Whether he told the whole truth is another matter. He was naturally a truthful man and his friends lived in dread of unguarded disclosures, but his communications were not so free as they seemed. There was a string to the end of the kite. Byron was kindly and generous by nature. He took pleasure in helping necessitous authors, men and women, not at all en grand seigneur, or without counting the cost, but because he knew what poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief in an Invisible Power. "A fearful looking for of judgment" haunted him to the last.

There is an increasing tendency on the part of modern critics to cast a doubt on Byron's sanity. It is true that he inherited bad blood on both sides of his family, that he was of a neurotic temperament, that at one time he maddened himself with drink, but there is no evidence that his brain was actually diseased. Speaking figuratively, he may have been "half mad," but, if so, it was a derangement of the will, not of the mind. He was responsible for his actions, and they rise up in judgment against him. He put indulgence before duty. He made a byword of his marriage and brought lifelong sorrow on his wife. If, as Goethe said, he was "the greatest talent" of the 19th century, he associated that talent with scandal and reproach. But he was born with certain noble qualities which did not fail him at his worst. He was courageous, he was kind, and he loved truth rather than lies. He was a worker and a fighter. He hated tyranny, and was prepared to sacrifice money and ease and life in the cause of popular freedom. If the issue of his call to arms was greater and other than he designed or foresaw, it was a generous instinct which impelled him to begin the struggle.

With regard to the criticism of his works, Byron's personality has always confused the issue. Politics, religion, morality, have confused, and still confuse, the issue. The question for the modern critic is, of what permanent value is Byron's poetry? What did he achieve for art, for the intellect, for the spirit, and in what degree does he still give pleasure to readers of average intelligence? It cannot be denied that he stands out from other poets of his century as a great creative artist, that his canvas is crowded with new and original images, additions to already existing types of poetic workmanship. It has been said that Byron could only represent himself under various disguises, that Childe Harold and The Corsair, Lara and Manfred and Don Juan, are variants of a single personality, the egotist who is at war with his fellows, the generous but nefarious sentimentalist who sins and suffers and yet is to be pitied for his suffering. None the less, with whatever limitations as artist or moralist, he invented characters and types of characters real enough and distinct enough to leave their mark on society as well as on literature. These masks or replicas of his own personality were formative of thought, and were powerful agents in the evolution of sentiment and opinion. In language which was intelligible and persuasive, under shapes and forms which were suggestive and inspiring, Byron delivered a message of liberation. There was a double motive at work in his energies as a poet. He wrote, as he said, because "his mind was full" of his own loves, his own griefs, but also to register a protest against some external tyranny of law or faith or custom. His own countrymen owe Byron another debt. His poems were a liberal education in the manners and customs of "the gorgeous East," in the scenery, the art, the history and politics of Italy and Greece. He widened the horizon of his contemporaries, bringing within their ken wonders and beauties hitherto unknown or unfamiliar, and in so doing he heightened and cultivated, he "touched with emotion," the unlettered and unimaginative many, that "reading public" which despised or eluded the refinements and subtleties of less popular writers.

To the student of literature the first half of the 19th century is the age of Byron. He has failed to retain his influence over English readers. The knowledge, the culture of which he was the immediate channel, were speedily available through other sources. The politics of the Revolution neither interested nor affected the Liberalism or Radicalism of the middle classes. It was not only the loftier and wholesomer poetry of Wordsworth and of Tennyson which averted enthusiasm from Byron, not only moral earnestness and religious revival but the optimism and the materialism of commercial prosperity. As time went on, a severer and more intelligent criticism was brought to bear on his handiwork as a poet. It was pointed out that his constructions were loose and ambiguous, that his grammar was faulty, that his rhythm was inharmonious, and it was argued that these defects and blemishes were outward and visible signs of a lack of fineness in the man's spiritual texture; that below the sentiment and behind the rhetoric the thoughts and ideas were mean and commonplace. There was a suspicion of artifice, a questioning of the passion as genuine. Poetry came to be regarded more and more as a source of spiritual comfort, if not a religious exercise, yet, in some sort, a substitute for religion. There was little or nothing in Byron's poetry which fulfilled this want. He had no message for seekers after truth. Matthew Arnold, in his preface to The Poetry of Byron, prophesied that "when the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount the poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, her first names with her will be those of Byron and Wordsworth."

That prophecy still waits fulfilment, but without doubt there has been a reconsideration of Byron's place in literature, and he stands higher than he did, say, in 1875. His quarrel with orthodoxy neither alarms nor provokes the modern reader. Cynical or flippant turns of speech, which distressed and outraged his contemporaries, are taken as they were meant, for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion revolt. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches" have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the Spenserian stanza, may have written up to or anticipated the guide-book, but the spectacle of the bull-fight at Cadiz is "for ever warm," the "sound of revelry" on the eve of Waterloo still echoes in our ears, and Marathon and Venice, Greece and Italy, still rise up before us, "as from the stroke of an enchanter's wand." It was, however, in another vein that Byron achieved his final triumph. In Don Juan he set himself to depict life as a whole. The style is often misnamed the mock-heroic. It might be more accurately described as humorous-realistic. His "plan was to have no plan" in the sense of synopsis or argument, but in the person of his hero to "unpack his heart," to avenge himself on his enemies, personal or political, to suggest an apology for himself and to disclose a criticism and philosophy of life. As a satirist in the widest sense of the word, as an analyser of human nature, he comes, at whatever distance, after and yet next to Shakespeare. It is a test of the greatness of Don Juan that its reputation has slowly increased and that, in spite of its supposed immoral tendency, in spite of occasional grossness and voluptuousness, it has come to be recognized as Byron's masterpiece. Don Juan will be read for its own sake, for its beauty, its humour, its faithfulness. It is a "hymn to the earth," but it is a human sequence to "its own music chaunted."

[v.04 p.0905] In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were translated into French, into German, into Italian, into Russian, and the stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The Bride of Abydos has been translated into ten, Cain into nine languages. Of Manfred there is one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, two French, nine German, three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe that "the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain that they show no poet who is to be compared with him" was and is the keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature is a testimony to the universality of his influence. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Boerne, Mueller and Heine in Germany; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti; Pushkin and Lermontov among the Russians; Michiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles—more or less, as eulogists or imitators or disciples—were of the following of Byron. This fact is beyond dispute, that after the first outburst of popularity he has touched and swayed other nations rather than his own. The part he played or seemed to play in revolutionary politics endeared him to those who were struggling to be free. He stood for freedom of thought and of life. He made himself the mouthpiece of an impassioned and welcome protest against the hypocrisy and arrogance of his order and his race. He lived on the continent and was known to many men in many cities. It has been argued that foreigners are insensible to his defects as a writer, and that this may account for an astonishing and perplexing preference. The cause is rather to be sought in the quality of his art. It was as the creator of new types, "forms more real than living man," that Byron appealed to the artistic sense and to the imagination of Latin, Teuton or Slav. That "he taught us little" of the things of the spirit, that he knew no cure for the sickness of the soul, were considerations which lay outside the province of literary criticism. "It is a mark," says Goethe (Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit, 1876, iii. 125), "of true poetry, that as a secular gospel it knows how to free us from the earthly burdens which press upon us, by inward serenity, by outward charm." Now of this "secular gospel" the redemption from "real woes" by the exhibition of imaginary glory, and imaginary delights, Byron was both prophet and evangelist.

Byron was 5 ft. 8 in. in height, and strongly built; only with difficulty and varying success did he prevent himself from growing fat. At five-and-thirty he was extremely thin. He was "very slightly lame," but he was painfully conscious of his deformity and walked as little and as seldom as he could. He had a small head covered and fringed with dark brown or auburn curls. His forehead was high and narrow, of a marble whiteness. His eyes were of a light grey colour, clear and luminous. His nose was straight and well-shaped, but "from being a little too thick, it looked better in profile than in front face." Moore says that it was in "the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay." The upper lip was of a Grecian shortness and the corners descending. His complexion was pale and colourless. Scott speaks of "his beautiful pale face—like a spirit's good or evil." Charles Matthews said that "he was the only man to whom he could apply the word beautiful." Coleridge said that "if you had seen him you could scarce disbelieve him... his eyes the open portals of the sun—things of light and for light." He was likened to "the god of the Vatican," the Apollo Belvidere.

