Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/79

 square in an open space planted with trees, and consists of a pillared façade, from whence we pass into a vast chamber supported on marble columns. It is the largest of the State reception rooms, and is the established rendezvous of Imperial pageantry whenever it is desirable to overawe the mind of foreign ambassadors.

Next to Chalke on the west is placed the handsomest public bath in the city, that of Zeuxippus, the most ambitious work of Severus during his efforts at restoration. It is compassed by ample colonnades which are conjoined with those of the Palace, and are especially notable for their wealth of statuary in bronze and marble, dating from the best period of Grecian art. Within and without, in the palatial halls and chambers encrusted with marble and mosaic work, and in the niches of the porticoes, are to be found almost all the gods and goddesses, the poets, politicians, and philosophers of Greece and Rome, as celebrated by the Coptic poet Christodorus in a century of epigrams. Amongst these a draped full-length figure of Homer is particularly admired: with his arms crossed upon his breast, his hair and beard unkempt, his brows bent in deep thought, his eyes fixed and expressionless in token of blindness, the bard is represented as he lived, absorbed in the creation of some sublime epic. The