This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ... of the cupolas, among the long silken robes, embroidered simarres, and the gilded and motley costumes of an innumerable populace. In a marble circus chariots raced around an Egyptian obelisk. Outside, a brazen column around which wound enormous serpents, and farther on, fantastic figures of Scylla and ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ... of the cupolas, among the long silken robes, embroidered simarres, and the gilded and motley costumes of an innumerable populace. In a marble circus chariots raced around an Egyptian obelisk. Outside, a brazen column around which wound enormous serpents, and farther on, fantastic figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the antique boar Du Cange, " Description of Constantinople." All authorities are here combined. ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE. 19 of Calydon and various marble and bronze monsters, indicated the fetes where lions, bears, panthers and wild asses let into the arena, amused the people with their yells and combats. There on a throne supported by twenty-four columns the Emperor, on Christmas-day, gave the signal, and men of all nations delighted the eyes of the crowd with the novelty of their costumes in form and in color. Farther on an amphitheatre afforded the spectacle of criminals abandoned to wild beasts. Toward the east St. Sophia displayed its glittering domes, its hundred columns of jasper and porphyry, its precious marbles veined with rose, striped with green and starred with purple whose saffron, snowy and metallic tints commingled as in Asiatic flowers among balustrades and capitals of gilded bronze before a silver sanctuary facing a tabernacle of massive gold, near golden vases incrusted with gems and beneath innumerable mosaics decking its walls with lustrous stones and spangles of gold. The dominant characteristics of this church, as throughout the city, were disorderly accumulation and unintelligent wealth. Magnificence was regarded as art and people sought not beauty but bewilderment. Precious materials were accumulated and fashioned into barbarous capitals. Greek models whose simplicity they could not comprehend were abandoned for...
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