The best-known portraits are: (1) Byron at the age of seven by Kay of Edinburgh; (2) a drawing of Lord Byron at Cambridge by Gilchrist (1808); (3) a portrait in oils by George Sanders (1809); (4) a miniature by Sanders (1812); (5) a portrait in oils by Richard Westall, R.A. (1813); (6) a portrait in oils (Byron in Albanian dress) by Thomas Phillips, R.A. (1813); (7) a portrait in oils by Phillips (1813); (8-9) a sketch for a miniature, and a miniature by James Holmes (1815); (10) a sketch by George Henry Harlow (1818); (11) a portrait in oils by Vincenzio Camuccini (in the Vatican) c. 1822; (12) a portrait in oils by W.H. West (1822); (13) a sketch by Count D'Orsay (1823). Busts were taken by Bertel Thorwaldsen (1817) and by Lorenzo Bartolini (1822). The statue (1829) in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is by Thorwaldsen after the bust taken in 1817.

AUTHORITIES.—The best editions of Lord Byron's poetical works are: (1) The Works of Lord Byron with his Letters and Journals and his Life, by Thomas Moore (17 vols., London, John Murray, 1832, 1833); (2) The Works of Lord Byron (1 vol., 1837, reissued, 1838-1892); (3) The Poetical Works of Lord Byron (6 vols., 1855); (4) The Works of Lord Byron, new, revised and enlarged edition, Letters and Journals, edited by G.E. Prothero, 6 vols., Poetry, edited by E.H. Coleridge (7 vols., 1898-1903); (5) The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, with memoir by E.H. Coleridge (1 vol., 1905).

The principal biographies, critical notices, memoirs, &c., are:—Journey through Albania... with Lord Byron, by J.C. Hobhouse (1812; reprinted in 2 vols., 1813 and 1855); Memoirs of the Life and Writings of ... Lord Byron [by Dr John Watkins] (1822); Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius of Lord Byron, by Sir E. Brydges, Bart. (1824); Correspondence of Lord Byron with a Friend (3 vols., Paris, 1824); Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, by R.C. Dallas (1824); Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron, by Capt. T. Medwin (1824); Last Days of Lord Byron, by W. Parry (1824); Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece, by E. Blaquiere (1825); A Narrative of Lord Byron's Last Journey to Greece, by Count Gamba (1825); The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of Lord Byron (3 vols., 1825); The Spirit of the Age, by W. Hazlitt (1825); Memoir of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron, by George Clinton (1826); Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries, by J.H. Leigh Hunt (2 vols., 1828); Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore (2 vols., 1830); The Life of Lord Byron, by J. Galt (1830); Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron, by J. Kennedy (1830); Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1834); Critical and Historical Essays, by T.B. Macaulay, i. 311-352 (1843); Lord Byron juge par les temoins de sa vie (1869), My Recollections of Lord Byron, by the Countess Guiccioli (1869); Lady Byron Vindicated, A History of the Byron Controversy, by H. Beecher Stowe (1870); Lord Byron, a Biography, by Karl Elze (1872); Kunst und Alterthum, Goethe's Saemmtliche Werke (1874), vol. xiii. p. 641; Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson (2 vols., 1878); The Real Lord Byron, by J.C. Jeaffreson (2 vols., 1883); A Selection, &c., by A.C. Swinburne (1885); Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, by E.J. Trelawny (1887); Memoirs of John Murray, by S. Smiles (2 vols., 1891); Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold (preface) (1892); The Siege of Corinth, edited by E. Koelbing (1893); Prisoner of Chillon and other Poems, edited by E. Koelbing (1896); The Works of Lord Byron, edited by W. Henley, vol. i. (1897); A. Brandl's "Goethes Verhaeltniss zu Byron," Goethe Jahrbuch, zwanzigster Band (1899); Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, by G. Brandis (6 vols., 1901-1905), translated from Hauptstroemungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 4 Bde. (Berlin 1872-1876); Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. iii. (1903) art. "Byron," by T. Watts Dunton; Studies in Poetry and Criticism, by J. Churton Collins (1905); Lord Byron, sein Leben, &c., by Richard Ackermann; Byron, 3 vols. in the Biblioteka velikikh pisatelei pod redaktsei, edited by S.A. Vengesova (St Petersburg, 1906): a variorum translation; Byron et le romantisme francais, by Edmond Esteve (1907).

(E. H. C.)

[1] An anonymous work entitled The Life, Writings, &c. of ... Lord Byron (3 vols., 1825) purports to give "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed Manuscript." To judge by internal evidence (see "The Wedding Day," &c. ii. 278-284) there is some measure of truth in this assertion, but the work as a whole is untrustworthy.

BYRON, HENRY JAMES (1834-1884), English playwright, son of Henry Byron, at one time British consul at Port-au-Prince, was born in Manchester in January 1834. He entered the Middle Temple as a student in 1858, with the intention of devoting his time to play-writing. He soon ceased to make any pretence of legal study, and joined a provincial company as an actor. In this line he never made any real success; and, though he continued to act for years, chiefly in his own plays, he had neither originality nor charm. Meanwhile he wrote assiduously, and few men have produced so many pieces of so diverse a nature. He was the first editor of the weekly comic paper, Fun, and started the short-lived Comic Trials. His first successes were in burlesque; but in 1865 he joined Miss Marie Wilton (afterwards Lady Bancroft) in the management of the Prince of Wales's theatre, near Tottenham Court Road. Here several of his pieces, comedies and extravaganzas were produced with success; but, upon his severing the partnership two years later, and starting management on his own account in the provinces, he was financially unfortunate. The commercial success of his life was secured with Our Boys, which was played at the Vaudeville from January 1875 till April 1879—a then unprecedented "run." The Upper Crust, another of his successes, gave a congenial opportunity to Mr J.L. Toole for one of his [v.04 p.0906] inimitably broad character-sketches. During the last few years of his life Byron was in frail health; he died in Clapham on the 11th of April 1884. H.J. Byron was the author of some of the most popular stage pieces of his day. Yet his extravaganzas have no wit but that of violence; his rhyming couplets are without polish, and decorated only by forced and often pointless puns. His sentiment had T.W. Robertson's insipidity without its freshness, and restored an element of vulgarity which his predecessor had laboured to eradicate from theatrical tradition. He could draw a "Cockney" character with some fidelity, but his dramatis personae were usually mere puppets for the utterance of his jests. Byron was also the author of a novel, Paid in Full (1865), which appeared originally in Temple Bar. In his social relations he had many friends, among whom he was justly popular for geniality and imperturbable good temper.

BYRON, JOHN BYRON, 1ST BARON (c. 1600-1652), English cavalier, was the eldest son of Sir John Byron (d. 1625), a member of an old Lancashire family which had settled at Newstead, near Nottingham. During the third decade of the 17th century Byron was member of parliament for the town and afterwards for the county of Nottingham; and having been knighted and gained some military experience he was an enthusiastic partisan of Charles I. during his struggle with the parliament. In December 1641 the king made him lieutenant of the Tower of London, but in consequence of the persistent demand of the House of Commons he was removed from this position at his own request early in 1642. At the opening of the Civil War Byron joined Charles at York. He was present at the skirmish at Powick Bridge; he commanded his own regiment of horse at Edgehill and at Roundway Down, where he was largely responsible for the royalist victory; and at the first battle of Newbury Falkland placed himself under his orders. In October 1643 he was created Baron Byron of Rochdale, and was soon serving the king in Cheshire, where the soldiers sent over from Ireland augmented his forces. His defeat at Nantwich, however, in January 1644, compelled him to retire into Chester, and he was made governor of this city by Prince Rupert. At Marston Moor, as previously at Edgehill, Byron's rashness gave a great advantage to the enemy; then after fighting in Lancashire and North Wales he returned to Chester, which he held for about twenty weeks in spite of the king's defeat at Naseby and the general hopelessness of the royal cause. Having obtained favourable terms he surrendered the city in February 1646. Byron took some slight part in the second Civil War, and was one of the seven persons excepted by parliament from all pardon in 1648. But he had already left England, and he lived abroad in attendance on the royal family until his death in Paris in August 1652. Although twice married Byron left no children, and his title descended to his brother Richard (1605-1679), who had been governor of Newark. Byron's five other brothers served Charles I. during the Civil War, and one authority says that the seven Byrons were all present at Edgehill.

BYRON, HON. JOHN (1723-1786), British vice-admiral, second son of the 4th Lord Byron, and grandfather of the poet, was born on the 8th of November 1723. While still very young, he accompanied Anson in his voyage of discovery round the world. During many successive years he saw a great deal of hard service, and so constantly had he to contend, on his various expeditions, with adverse gales and dangerous storms, that he was nicknamed by the sailors, "Foul-weather Jack." It is to this that Lord Byron alludes in his Epistle to Augusta:—

"A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Recalling as it lies beyond redress, Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore, He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore."

