Thus under angelic guidance the work went on, and after five years, eleven months and ten days of ceaseless toil the stately fane was completed. Largesses of enormous amount were distributed: one thousand oxen, as many sheep, as many swine, six hundred deer, ten thousand fowls, thirty thousand measures of corn, were given to the poor. In long procession, on Christmas Eve, A.D. 538, the emperor, accompanied by the patriarch, came to the door of St. Sophia; thence, unaccompanied by priest or courtier, as though making the final offering alone, he ran to the foot of the ambo, and with hands outstretched in the attitude of prayer exclaimed, "Glory to God, who hath deemed me worthy of such a work! I have conquered thee, Solomon." Well might he so exclaim as he gazed on the temple resplendent with gold and jewels and flashing marbles and decked with the spoils of heathen shrines. There was the white marble of Paros, the blue of Libya, the green of Croceæ, the black-streaked Celtic marble, the rosy-veined Phrygian, the granite and porphyry of Egypt; supporting the four smaller semi-domes were the eight pillars from the temple of the Sun; on either side of the nave the eight columns which had once adorned the temple of Diana of the Ephesians; the seats of the priests and the throne of the patriarch were silver-gilt; the dome of the ciborium over the holy table was of pure gold, bearing a cross weighing seventy-five pounds and encrusted with precious stones. The sacred vessels--the chalices, the flagons, the patens--were of the same metal; the hangings of the altar were of cloth of gold embroidered with gems; the candlesticks on the altar, the ambo, in the women's gallery and elsewhere, six thousand in number, were all of gold, as were the crosses on the bema, the covers of the holy books, the pillars of the iconostasis screening off the bema. In the altar itself pious ingenuity had surpassed itself. Into the fluid mass of liquid gold were thrown pearls, rubies, crystals, topazes, sapphires, onyxes and amethysts to enhance the costliness of the holiest of holies. The expense was enormous--Byzantine writers say three hundred and twenty thousand pounds weight of gold, or between sixty and seventy millions of dollars.