the Patriarch of Agia Sophia has in that city one hundred metropolitans and archbishops, and each metropolitan has seven suffragans in the same city.” The idea of competition with Solomon’s Temple and the Tabernacle would be sure to suggest itself, and, once received, it would be justified by many assertions; indeed a tendency to imitate the biblical accounts may be detected in the Anonymous author. For instance, we have Justinian’s intention to cover the floor with silver, the description of the gold vessels for the altar, and the “sea” for the priests. Justinian’s oft-quoted speech on entering the completed church may be assigned to this leading idea, which we find expressed as early as the sixth century by Corippus, the poet-bishop, who says, “Praise of the temple of Solomon is now silenced, and the Wonders of the World have to yield the preeminence. Two shrines founded by the wisdom of God have rivalled Heaven, one the sacred Temple, the other the splendid fane of S. Sophia, the Vestibule of the Divine Presence.”[231] Glycas, who tells many of the stories given by the Anonymous, continues the idea further. Justinian, he says, set up a statue “representing Solomon as looking at the Great Church and gnashing his teeth with envy.”[232] In the Book of Proverbs we read, “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” This was also seized upon, and Michael Psellus speaks of S. Sophia as “the very beautiful temple, the incomparable home which the Divine Wisdom built in His own name and which He raised on seven pillars.”[233] Modern writers, Tournefort, Von Hammer, &c., have delighted to point out that the church has 107 columns; indeed, with a little humouring, 108 may be counted. The symmetrical number of the workmen employed according to the Anonymous may be matched in a legendary account of the building of S. Luke’s, according to which there were twenty-four protomaistores, each of whom had twenty-four workmen under him. The story of Justinian mixing money with the earth is parallel to the account, given by Vasari, of Brunelleschi’s scheme for building the dome of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence. It is impossible that the church should have been flooded with water, as described by the Anonymous. There appears to be no basis for the supposition that the great dome was gilt outside. In the texts of Codinus the dome is said to be of ivy-wood (κισσηρίνος): this is evidently somebody’s misreading for pumice-stone (κισήριον).