Among his other expeditions was that to Louisburg in 1760, where he was sent in command of a squadron to destroy the fortifications. And in 1764 in the "Dolphin" he went for a prolonged cruise in the South Seas. In 1768 he published a Narrative of some of his early adventures with Anson, which was to some extent utilized by his grandson in Don Juan. In 1769 he was appointed governor of Newfoundland. In 1775 he attained his flag rank, and in 1778 became a vice-admiral. In the same year he was despatched with a fleet to watch the movements of the Count d'Estaing, and in July 1779 fought an indecisive engagement with him off Grenada. He soon after returned to England, retiring into private life, and died on the 10th of April 1786.

BYSTROeM, JOHAN NIKLAS (1783-1848), Swedish sculptor, was born on the 18th of December 1783 at Philipstad. At the age of twenty he went to Stockholm and studied for three years under Sergel. In 1809 he gained the academy prize, and in the following year visited Rome. He sent home a beautiful work, "The Reclining Bacchante," in half life size, which raised him at once to the first rank among Swedish sculptors. On his return to Stockholm in 1816 he presented the crown prince with a colossal statue of himself, and was entrusted with several important works. Although he was appointed professor of sculpture at the academy, he soon returned to Italy, and with the exception of the years from 1838 to 1844 continued to reside there. He died at Rome in 1848. Among Bystroem's numerous productions the best are his representations of the female form, such as "Hebe," "Pandora," "Juno suckling Hercules," and the "Girl entering the Bath." His colossal statues of the Swedish kings are also much admired.

BYTOWNITE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the plagioclase (q.v.) series of the felspars. The name was originally given (1835) by T. Thomson, to a greenish-white felspathic mineral found in a boulder near Bytown (now the city of Ottawa) in Ontario, but this material was later shown on microscopical examination to be a mixture. The name was afterwards applied by G. Tschermak to those plagioclase felspars which lie between labradorite and anorthite; and this has been generally adopted by petrologists. In chemical composition and in optical and other physical characters it is thus much nearer to the anorthite end of the series than to albite. Like labradorite and anorthite, it is a common constituent of basic igneous rocks, such as gabbro and basalt. Isolated crystals of bytownite bounded by well-defined faces are unknown.

(L. J. S.)

BYWATER, INGRAM (1840- ), English classical scholar, was born in London on the 27th of June 1840. He was educated at University and King's College schools, and at Queen's College, Oxford. He obtained a first class in Moderations (1860) and in the final classical schools (1862), and became fellow of Exeter (1863), reader in Greek (1883), regius professor of Greek (1893-1908), and student of Christ Church. He received honorary degrees from various universities, and was elected corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He is chiefly known for his editions of Greek philosophical works: Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae (1877); Prisciani Lydi quae extant (edited for the Berlin Academy in the Supplementum Aristolelicum, 1886); Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea (1890), De Arte Poetica (1898); Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Nicomachean Ethics (1892).

BYZANTINE ART

PLATE I.



CAPITALS OF COLUMNS.



PLATE II.



BYZANTINE ART.[1] By "Byzantine art" is meant the art of Constantinople (sometimes called Byzantium in the middle ages as in antiquity), and of the Byzantine empire; it represents the form of art which followed the classical, after the transitional interval of the early Christian period. It reached maturity under Justinian (527-565), declined and revived with the fortunes of the empire, and attained a second culmination from the 10th to the 12th centuries. Continuing in existence throughout the later middle ages, it is hardly yet extinct in the lands of the Greek Church. It had enormous influence over the art of Europe and the East during the early middle ages, not only through the distribution of minor works from Constantinople but by the reputation of its architecture and painting. Several buildings in Italy are truly Byzantine. It is difficult to set a time for the origin of the style. When Constantine founded new Rome the art was still classical, although it had even then gathered up many of the elements which were to transform its aspect. Just two hundred years later some of the most characteristic works of this style of art were being produced, such [v.04 p.0907] as the churches of St Sergius, the Holy Wisdom (St Sophia), and the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, and San Vitale at Ravenna. We may best set an arbitrary point for the demarcation of the new style midway between these two dates, with the practical separation of the eastern and western empires.

The style may be said to have arisen from the orientalization of Roman art, and itself largely contributed to the formation of the Saracenic or Mahommedan styles. As Choisy well says, "The history of art in the Roman epoch presents two currents, one with its source in Rome, the other in Hellenic Asia. When Rome fell the Orient returned to itself and to the freedom of exploring new ways. There was now a new form of society, the Christian civilization, and, in art, an original type of architecture, the Byzantine." It has hardly been sufficiently emphasized how closely the art was identified with the outward expression of the Christian church; in fact, the Christian element in late classical art is the chief root of the new style, and it was the moral and intellectual criticism that was brought to bear on the old material, which really marked off Byzantine art from being merely a late form of classic.

Hardly any distinction can be set up in the material contents of the art; it was at least for a period only simplified and sweetened, and it is this freshening which prepared the way for future development. It must be confessed, however, that certain influences darkened the style even before it had reached maturity; chief among these was a gloomy hierarchical splendour, and a ritual rigidity, which to-day we yet refer to, quite properly, as Byzantinism. Choisy sees a distinction in the constructive types of Roman and Byzantine architecture, in that the former covered spaces by concreted vaults built on centres, which approximated to a sort of "monolithic" formation, whereas in the Byzantine style the vaults were built of brick and drawn forward in space without the help of preparatory support. Building in this way, it became of the greatest importance that the vaults should be so arranged as to bring about an equilibrium of thrusts. The distinction holds as between Rome in the 4th century and Constantinople in the 6th, but we are not sufficiently sure that the concreted construction did not depend on merely local circumstances, and it is possible, in other centres of the empire where strong cement was not so readily obtainable, and wood was scarce, that the Byzantine constructive method was already known in classical times. Choisy, following Dieulafoy, would derive the Byzantine system of construction from Persia, but this proposition seems to depend on a mistaken chronology of the monuments as shown by Perrot and Chipiez in their History of Art in Persia. It seems probable that the erection of brick vaulting was indigenous in Egypt as a building method. Strzygowski, in his recent elaborate examination of the art-types found at the palace of Mashita (Mschatta), a remarkable ruin discovered by Canon Tristram in Moab, of which the most important parts have now been brought to the new Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, shows that there are Persian ideas intermixed with Byzantine in its decoration, and there are also brick arches of high elliptical form in the structure. He seems disposed to date this work rather in the 5th than in the 6th century, and to see in it an intermediate step between the Byzantine work of the west and a Mesopotamian style, which he postulates as probably having its centre at Seleucia-Ctesiphon. From the examples brought forward by the learned author himself, it is safer as yet to look on the work as in the main Byzantine, with many Egyptian and Syrian elements, and an admixture, as has been said, of Persian ideas in the ornamentation. Egypt was certainly an important centre in the development of the Byzantine style.

The course of the transition to Byzantine, the first mature Christian style, cannot be satisfactorily traced while, guided by Roman archaeologists, we continue to regard Rome as a source of Christian art apart from the rest of the world. Christianity itself was not of Rome, it was an eastern leaven in Roman society. Christian art even in that capital was, we may say, an eastern leaven in Roman art. If we set the year 450 for the beginning of Byzantine art, counting all that went before as early Christian, we get one thousand years to the Moslem conquest of Constantinople (1453). This millennium is broken into three well-marked periods by the great iconoclastic schism (726-842) and the taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. The first we may call the classical epoch of Byzantine art; it includes the mature period under Justinian (the central year of which we may put as 550), from which it declined until the settlement of the quarrel about images, 400 years in all, to, say, 850. The second period, to which we may assign the limits 850-1200, is, in the main, one of orientalizing influences, especially in architecture, although in MSS. and paintings there was, at one time, a distinct and successful classical revival. The interregnum had caused almost complete isolation from the West, and inspiration was only to be found either by casting back on its own course, or by borrowing from the East. This period is best represented by the splendid works undertaken by Basil the Macedonian (867-886) and his immediate successors, in the imperial palace, Constantinople. The third period is marked by the return of western influence, of which the chief agency was probably the establishment of Cistercian monasteries. This western influence, although it may be traced here and there, was not sufficient, however, to change the essentially oriental character of the art, which from first to last may be described as Oriental-Christian.

