“Now Justinian alone began and alone finished the church with no other helping him, or even building a part of it. Its beauty is wonderful to behold; all kinds of pearls glitter there like the sea, and one seems to see the ever-flowing waters of great rivers. Now the four boundaries[229] of the church he called after the rivers that flowed from Paradise, and he made a law that whosoever was excommunicated should stand there for his sins. And for the phiale in the centre he made twelve arcades, and lions belching out water for the people to wash in. On the right side, however, of the right-hand gynaeceum, he made a basin (_thalassa_) of one cubit for the water to come up in, and one flight of steps (_klimax_) for the priests to cross above the water. He placed too in the front of the basin (_dexamene_) an open tank for the rain (_ombusia_), and carved twelve lions, twelve pards, twelve deer, and eagles, and hares, and calves, and crows, twelve of each, and these spouted out the water for the use of the priests alone. The place was called the place of the lions (_leontarion_) and metatorion, because there was a golden couch there, that the emperor might rest on his way to the temple. But who can describe the comeliness and beauty of the temple, overlaid with resplendent gold from the crown to the pavement? “When the temple and the sacred vessels had been all completed, on the 24th of December he marched in solemn pomp from the palace to the Gate of the Augusteum, opening into the Horologium; and he killed 1,000 oxen, 6,000 sheep, 500 deer, 1,000 pigs, 1,000 fowls, and gave them to the poor and needy, as well as 30,000 measures of wheat. And the distribution of these on that day took three hours, and then the emperor entered with the cross, and the patriarch Eutychius, and at the royal entrance he left the patriarch and walked alone to the ambo; then, stretching out his hands to heaven, he cried, ‘Glory be to God who has thought me worthy to finish this work. Solomon, I have surpassed thee.’ And when the ceremony was over he distributed largesse, and with the help of Strategius gave away three hundred pounds of gold. But on the following day he solemnly opened the temple, and killed even more oxen, and feasted every one for fifteen days until the feast of Epiphany, praising God. In such a way as this was the great work completed.