The description or rather explanation of S. Sophia was most probably written and recited as an Opening Ode at the _Encaenia_ of December 24th, 563. Körtum (in Salzenberg) conjectures that the poem was recited in “a hall of the Imperial Palace,” but Du Cange is probably more correct in assigning only the first eighty lines to the Palace. The succeeding lines he says “were addressed to the clergy in the Patriarch’s Palace,” but we believe, from the antithesis between the Palace of the Emperor and the House of God, that the address to the patriarch was spoken within the walls of the church itself, and that the whole poem, which is divided into three parts, was written to be recited in connection with the opening ceremony mentioned above. It shows us how much architecture was esteemed by Justinian, that the historian of his wars wrote also a history of his buildings; and the court poet was employed to celebrate the greatest of them in verse. On many accounts the poem is the best ancient architectural description extant. It is exact in accuracy, most orderly in its sequence when read with a knowledge of the building, and must have been written within its walls. A close and careful study written when architectural ideas were in the ascendant--the chief subject of thought in times of peace--it is no futile attempt to explain a work of genius in terms of mechanics and foot-rule measurements, after the manner of an architectural lecture, but it translates the ideas of the artist into the words of the poet. The conceit of Homeric metre and phrasing is almost a charm at this distance of time, the poet’s enthusiasm being quite sufficient to carry off the affectation of attempting an architectural epic. It is not however in its form but in its stimulus to imagination that we see its chief value. CHAPTER III THE SILENTIARY’S POEM--PART I The first eighty lines of the Prelude are an eulogy on the emperor. The succeeding lines were addressed to the clergy. “We come to you, sirs, from the home of the emperor, to the home of the Almighty Emperor, the Deviser of the Universe, by whose grace victory cleaves to our lord. The august head of our state lent a kindly ear to our words, as he sat in the hall; now we see the chief of the sacred priests. May he too favour us, and may none of those who listen carp at our words.” The poem itself, in long Homeric hexameters, begins by describing the general peace throughout the Roman world at the time of the restoration of S. Sophia. Dr. Körtum notes the following references to events only then recently passed. The rule of the Vandals in Africa had been destroyed by Belisarius (534), and a later insurrection quelled (545); the reign of the Ostrogoths in the West had come to an end (554), and peace had just been concluded with the Persians (561). There is also an allusion to the conspiracy of this same year, when an attempt was made on the emperor’s life.