Architecture.—The architecture of our period is treated in some detail in the article ARCHITECTURE; here we can only glance at some broad aspects of its development. As early as the building of Constantine's churches in Palestine there were two chief types of plan in use—the basilican, or axial, type, represented by the basilica at the Holy Sepulchre, and the circular, or central, type, represented by the great octagonal church once at Antioch. Those of the latter type we must suppose were nearly always vaulted, for a central dome would seem to furnish their very raison d'etre. The central space was sometimes surrounded by a very thick wall, in which deep recesses, to the interior, were formed, as at the noble church of St George, Salonica (5th century?), or by a vaulted aisle, as at Sta Costanza, Rome (4th century); or annexes were thrown out from the central space in such a way as to form a cross, in which these additions helped to counterpoise the central vault, as at the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna (5th century). The most famous church of this type was that of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople. Vaults appear to have been early applied to the basilican type of plan; for instance, at St Irene, Constantinople (6th century), the long body of the church is covered by two domes.

At St Sergius, Constantinople, and San Vitale, Ravenna, churches of the central type, the space under the dome was enlarged by having apsidal additions made to the octagon. Finally, at St Sophia (6th century) a combination was made which is perhaps the most remarkable piece of planning ever contrived. A central space of 100 ft. square is increased to 200 ft. in length by adding two hemicycles to it to the east and the west; these are again extended by pushing out three minor apses eastward, and two others, one on either side of a straight extension, to the west. This unbroken area, about 260 ft. long, the larger part of which is over 100 ft. wide, is entirely covered by a system of domical surfaces. Above the conchs of the small apses rise the two great semi-domes which cover the hemicycles, and between these bursts out the vast dome over the central square. On the two sides, to the north and south of the dome, it is supported by vaulted aisles in two storeys which bring the exterior form to a general square. At the Holy Apostles (6th century) five domes were applied to a cruciform plan, that in the midst being the highest. After the 6th century there were no churches built which in any way competed in scale with these great works of Justinian, and the plans more or less tended to approximate to one type. The central area covered by the dome was included in a considerably larger square, of which the four divisions, to the east, west, north and south, were carried up higher in the vaulting and roof system than the four corners, forming in this way a sort of nave [v.04 p.0908] and transepts. Sometimes the central space was square, sometimes octagonal, or at least there were eight piers supporting the dome instead of four, and the "nave" and "transepts" were narrower in proportion. If we draw a square and divide each side into three so that the middle parts are greater than the others, and then divide the area into nine from these points, we approximate to the typical setting out of a plan of this time. Now add three apses on the east side opening from the three divisions, and opposite to the west put a narrow entrance porch running right across the front. Still in front put a square court. The court is the atrium and usually has a fountain in the middle under a canopy resting on pillars. The entrance porch is the narthex. The central area covered by the dome is the solea, the place for the choir of singers. Here also stood the ambo. Across the eastern side of the central square was a screen which divided off the bema, where the altar was situated, from the body of the church; this screen, bearing images, is the iconastasis. The altar was protected by a canopy or ciborium resting on pillars. Rows of rising seats around the curve of the apse with the patriarch's throne at the middle eastern point formed the synthronon. The two smaller compartments and apses at the sides of the bema were sacristies, the diaconicon and prothesis. The continuous influence from the East is strangely shown in the fashion of decorating external brick walls of churches built about the 12th century, in which bricks roughly carved into form are set up so as to make bands of ornamentation which it is quite clear are imitated from Cufic writing. This fashion was associated with the disposition of the exterior brick and stone work generally into many varieties of pattern, zig-zags, key-patterns, &c.; and, as similar decoration is found in many Persian buildings, it is probable that this custom also was derived from the East. The domes and vaults to the exterior were covered with lead or with tiling of the Roman variety. The window and door frames were of marble. The interior surfaces were adorned all over by mosaics or paintings in the higher parts of the edifice, and below with incrustations of marble slabs, which were frequently of very beautiful varieties, and disposed so that, although in one surface, the colouring formed a series of large panels. The choicer marbles were opened out so that the two surfaces produced by the division formed a symmetrical pattern resembling somewhat the marking of skins of beasts.

Mosaics and Paintings.—The method of depicting designs by bringing together morsels of variously colored materials is of high antiquity. We are apt to think of a line of distinction between classical and Christian mosaics in that the former were generally of marble and the latter mostly of colored and gilt glass. But glass mosaics were already in use in the Augustan age, and the use of gilt tesserae goes back to the 1st or 2nd century. The first application of glass to this purpose seems to have been made in Egypt, the great glass-working centre of antiquity, and the gilding of tesserae may with probability be traced to the same source, whence, it is generally agreed, most of the gilt glass vessels, of which so many have been found in the catacombs, were derived. The earliest existing mosaics of a typically Christian character are some to be found at Santa Costanza, Rome (4th century). Other mosaics on the vaults of the same church are of marble and follow a classical tradition. It is probable that we have here the meeting-point of two art-currents, the indigenous and the eastern. In Rome, the great apse-mosaic of S. Pudenziana dates from about A.D. 400. The mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, is incrusted within by mosaic work of the 5th century, and most probably the dome mosaics of the church of St George, Salonica, are also of this period. Of the 6th century are many of the magnificent examples still remaining at Ravenna, portions of the original incrustation of St Sophia, Constantinople, those of the basilica at Parenzo, on the Gulf of Istria, and of St Catherines, Sinai. An interesting mosaic which is probably of this period, and has only recently been described, is at the small church of Keti in Cyprus. This, which may be the only Byzantine mosaic in the British dominions, fills the conch of a tiny apse, but is none the less of great dignity. In the centre is a figure of the Virgin with the Holy Child in her arms standing between two angels who hold disks marked with the sign [CHI]. They are named Michael and Gabriel. Another mosaic of this period brought from Ravenna to Germany two generations ago has been recently almost rediscovered, and set up in the new Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin. In this, a somewhat similar composition fills the conch of the apse, but here it is the Risen Christ who stands between the two archangels. Above, in a broad strip, a frieze of angels blowing trumpets stand on the celestial sea on either hand of the Enthroned Majesty.

Such mosaics flowed out widely over the Christian world trom its art centres, as far east as Sana, the capital of Yemen, as far north as Kiev in Russia, and Aachen in Germany, and as far west as Paris, and continued in time for a thousand years without break in the tradition save by the iconoclastic dispute. The finest late example is the well-known "mosaic-church" (the Convent of the Saviour) at Constantinople, a work of the 14th century.

The single figures were from the first, and for the most part, treated with an axial symmetry. Almost all are full front; only occasionally will one, like the announcing angel, be drawn with a three-quarter face. The features are thus kept together on the general map of the face. In the same way the details of a tree will be collected on a simple including form which makes a sort of mat for them. Groups, similarly, are closely gathered up into masses of balanced form, and such masses are arranged with strict regard for general symmetry. "The art," as Bayet says, "in losing something of life and liberty became so much the better fitted for the decoration of great edifices." The technical means were just as much simplified, and only a few frank colours were made sufficient, by skilful juxtaposition, to do all that was required of them. The fine pure blue, or bright gold, backgrounds on which the figures were spaced, as well as the broken surface incidental to the process, created an atmosphere which harmonized all together. At St Sophia there were literally acres of such mosaics, and they seem to have been applied with similar profusion in the imperial palace.

Mosaic was only a more magnificent kind of painting, and painted design followed exactly the same laws; the difference is in the splendour of effect and in the solidity and depth of colour. Paintings, from the first, must have been of more grey and pearly hues. A large side chapel at the mosaic church at Constantinople is painted, and it is difficult to say which is really the more beautiful, the deep splendour of the one, or the tender yet gay colour of the other. The greatest thing in Byzantine art was this picturing of the interiors of entire buildings with a series of mosaics or paintings, filling the wall space, vaults and domes with a connected story. The typical character of the personages and scenes, the elimination of non-essentials, and the continuity of the tradition, brought about an intensity of expression such as may nowhere else be found. It is part of the limited greatness of this side of Byzantine art that there was no room in it for the gaiety and humour of the later medieval schools; all was solemn, epical, cosmic. When such stories are displayed on the golden ground of arches and domes, and related in a connected cycle, the result produces, as it was intended to produce, a sense of the universal and eternal. Beside this great power of co-ordination possessed by Byzantine artists, they created imaginative types of the highest perfection. They clothed Christian ideas with forms so worthy, which have become so diffused, and so intimately one with the history, that we are apt to take them for granted, and not to see in them the superb results of Greek intuition and power of expression. Such a type is the Pantocrator,—the Creator-Redeemer, the Judge inflexible and yet compassionate,—who is depicted at the zenith of all greater domes; such the Virgin with the Holy Child, enthroned or standing in the conchs of apses, all tenderness and dignity, or with arms extended, all solicitude; of her image the Painter's Guide directs that it is to be painted with the "complexion the colour of wheat, hair and eyes brown, grand eyebrows, and beautiful eyes, clad in beautiful clothing, humble, beautiful and faultless"; such are the angels with their mighty [v.04 p.0909] wings, splendid impersonations of beneficent power; such are the prophets, doctors, martyrs, saints,—all have been fixed into final types.

