S. Baron, after a restoration by P. Benard.

In this period military exigencies did not permit of numerous
apartments. We find the great room, the place of reunion, a
sumptuously decorated apartment, in which also the meals were
served and the bed was placed. The floor was of bricks, and the
apartment was warmed by hot air supplied from a_ hypocaustum,
_placed below the floor, and admitted through a painted iron
grating. The wall decorations presented an infinite variety of
beautifully executed mouldings and scroll designs of flowers and
foliage, common to the Byzantine manner. The furniture of the
room was sober in style. The bed was shaped and ornamented
somewhat like a modern sofa. A curtain on sliding rings served
to screen from draughts, as well as to separate beds. In this
room the lady received her guests._]

What a contrast is offered between the empresses of these later
centuries and the great names of the earlier period, Eudoxia and
Pulcheria and Eudocia and the great Theodora! We have fallen on evil
times; and in the general corruption, woman has degenerated. During the
remaining centuries which it falls to our lot to consider, we shall find
that the chronicles of women continue to exhibit the downward march of
womanhood, until with the utter debasement of woman, the fabric of
society gives way, and all is darkness in the history of the sex.

We have had a glimpse of the luxury with which the Empress Eudoxia
surrounded herself in her palace on the Bosporus, and our curiosity and
interest may be satisfied concerning the domestic surroundings of a
woman of rank during the period of the Byzantine decadence. The only
truly original Christian art, down to the eleventh century, was the
Byzantine; it dominated both Christian and pagan artists. In the period
to which we refer, military exigencies did not permit of numerous
apartments. We find the great room, the place of reunion, a sumptuously
decorated apartment, in which also the meals were served and the bed was
placed.

This chief room showed little constructive quality, but it was superbly
decorated. The square, heavy door was usually contrived below a
relieving arch, whose archivolt was richly charged with sculptured and
painted ornaments; the twin windows were supported by a pied-droit or on
small columns. The flat walls rarely had a real projecting entablature;
the ends of joists were simulated by cornices resting on consoles or