_Fall of Dome and Restoration._--On the 7th of May, 558, the eastern part of the dome, “built by Isaurian workmen, with the apse, was thrown down by an earthquake, destroying in its fall the holy table, the ciborium, and the ambo.”[54] Reference is made to this in the opening lines of the Silentiary’s poem (see Chapter III.). According to Theophanes “the architects attributed its fall to the fact that to save expense the piers had been made too full of openings. The emperor restored the piers and raised the dome twenty feet.” The church was again consecrated in the fifth year after the catastrophe by Eutychius in the thirty-sixth year of Justinian, on the 24th of December.[55] Theophanes[56] describes the emperor and patriarch as riding together to the church in a chariot, and bearing the gospel with them, “while the people chanted the ‘Lift up your gates.’” The church, after its repair, is described by three contemporary authors--Paul the Silentiary, Agathias, and Evagrius. The poem of the first of these is given in the next chapter. _Agathias._--Agathias, surnamed the scholar, was born in 536 at Myrina in Asia Minor,[57] studied at Alexandria, and came in 554 to Constantinople, where he became known as a historian and a poet, and died in 582. Justinian, he says, restored several buildings after the earthquake, his especial care however was the great church of S. Sophia.[58] “Now the former church having been burnt by the angry mob, Justinian built it up again from the foundations as big and more beautiful and wonderful, and this most beautiful design was adorned with much precious metal. He built it in a round form with burnt brick and lime, it was bound together here and there with iron, but they avoided the use of wood, so that it should no more be easily burnt. Now Anthemius was the man who devised and worked at every part.