We are apt to speak of the rigidity and fixity of Byzantine work, but the method is germane in the strictest sense to the result desired, and we should ask ourselves how far it is possible to represent such a serious and moving drama except by dealing with more or less unchangeable types. It could be no otherwise. This art was not a matter of taste, it was a growth of thought, cast into an historical mould. Again, the artists had an extraordinary power of concentrating and abstracting the great things of a story into a few elements or symbols. For example, the seven days of creation are each figured by some simple detail, such as a tree, or a flight of birds, or symbolically, as seven spirits; the flood by an ark on the waters. What the capabilities of such a method are, where invention is not allowed to wander into variety, but may only add intensity, may, for instance, be seen in representations of the Agony in the Garden. This subject is usually divided into three sections, each consecutive one showing, with the same general scene, greater darkness, an advance up the hill, and the figure of Christ more bowed. Another composition, the "Sleep (death) of the Virgin," is all sweetness and peace, but no less powerful. A remarkable invention is the etomasia, a splendid empty throne prepared for the Second Advent. The stories of the Old Testament are put into relation with the Gospel by way of type and anti-type. There are allegories: the anchorite life contrasted with the mad life of the world, the celestial ladder, &c., and fine impersonations, such as night and dawn, mercy and truth, cities and rivers, are frequently found, especially in MS. pictures.

A few general schemes may be briefly summarized. St Sophia has the Pantocrator in the middle of the dome, and four cherubim of colossal size at the four corners; on the walls below were angels, prophets, saints and doctors. On the circle of the apse was enthroned the Virgin. To the right and left, high above the altar, were two archangels holding banners inscribed "Holy, Holy, Holy." These last are also found at Nicaea, and at the monastery of St Luke. The church of the Holy Apostles had the Ascension in the central dome, and below, the Life of Christ. St Sophia, Salonica, also has the Ascension, a composition which is repeated on the central dome of St Mark's, Venice. In the eastern dome of the Venetian church is Christ surrounded by prophets, and, in the western dome, the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. A Pentecost similar to the last occupies the dome over the Bema of St Luke's monastery in Phocis; in the central dome of this church is the Pantocrator, while in a zone below stand, the Virgin to the east, St John Baptist to the west, and the four archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, to the north and south. A better example of grandeur of treatment can hardly be cited than the paintings of the now destroyed dome of the little church of Megale Panagia at Athens, a dome which was only about 12 ft. across. At the centre was Christ enthroned, next came a series of nine semicircles containing the orders of the angels, seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominations, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels and angels. Below these came a wide blue belt set with stars and the signs of the zodiac; to the east the sun, to the west the moon. Still below these were the winds, hail and snow; and still lower mountains and trees and the life on the earth, with all of which were interwoven passages from the last three Psalms, forming a Benedicite. After St Mark's, Venice, the completest existing scheme of mosaics is that of the church of St Luke; those of Daphne, Athens, are the most beautiful. A complete series of paintings exists in one of the monastic churches on Mount Athos. The Pantocrator is at the centre of the dome, then comes a zone with the Virgin, St John Baptist and the orders of the angels. Then the prophets between the windows of the dome and the four evangelists in the pendentives. On the rest of the vaults is the life of Christ, ending at the Bema with the Ascension; in the apse is the Virgin above, the Divine Liturgy lower, and the four doctors of the church below. All the walls are painted as well as the vaults. The mosaics overflowed from the interiors on to the external walls of buildings even in Roman days, and the same practice was continued on churches. The remains of an external mosaic of the 6th century exist on the west facade of the basilica at Parenzo. Christ is there seated amongst the seven candlesticks, and adored by saints. At the basilica at Bethlehem the gable end was appropriately covered with a mosaic of the Nativity, also a work of the age of Justinian. In Rome, St Peter's and other churches had mosaics on the facades; a tradition represented, in a small way, at San Miniato, Florence. At Constantinople, according to Clavigo, the Spanish ambassador who visited that city about 1400, the church of St Mary of the Fountain had its exterior richly worked in gold, azure and other colours; and it seems almost necessary to believe that the bare front of the narthex of St Sophia was intended to be decorated in a similar manner. In Damascus the courtyard of the Great Mosque seems to have been adorned with mosaics; photographs taken before the fire in 1893 show patches on the central gable in some of the spandrels of the side colonnade and on the walls of the isolated octagonal treasury. The mosaics here were of Byzantine workmanship, and their effect, used in such abundance, must have been of great splendour. In Jerusalem the mosque of Omar also had portions of the exterior covered with mosaics. We may imagine that such external decorations of the churches, where a few solemn figures told almost as shadows on the golden background brightly reflecting the sun, must have been even more glorious than the imagery of their interiors.

Painted books were hardly different in their style from the paintings on the walls. Of the MSS. the Cottonian Genesis, now only a collection of charred fragments, was an early example. The great Natural History of Dioscorides of Vienna (c. 500) and the Joshua Roll of the Vatican, which have both been lately published in perfect facsimile, are magnificent works. In the former the plants are drawn with an accuracy of observation which was to disappear for a thousand years. The latter shows a series of drawings delicately tinted in pinks and blues. Many of the compositions contain classical survivals, like personified rivers.

In some of the miniatures of the later school of the art the classical revival of the 10th century was especially marked. Still later others show a very definite Persian influence in their ornamentation, where intricate arabesques almost of the style of eastern rugs are found.

The Plastic Art.—If painting under the new conditions entered on a fresh course of power and conquest, if it set itself successfully to provide an imagery for new and intense thought, sculpture, on the other hand, seems to have withered away as it became removed from the classic stock. Already in the pre-Constantinian epoch of classical art sculpture had become strangely dry and powerless, and as time went on the traditions of modelling appear to have been forgotten. Two points of recent criticism may be mentioned here. It has been shown that the porphyry images of warriors at the southwest angle of St Mark's, Venice, are of Egyptian origin and are of late classical tradition. The celebrated bronze St Peter at Rome is now assigned to the 13th century. Not only did statue-making become nearly a lost art, but architectural carvings ceased to be seen as modelled form, and a new system of relief came into use. Ornament, instead of being gathered up into forcible projections relieved against retiring planes, and instead of having its surfaces modulated all over with delicate gradations of shade, was spread over a given space in an even fretwork. Such a highly developed member as the capital, for instance, was thought of first as a simple, solid form, usually more or less the shape of a bowl, and the carving was spread out over the general surface, the background being sunk into sharply defined spaces of shadow, all about the same size. Often the background was so deeply excavated that it ceased to be a plane supporting the relieved parts, but passed wholly into darkness. Strzygowski has given to this process the name of the "deep-dark" ground. A further step was to relieve the upper fretwork of carving from the ground altogether in certain places by cutting away the sustaining portions.

[v.04 p.0910] The simplicity, the definition and crisp sharpness of some of the results are entirely delightful. The bluntness and weariness of many of the later modelled Roman forms disappear in the new energy of workmanship which was engaged in exploring a fresh field of beauty. These brightly illuminated lattices of carved ornament seem to hold within them masses of cold shadow. Beautiful as was this method of architectural adornment, it must be allowed that it was, in essence, much more elementary than the school of modelled form. All such carvings were usually brightly coloured and gilt, and it seems probable that the whole was considered rather as a colour arrangement than as sculpture proper.

Plaster work, again, an art on which wonderful skill was lavished in Rome, became under the Byzantines extremely rude. Many good examples of this work exist at San Vitale and Sant' Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, also at Parenzo, and at St Sophia, Constantinople. Later examples of plaster work of Byzantine tradition are to be found at Cividale, and at Sant' Ambrogio, Milan, where the tympana of the well-known baldachin are of this material, and contain modelled figures.

Coins and medallions of even the best period of Byzantine art prove what a deep abyss separates them from the power over modelled relief shown in classical examples. The sculptural art is best displayed by ivory carvings, although this is more to be attributed to their pictorial quality than to a feeling for modelling.

Metal Work, Ivories and Textiles.—One of the greatest of Byzantine arts is the goldsmith's. This absorbed so much from Persian and Oriental schools as to become semi-barbaric. Under Justinian the transformation from Classical art was almost complete. Some few examples, like a silver dish from Cyprus in the British Museum, show refined restraint; on the other hand, the mosaic portraits of the emperor and Theodora show crowns and jewels of full Oriental style, and the description of the splendid fittings of St Sophia read like an eastern tale. Goldsmith's work was executed on such a scale for the great church as to form parts of the architecture of the interior. The altar was wholly of gold, and its ciborium and the iconastasis were of silver. In the later palace-church, built by Basil the Macedonian, the previous metals were used to such an extent that it is clear, from the description, that the interior was intended to be, as far as possible, like a great jewelled shrine. Gold and silver, we are told, were spread over all the church, not only in the mosaics, but in plating and other applications. The enclosure of the bema, with its columns and entablatures, was of silver gilt, and set with gems and pearls.

