hese sarcophagi have been found in various parts of
Italy and in France, and are seen in many museums.

In no part of the Roman Empire was sculpture as favorably regarded by
the early Christians as at Byzantium. Several attempts to adorn the city
with statues and other works of art were made there, and many of the
Greek sculptures which had been carried to Rome were again borne off to
decorate this new Capitol. The Emperor Constantine there erected a
column a hundred feet high, and placed his statue on it; Theodosius also
erected a column and an obelisk; but Justinian excelled all these, and
about 543 A.D. set up a monument with a colossal equestrian statue of
himself in bronze upon it. The column which supported this statue was of
brick masonry covered with plates of bronze. From the accounts we have
of it we conclude that this was a fine work for its time; it was called
the Augustio, and was placed on the Augusteum near the church of St.
Sophia; in the sixteenth century it had been overthrown and broken in
pieces, and the metal was then melted down. The artist who executed the
Augustio was Eustathius of Rome, who was sent to Byzantium for this
purpose.

But the Byzantine Christians soon grew into a fixed disapproval of
statues, and favored only the lesser works of art. Ivory-carving, which
long before had been brought from the East by the Greeks, now came into
special favor, and the Byzantine artists devoted all their talent to
making beautiful works of this sort. The most important of these
carvings which remains is in the cathedral of Ravenna. It is the
episcopal chair or cathedra of Maximianus, and was made between 546 and
552 (Fig. 72).

This chair is composed entirely of carved plates of ivory; scenes from
the life of Joseph and other similar designs are represented, and these
are surrounded by a great variety of small figures, which form a sort of
framework around the principal parts; for example, animals and birds
among vine-branches, and all arranged in a life-like and artistic
manner. So large a work as this chair in ivory is unusual. The greater
number of ivory carvings are upon small objects, such as drinking-cups
and other vessels, book-covers and diptychs, or tablets for writing, of
which fine specimens remain and are seen in art collections.

Diptychs were carved ivory tablets, with the inner surface waxed for
writing, and were used by the early Christians, as they had been by the
ancients. The illus