hairs were of marble, also adorned with sphinxes;
the curule chair was originally very similar in form to the modern
folding chair, but eventually received a good deal of ornament.

The most famous of the very few chairs which have come down from a
remote antiquity is the reputed chair of St Peter in St Peter's at Rome.
The wooden portions are much decayed, but it would appear to be
Byzantine work of the 6th century, and to be really an ancient _sedia
gestatoria_. It has ivory carvings representing the labours of Hercules.
A few pieces of an earlier oaken chair have been let in; the existing
one, Gregorovius says, is of acacia wood. The legend that this was the
curule chair of the senator Pudens is necessarily apocryphal. It is not,
as is popularly supposed, enclosed in Bernini's bronze chair, but is
kept under triple lock and exhibited only once in a century. Byzantium,
like Greece and Rome, affected the curule form of chair, and in addition
to lions' heads and winged figures of Victory and dolphin-shaped arms
used also the lyre-back which has been made familiar by the
pseudo-classical revival of the end of the 18th century. The chair of
Maximian in the cathedral of Ravenna is believed to date from the middle
of the 6th century. It is of marble, round, with a high back, and is
carved in high relief with figures of saints and scenes from the
Gospels--the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the flight into
Egypt and the baptism of Christ. The smaller spaces are filled with
carvings of animals, birds, flowers and foliated ornament. Another very
ancient seat is the so-called "Chair of Dagobert" in the Louvre. It is
of cast bronze, sharpened with the chisel and partially gilt; it is of
the curule or faldstool type and supported upon legs terminating in the
heads and feet of animals. The seat, which was probably of leather, has
disappeared. Its attribution depends entirely upon the statement of
Suger, abbot of St Denis in the 12th century, who added a back and arms.
Its age has been much discussed, but Viollet-le-Duc dated it to early
Merovingian times, and it may in any case be taken as the oldest
faldstool in existence. To the same generic type belongs the famous
abbots' chair of Glastonbury; such chairs might readily be taken to
pieces when their owners travelled. The _faldisterium_ in time acquired
arms and a back, while retaining its folding shape. The most famous, as
well as the most ancient, English chair is that