The most splendid existing example of goldsmith's work on a large scale is the Paid d'Oro of St Mark's, Venice; an assemblage of many panels on which saints and angels are enamelled. The monastic church of St Catherine, Sinai, is entered through a pair of enamelled doors, and several doors inlaid with silver still exist. In these doors the ground was of gilt-bronze; but there is also record of silver doors in the imperial palace at Constantinople. The inlaid doors of St Paul Outside the Walls at Rome were executed in Constantinople by Stauricios, in 1070, and have Greek inscriptions. There are others at Salerno (c. 1080), but the best known are those at St Mark's, Venice. In all these the imagery was delineated in silver on the gilt-bronze ground. The earliest works of this sort are still to be found in Constantinople. The panels of a door at St Sophia bear the monograms of Theophilus and Michael (840). Two other doors in the narthex of the same church, having simpler ornamentation of inlaid silver, are probably as early as the time of Justinian.

The process of enamelling dates from late classical times and Venturi supposes that it was invented in Alexandria. The cloisonne process, characteristic of Byzantine enamels, is thought by Kondakov to be derived from Persia, and to its study he has devoted a splendid volume. One of the finest examples of this cloisonne is the reliquary at Limburg on which the enthroned Christ appears between St Mary and St John in the midst of the twelve apostles. An inscription tells that it was executed for the emperors Constantine and Romanus (948-959).

A reliquary lately added to the J. Pierpont Morgan collection at South Kensington is of the greatest beauty in regard to the colour and clearness of the enamel. The cover, which is only about 41/2 by 3 ins., has in the centre a crucifixion with St Mary and St John to the right and left, while around are busts of the apostles. Christ is vested in a tunic. The ground colour is the green of emerald, the rest mostly blue and white. The cloisons are of gold. Two other Byzantine enamels are in the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum: one is a cross with the crucifixion on a background of the same emerald enamel; the other is a small head of St Paul of remarkably fine workmanship.

Ivory-working was another characteristic Byzantine art, although, like so many others it had its origin in antiquity. One of the earliest ivories of the Byzantine type is the diptych at Monza, showing a princess and a boy, supposed to be Galla Placidia and Valentinian III. This already shows the broad, flattened treatment which seems to mark the ivory work of the East. The majestic archangel of the British Museum, one of the largest panels known, is probably of the 5th century, and almost certainly, as Strzygowski has shown, of Syrian origin. Design and execution are equally fine. The drawing of the body, and the modelling of the drapery, are accomplished and classical. Only the full front pose, the balanced disposition of the large wings, and the intense outlook of the face, give it the Byzantine type.

Ivory, like gold-work and enamel, was pressed into the adornment of architectural works. The ambo erected by Justinian at St Sophia was in part covered by ivory panels set into the marble. The best existing specimen of this kind of work is the celebrated ivory throne at Ravenna. This masterpiece, which resembles a large, high-backed chair, is entirely covered with sculptured ivory, delicate carvings of scriptural subjects and ornament. It is of the 6th century and bears the monogram of Bishop Maximian. It is probably of Egyptian or Syrian origin.

So many fragments of ivories have been discovered in recent explorations in Egypt that it is most likely that Alexandria, a fit centre for receiving the material, was also its centre of distribution. The weaving of patterned silks was known in Europe in the classical age, and they reached great development in the Byzantine era. A fragment, long ago figured by Semper, showing a classical design of a nereid on a sea-horse, is so like the designs found on many ivories discovered in Egypt that we may probably assign it to Alexandria. Such fabrics going back to the 3rd century have been found in Egypt which must have been one of the chief centres for the production of silk as for linen textiles. The Victoria and Albert Museum is particularly rich in early silks. One fine example, having rose-coloured stripes and repeated figures of Samson and the lion, must be of the great period of the 6th century. The description of St Sophia written at that time tells of the altar curtains that they bore woven images of Christ, St Peter and St Paul standing under tabernacles upon a crimson ground, their garments being enriched with gold embroidery. Later the patterns became more barbaric and of great scale, lions trampled across the stuff, and in large circles were displayed eagles, griffins and the like in a fine heraldic style. From the origin of the raw material in China and India and the ease of transport, such figured stuffs gathered up and distributed patterns over both Europe and Asia. The Persian influence is marked. There is, for example, a pattern of a curious dragon having front feet and a peacock's tail. It appears on a silver Persian dish in the Hermitage Museum, it is found on the mixed Byzantine and Persian carvings of the palace of Mashita, and it occurs on several silks of which there are two varieties at the Victoria and Albert Museum, both of which are classed as Byzantine; it is difficult to say of many of these patterns whether they are Sassanian originals or Byzantine adaptations from them.

AUTHORITIES.—A very complete bibliography is given by H. Leclercq, Manuel d'archeologie chretienne (Paris, 1907). The current authorities for all that concerns Byzantine history or art [v.04 p.0911] are:—Byzantinische Zeitschrift ... (Leipzig, 1892 seq.); Oriens Christianus (Rome, 1900 seq.). See also Dom R.P. Cabrol, Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne, &c. (Paris, 1902 seq.). The best general introduction is:—C. Bayet, L'Art byzantin (Paris, 1883, new edition, 1904). See J. Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom (Leipzig, 1901) and other works; Kondakov, Les Emaux byz. (1892), and other works; C. Diehl, Justinien et la civilis. byz. (Paris, 1901), and other works; G. Millet, Le Monastere de Daphne, &c. (Paris, 1899), and other works; L.G. Schlumberger, L'Epopee byz. &c. (1896 seq.); A. Michel, Histoire de l'art, vol. i. (Paris, 1905); H. Brockhaus, Die Kunst in den Athos-Klostern (Leipzig, 1891); E. Molinier, Histoire generale des arts, &c. i., Ivoires (Paris, 1896); O. Dalton, Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities...of the British Museum (1901); A. van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople (1899); Salzenberg, Altchristliche Baudenkmaler &c. (Berlin, 1854); A. Choisy, L'Art de batir chez les Byzantins (Paris, 1875); Couchand, Eglises byzantines en Grece; Ongania, Basilica di S. Marco; Texier and Pullan, L'Architecture b. 73 (1864); Lethaby and Swainson, Sancta Sophia, Constantinople (1894); Schultz and Barnsley, The Monastery of St Luke, &c. (1890); L. de Beylie, L'Habitation byz. (Paris, 1903). For Syria: M. de Voguee, L'Architecture...dans la Syrie centrale (Paris, 1866-1877); H.C. Butler, Architecture and other Arts, &c. (New York, 1904). For Egypt: W.E. Crum, Coptic Monuments (Cairo, 1902); A. Gayet, L'Art Copte (Paris, 1902); A.J. Butler, Ancient Coptic Churches. For North Africa: S. Csell, Les Monuments antiques de l'Algerie (Paris, 1901). For Italy: A. Venturi, Storia dell' arte Italiana (Milan, 1901); G. Rivoira, Le Origini della architettura Lombarda (Rome, 1901); C. Errard and A. Gayet, L'Art byzantin, &c. (Paris,1903).

(W. R. L.)

[1] For Byzantine literature see GREEK LITERATURE: Byzantine.

BYZANTIUM, an ancient Greek city on the shores of the Bosporus, occupying the most easterly of the seven hills on which modern Constantinople stands. It was said to have been founded by Megarians and Argives under Byzas about 657 B.C., but the original settlement having been destroyed in the reign of Darius Hystaspes by the satrap Otanes, it was recolonized by the Spartan Pausanias, who wrested it from the Medes after the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.)—a circumstance which led several ancient chroniclers to ascribe its foundation to him. Its situation, said to have been fixed by the Delphic oracle, was remarkable for beauty and security. It had complete control over the Euxine grain-trade; the absence of tides and the depth of its harbour rendered its quays accessible to vessels of large burden; while the tunny and other fisheries were so lucrative that the curved inlet near which it stood became known as the Golden Horn. The greatest hindrance to its prosperity was the miscellaneous character of the population, partly Lacedaemonian and partly Athenian, who flocked to it under Pausanias. It was thus a subject of dispute between these states, and was alternately in the possession of each, till it fell into the hands of the Macedonians. From the same cause arose the violent intestine contests which ended in the establishment of a rude and turbulent democracy. About seven years after its second colonization, the Athenian Cimon wrested it from the Lacedaemonians; but in 440 B.C. it returned to its former allegiance. Alcibiades, after a severe blockade (408 B.C.), gained possession of the city through the treachery of the Athenian party; in 405 B.C. it was retaken by Lysander and placed under a Spartan harmost. It was under the Lacedaemonian power when the Ten Thousand, exasperated by the conduct of the governor, made themselves masters of the city, and would have pillaged it had they not been dissuaded by the eloquence of Xenophon. In 390 B.C. Thrasybulus, with the assistance of Heracleides and Archebius, expelled the Lacedaemonian oligarchy, and restored democracy and the Athenian influence.

