"Hæc quæcumque vides veteri prostrata ruina Obruta verberis, ederis, dumisque jacebant." Opening out of the court in front of the church is the little _Chapel of S. Sylvestro_, built by Innocent II. in 1140. It contains a series of very curious frescoes. "Showing the influence of Byzantine upon Roman art is the little chapel of S. Silvestro, detailing the history of the conversion of Constantine with a naïveté which, with the exception of a certain dignity in some of the figures, constitutes their sole attraction. They are indeed little better than Chinese paintings; the last of the series, representing Constantine leading Pope Sylvester's horse by the bridle, walking beside him in his long flowing robe, with a chattah held over his head by an attendant, has quite an Asiatic character."--_Lord Lindsay's Christian Art._ "Here, as in so many instances, legend is the genuine reflex, not of the external, but the moral part of history. In this series of curious wall-paintings, we see Constantine dismissing, consoled and laden with gifts, the mothers whose children were to be slaughtered to provide a bath of blood, the remedy prescribed--but which he humanely rejected--for his leprosy, his punishment for persecuting the Church while he yet lingered in the darkness of paganism; we see the vision of St. Peter and St. Paul, who appear to him in his dreams, and prescribe the infallible cure for both physical and moral disease through the waters of baptism; we see the mounted emissaries, sent by the emperor to seek St. Sylvester, finding that pontiff concealed in a cavern on Mount Soracte; we see that saint before the emperor, exhibiting to him the authentic portraits of the two apostles (said to be still preserved at St. Peter's), pictures in which Constantine at once recognises the forms seen in his vision, assuming them to be gods entitled to his worship; we see the imperial baptism, with a background of fantastic architecture, the rite administered both by immersion (the neophyte standing in an ample font) and affusion; we see the pope on a throne, before which the emperor is kneeling, to offer him a tiara--no doubt the artist intended thus to imply the immediate bestowal of temporal sovereignty (very generally believed the act of Constantine in the first flush of his gratitude and neophyte zeal) upon the papacy; lastly, we see the pontiff riding into Rome in triumph, Constantine himself leading his horse, and other mitred bishops following on horseback. Another picture--evidently by the same hand--quaintly represents the finding of the true cross by St. Helena, and the miracle by which it was distinguished from the crosses of the two thieves,--a subject here introduced because a portion of that revered relic was among treasures deposited in this