The condition was literally fulfilled. Clad in white and scarlet, the cobbler was placed in the centre of the arena and the salute given _behind his back_. For the materials requisitions were made in all the provinces. The governors of the _Themata_ of the East, the West, the North and the South were ordered to send up to the capital pillars and marbles from the ancient temples, baths and palaces. Eight columns of porphyry, which Aurelian had transported from Baalbec to adorn the temple of the Sun erected by him at Rome, were sent to Constantinople by Marcia, a noble widow, whose dowry they had been; eight pillars of green marble were supplied by the famous shrine of the Ephesian Diana, and the temples of the Delian Apollo, of Cybele at Cyzicus and of Athene at Athens were despoiled of their most valuable portions. The work was pressed forward vigorously. The stones were paid for on delivery; the workmen had extra pay twice a week; the emperor, staff in hand, dressed in white linen robe with a white linen kerchief on his head, daily visited and encouraged his workmen. The architects, Anthemius of Tralles and Ignatius of Miletus, had under their orders, according to the Greek stories, one hundred master architects, each superintending one hundred men. The lime was tempered with barley-water, and the foundations of the great central piers, fifty feet square and twenty feet deep, were laid with concrete in which the same barley-water and chopped willow-bark, poured in lukewarm, were chief ingredients. The mosaics and marbles of the interior were laid in lime and oil. The bricks for the cupola were made of Rhodian clay, under the direction of Troilus the chamberlain, Theodore the patrician of Seleucia, and Basil the quæstor, and were so light that twelve of them weighed only as much as one ordinary brick. This last statement, however, of the Byzantine writer is described by Salzenberg as a pure fiction. The building was fireproof, no wood being used except in some of the doors.