After having withstood an attempt under Epaminondas to restore it to the Lacedaemonians, Byzantium joined with Rhodes, Chios, Cos, and Mausolus, King of Caria, in throwing off the yoke of Athens, but soon after sought Athenian assistance when Philip of Macedon, having overrun Thrace, advanced against it. The Athenians under Chares suffered a severe defeat from Amyntas, the Macedonian admiral, but in the following year gained a decisive victory under Phocion and compelled Philip to raise the siege. The deliverance of the besieged from a surprise, by means of a flash of light which revealed the advancing masses of the Macedonian army, has rendered this siege memorable. As a memorial of the miraculous interference, the Byzantines erected an altar to Torch-bearing Hecate, and stamped a crescent on their coins, a device which is retained by the Turks to this day. They also granted the Athenians extraordinary privileges, and erected a monument in honour of the event in a public part of the city.

During the reign of Alexander Byzantium was compelled to acknowledge the Macedonian supremacy; after the decay of the Macedonian power it regained its independence, but suffered from the repeated incursions of the Scythians. The losses which they sustained by land roused the Byzantines to indemnify themselves on the vessels which still crowded the harbour, and the merchantmen which cleared the straits; but this had the effect of provoking a war with the neighbouring naval powers. The exchequer being drained by the payment of 10,000 pieces of gold to buy off the Gauls who had invaded their territories about 279 B.C., and by the imposition of an annual tribute which was ultimately raised to 80 talents, they were compelled to exact a toll on all the ships which passed the Bosporus—a measure which the Rhodians resented and avenged by a war, wherein the Byzantines were defeated. After the retreat of the Gauls Byzantium rendered considerable services to Rome in the contests with Philip II., Antiochus and Mithradates.

During the first years of its alliance with Rome it held the rank of a free confederate city; but, having sought arbitration on some of its domestic disputes, it was subjected to the imperial jurisdiction, and gradually stripped of its privileges, until reduced to the status of an ordinary Roman colony. In recollection of its former services, the emperor Claudius remitted the heavy tribute which had been imposed on it; but the last remnant of its independence was taken away by Vespasian, who, in answer to a remonstrance from Apollonius of Tyana, taunted the inhabitants with having "forgotten to be free." During the civil wars it espoused the party of Pescennius Niger; and though skilfully defended by the engineer Periscus, it was besieged and taken (A.D. 196) by Severus, who destroyed the city, demolished the famous wall, which was built of massive stones so closely riveted together as to appear one block, put the principal inhabitants to the sword and subjected the remainder to the Perinthians. This overthrow of Byzantium was a great loss to the empire, since it might have served as a protection against the Goths, who afterwards sailed past it into the Mediterranean. Severus afterwards relented, and, rebuilding a large portion of the town, gave it the name of Augusta Antonina. He ornamented the city with baths, and surrounded the hippodrome with porticos; but it was not till the time of Caracalla that it was restored to its former political privileges. It had scarcely begun to recover its former position when, through the capricious resentment of Gallienus, the inhabitants were once more put to the sword and the town was pillaged. From this disaster the inhabitants recovered so far as to be able to give an effectual check to an invasion of the Goths in the reign of Claudius II., and the fortifications were greatly strengthened during the civil wars which followed the abdication of Diocletian. Licinius, after his defeat before Adrianople, retired to Byzantium, where he was besieged by Constantine, and compelled to surrender (A.D. 323-324). To check the inroads of the barbarians on the north of the Black Sea, Diocletian had resolved to transfer his capital to Nicomedia; but Constantine, struck with the advantages which the situation of Byzantium presented, resolved to build a new city there on the site of the old and transfer the seat of government to it. The new capital was inaugurated with special ceremonies, A.D. 330. (See CONSTANTINOPLE.)

The ancient historians invariably note the profligacy of the inhabitants of Byzantium. They are described as an idle, depraved people, spending their time for the most part in loitering about the harbour, or carousing over the fine wine of Maronea. In war they trembled at the sound of a trumpet, in peace they quaked before the shouting of their own demagogues; and during the assault of Philip II. they could only be prevailed on to man the walls by the savour of extempore cook-shops distributed along the ramparts. The modern Greeks attribute the introduction of Christianity into Byzantium to St Andrew; it certainly had some hold there in the time of Severus.

[v.04 p.0912] C The third letter in the Latin alphabet and its descendants corresponds in position and in origin to the Greek Gamma ([Gamma], [gamma]), which in its turn is borrowed from the third symbol of the Phoenician alphabet (Heb. Gimel). The earliest Semitic records give its form as or more frequently or The form is found in the earliest inscriptions of Crete, Attica, Naxos and some other of the Ionic islands. In Argolis and Euboea especially a form with legs of unequal length is found From this it is easy to pass to the most widely spread Greek form, the ordinary In Corinth, however, and its colony Corcyra, in Ozolian Locris and Elis, a form inclined at a different angle is found. From this form the transition is simple to the rounded which is generally found in the same localities as the pointed form, but is more widely spread, occurring in Arcadia and on Chalcidian vases of the 6th century B.C., in Rhodes and Megara with their colonies in Sicily. In all these cases the sound represented was a hard G (as in gig). The rounded form was probably that taken over by the Romans and with the value of G. This is shown by the permanent abbreviation of the proper names Gaius and Gnaeus by C. and Cn. respectively. On the early inscription discovered in the Roman Forum in 1899 the letter occurs but once, in the form written from right to left. The broad lower end of the symbol is rather an accidental pit in the stone than an attempt at a diacritic mark—the word is regei, in all probability the early dative form of rex, "king." It is hard to decide why Latin adopted the g-symbol with the value of k, a letter which it possessed originally but dropped, except in such stereotyped abbreviations as K. for the proper name Kaeso and Kal. for Calendae. There are at least two possibilities: (1) that in Latium g and k were pronounced almost identically, as, e.g., in the German of Wuerttemberg or in the Celtic dialects, the difference consisting only in the greater energy with which the k-sound is produced; (2) that the confusion is graphic, K being sometimes written which was then regarded as two separate symbols. A further peculiarity of the use of C in Latin is in the abbreviation for the district Subura in Roma and its adjective Suburanus, which appears as SVC. Here C no doubt represents G, but there is no interchange between g and b in Latin. In other dialects of Italy b is found representing an original voiced guttural (gw), which, however, is regularly replaced by v in Latin. As the district was full of traders, Subura may very well be an imported word, but the form with C must either go back to a period before the disappearance of g before v or must come from some other Italic dialect. The symbol G was a new coinage in the 3rd century B.C. The pronunciation of C throughout the period of classical Latin was that of an unvoiced guttural stop (k). In other dialects, however, it had been palatalized to a sibilant before i-sounds some time before the Christian era; e.g. in the Umbrian facia = Latin facial. In Latin there is no evidence for the interchange of c with a sibilant earlier than the 6th century A.D. in south Italy and the 7th century A.D. in Gaul (Lindsay, Latin Language, p. 88). This change has, however, taken place in all Romance languages except Sardinian. In Anglo-Saxon c was adopted to represent the hard stop. After the Norman conquest many English words were re-spelt under Norman influence. Thus Norman-French spelt its palatalized c-sound (=tsh) with ch as in cher and the English palatalized cild, &c. became child, &c. In Provencal from the 10th century, and in the northern dialects of France from the 13th century, this palatalized c (in different districts ts and tsh) became a simple s. English also adopted the value of s for c in the 13th century before e, i and y. In some foreign words like cicala the ch- (tsh) value is given to c. In the transliteration of foreign languages also it receives different values, having that of tsh in the transliteration of Sanskrit and of ts in various Slavonic dialects.

As a numeral C denotes 100. This use is borrowed from Latin, in which the symbol was originally This, like the numeral symbols later identified with L and M, was thus utilized since it was not required as a letter, there being no sound in Latin corresponding to the Greek [theta]. Popular etymology identified the symbol with the initial letter of centum, "hundred."

(P. GI.)

