The miracle of the moving cross of lights mentioned by Anthony reminds us of a remarkable custom in regard to the great coronas of lights in Byzantine churches which is observed on Mount Athos, and also at Sinai, and is probably ancient. A part of the great festival service at Vatopedi consists in singing the _Polyeleos_. “When the last of the multitude of candles had been lighted in the great coronas under the domes, the monks fetched long poles, with which they pushed out the candelabra to the full extent that their suspending chains permitted and then let them go, the result being that in a few minutes the whole church was filled with slowly swinging lights.”[199] The method of lighting described by the Silentiary has not changed in the unchanging East. S. Sophia is still lighted by a myriad little lamps arranged in rows, or suspended in circles. The single lamp is a small glass vessel of oil on which floats the wick; the two typical forms being like a bowl or an elongated tumbler. These cups are hung by three chains, or inserted in a ring, at the end of a metal arm, projecting from the wall or from the rim of a suspended circle. [Illustration: FIG. 23.--Hanging Rods for Lamps in S. Sophia until 1850.] Up to the time of Fossati’s restoration there was an immense polygon of probably some sixty feet diameter of iron rods suspended from the dome. Grelot[200] described it in 1680 as a large circle of iron rods hanging down to within eight or ten feet of the pavement and having fixed to it “a prodigious number of lamps, ostrich eggs, and other baubles.” In the mosque of Achmet, several rings are bound together by straight rods, making overhead a geometrical arrangement of bars, from which the lamps are suspended; although these are all Turkish, the system remained from Byzantine times. Fig. 23 is re-drawn from Fossati. (_Aya Sophia_, Constantinople, 1852.) One of the most beautiful methods is that of suspending the lamps to long straight iron bars running the whole length of the building as at S. John Studius. In the mosque of Damascus, before the recent fire, there were hanging assemblages of circles one above another somewhat similar we may suppose to the trees of the poet. At Salonica a network of lamps which hangs almost like a curtain before the bema of S. Demetrius may illustrate the “nets” if nets there were. During Ramazan festoons of lamps are hung from minaret to minaret arranged in inscriptions; in 1676 Dr. Covel of Cambridge saw illuminations before the Sultan at Adrianople which represented “castles, mosques, peacocks, Turkish writings, &c., extremely pleasant and wonderful to behold.” These were formed by lamps hung to light frames; the method was probably derived from Byzantine illuminations such as the fireworks mentioned as being exhibited in the Hippodrome.