of the two great highways of commerce — the water high- road from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, and the land high-road from Asia into Europe ; a position which, from early times, gave it power and influence, especially over the corn trade carried on with the western merchants on the northern shores of the Euxine. The absence of tides and the depth of its harbour, an inlet known as the " Golden Horn," four miles in length, rendered its quays accessible to vessels of large burden. ii. Geological. — Constantinople possessed no good building stone or even material for making good bricks, but as far as possible the materials upon the spot had to be employed. Most of the marble used in the new capital was brought from different quarries round the Eastern Mediterranean, for Con- stantinople was a marble-working centre from which sculptured marbles were exported to all parts of the Roman world. Mr. Brindley, a writer on the subject, is of opinion that quite seventy-five per cent, of the colored marble used in Santa Sophia, and the other churches and mosques in Constantinople, is Thessa- lian green (Verde Antico), and that the architect was influenced by the kind of column likely to be at once obtainable. The (]uarries were situated in different parts of the empire, the mono- lith columns being worked by convicts in groups of sizes such as the (juarry could produce.