CAB (shortened about 1825 from the Fr. cabriolet, derived from cabriole, implying a bounding motion), a form of horsed vehicle for passengers either with two ("hansom") or four wheels ("four-wheeler" or "growler"), introduced into London as the cabriolet de place, from Paris in 1820 (see CARRIAGE). Other vehicles plying for hire and driven by mechanical means are included in the definition of the word "cab" in the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act 1007. The term "cab" is also applied to the driver's or stoker's shelter on a locomotive-engine.

Cabs, or hackney carriages, as they are called in English acts of parliament, are regulated in the United Kingdom by a variety of statutes. In London the principal acts are the Hackney Carriage Acts of 1831-1853, the Metropolitan Public Carriages Act 1869, the London Cab Act 1896 and the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act 1907. In other large British towns cabs are usually regulated by private acts which incorporate the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, an act which contains provisions more or less similar to the London acts. The act of 1869 defined a hackney carriage as any carriage for the conveyance of passengers which plies for hire within the metropolitan police district and is not a stage coach, i.e. a conveyance in which the passengers are charged separate and distinct fares for their seats. Every cab must be licensed by a licence renewable every year by the home secretary, the licence being issued by the commissioner of police. Every cab before being licensed must be inspected at the police station of the district by the inspector of public carriages, and certified by him to be in a fit condition for public use. The licence costs L2. The number of persons which the cab is licensed to carry must be painted at the back on the outside. It must carry a lighted lamp during the period between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise. The cab must be under the charge of a driver having a licence from the home secretary. A driver before obtaining a licence, which costs five shillings per annum, must pass an examination as to his ability to drive and as to his knowledge of the topography of London.

General regulations with regard to fares and hiring may be made from time to time by the home secretary under the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act 1907. The hiring is by distance or by time as the hirer may decide at the beginning of the hiring; if not otherwise expressed the fare is paid according to distance. If a driver is hired by distance he is not compelled to drive more than six miles, and if hired by time he is not compelled to drive for more than one hour. When a cab is hired in London by distance, and discharged within a circle the radius of which is four miles (the centre being taken at Charing Cross), the fare is one shilling for any distance not exceeding two miles, and sixpence for every additional mile or part of a mile. Outside the circle the fare for each mile, or part of a mile, is one shilling. When a cab is hired by time, the fare (inside or outside the circle) is two shillings and sixpence for the first hour, and eightpence for every quarter of an hour afterwards. Extra payment has to be made for luggage (twopence per piece outside), for extra passengers (sixpence each for more than two), and for waiting (eightpence each completed quarter of an hour). If a horse cab is fitted with a taximeter (vide infra) the fare for a journey wholly within or partly without and partly within the four-mile radius, and not exceeding one mile or a period of ten minutes, is sixpence. For each half mile or six minutes an additional threepence is paid. If the journey is wholly without the four-mile radius the fare for the first mile is one shilling, and for each additional quarter of a mile or period of three minutes, threepence is paid. If the cab is one propelled by mechanical means the fare for a journey not [v.04 p.0913] exceeding one mile or a period of ten minutes is eightpence, and for every additional quarter mile or period of 21/2 minutes twopence is paid. A driver required to wait may demand a reasonable sum as a deposit and also payment of the sum which he has already earned. The London Cab Act 1896 (by which for the first time legal sanction was given to the word "cab") made an important change in the law in the interest of cab drivers. It renders liable to a penalty on summary conviction any person who (a) hires a cab knowing or having reason to believe that he cannot pay the lawful fare, or with intent to avoid payment; (b) fraudulently endeavours to avoid payment; (c) refuses to pay or refuses to give his address, or gives a false address with intent to deceive. The offences mentioned (generally known as "bilking") may be punished by imprisonment without the option of a fine, and the whole or any part of the fine imposed may be applied in compensation to the driver.

Strictly speaking, it is an offence for a cab to ply for hire when not waiting on an authorized "standing," but cabs passing in the street for this purpose are not deemed to be "plying for hire." These stands for cabs are appointed by the commissioner of police or the home secretary. "Privileged cabs" is the designation given to those cabs which by virtue of a contract between a railway company and a number of cab-owners are alone admitted to ply for hire within a company's station, until they are all engaged, on condition (1) of paying a certain weekly or annual sum, and (2) of guaranteeing to have cabs in attendance at all hours. This system was abolished by the act of 1907, but the home secretary was empowered to suspend or modify the abolition if it should interfere with the proper accommodation of the public.

At one time there was much discussion in England as to the desirability of legalizing on cabs the use of a mechanical fare-recorder such as, under the name of taximeter or taxameter, is in general use on the continent of Europe. It is now universal on hackney carriages propelled by mechanical means, and it has also extended largely to those drawn by animal power. A taximeter consists of a securely closed and sealed metal box containing a mechanism actuated by a flexible shaft connected with the wheel of the vehicle, in the same manner as the speedometer on a motor car. It has, within plain view of the passenger, a number of apertures in which appear figures showing the amount payable at any time. A small lever, with a metal flag, bearing the words "for hire" stands upright upon it when the cab is disengaged. As soon as a passenger enters the cab the lever is depressed by the driver and the recording mechanism starts. At the end of the journey the figures upon the dials show exactly the sum payable for hire; this sum is based on a combination of time and distance.

CABAL (through the Fr. cabale from the Cabbala or Kabbalah, the theosophical interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures), a private organization or party engaged in secret intrigues, and applied also to the intrigues themselves. The word came into common usage in English during the reign of Charles II. to describe the committee of the privy council known as the "Committee for Foreign Affairs," which developed into the cabinet. The invidious meaning attached to the term was stereotyped by the coincidence that the initial letters of the names of the five ministers, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale, who signed the treaty of alliance with France in 1673, spelled cabal.

CABALLERO, FERNAN (1796-1877), the pseudonym adopted from the name of a village in the province of Ciudad Real by the Spanish novelist Cecilia Francisca Josefa Boehl de Faber y Larrea. Born at Morges in Switzerland on the 24th of December 1796, she was the daughter of Johan Nikolas Boehl von Faber, a Hamburg merchant, who lived long in Spain, married a native of Cadiz, and is creditably known to students of Spanish literature as the editor of the Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas (1821-1825), and the Teatro espanol anterior a Lope de Vega (1832). Educated principally at Hamburg, she visited Spain in 1815, and, unfortunately for herself, in 1816 married Antonio Planells y Bardaxi, an infantry captain of bad character. In the following year Planells was killed in action, and in 1822 the young widow married Francisco Ruiz del Arco, marques de Arco Hermoso, an officer in one of the Spanish household regiments. Upon the death of Arco Hermoso in 1835, the marquesa found herself in straitened circumstances, and in less than two years she married Antonio Arron de Ayala, a man considerably her junior. Arron was appointed consul in Australia, engaged in business enterprises and made money; but unfortunate speculations drove him to commit suicide in 1859. Ten years earlier the name of Fernan Caballero became famous in Spain as the author of La Gaviola. The writer had already published in German an anonymous romance, Sola (1840), and curiously enough the original draft of La Gaviota was written in French. This novel, translated into Spanish by Jose Joaquin de Mora, appeared as the feuilleton of El Heraldo (1849), and was received with marked favour. Ochoa, a prominent critic of the day, ratified the popular judgment, and hopefully proclaimed the writer to be a rival of Scott. No other Spanish book of the 19th century has obtained such instant and universal recognition. It was translated into most European languages, and, though it scarcely seems to deserve the intense enthusiasm which it excited, it is the best of its author's works, with the possible exception of La Familia de Alvareda (which was written, first of all, in German). Less successful attempts are Lady Virginia and Clemencia; but the short stories entitled Cuadros de Costumbres are interesting in matter and form, and Una en otra and Elia o la Espana treinta anos ha are excellent specimens of picturesque narration. It would be difficult to maintain that Fernan Caballero was a great literary artist, but it is certain that she was a born teller of stories and that she has a graceful style very suitable to her purpose. She came into Spain at a most happy moment, before the new order had perceptibly disturbed the old, and she brought to bear not alone a fine natural gift of observation, but a freshness of vision, undulled by long familiarity. She combined the advantages of being both a foreigner and a native. In later publications she insisted too emphatically upon the moral lesson, and lost much of her primitive simplicity and charm; but we may believe her statement that, though she occasionally idealized circumstances, she was conscientious in choosing for her themes subjects which had occurred in her own experience. Hence she may be regarded as a pioneer in the realistic field, and this historical fact adds to her positive importance. For many years she was the most popular of Spanish writers, and the sensation caused by her death at Seville on the 7th of April 1877 proved that her naive truthfulness still attracted readers who were interested in records of national customs and manners.