the main be chosen from among works produced after the middle of
the sixth century towards the very end of Justinian's reign rather
than from its outset.

The rise of Constantinople did not at first imply any very serious
decline in the importance of the other great cities of the Near East,
of which Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria were the most
important. The prelates of these places, indeed, disputed the sup-
remacy of Constantinople in religious affairs and each remained the
centre of a way of thought that was distinct from that of the direct
line of Orthodoxy that pertained at the capital; each exercised quite
an important influence on the political affairs of the Empire; in each
there developed a trend in art which was different from that which
characterized Constantinople. Indeed the new capital had quite a lot
to learn from both these cities, for they boasted a long history and
were important when the old Byzantium that was to be renamed
Constantinople was no more than a minor provincial town, and they
looked with some mistrust on Byzantium's rise when it was selected
by Constantine for the site of his new capital. The rôle of both
Antioch and Alexandria was in fact considerable; it might well have
been longer lived had not the whole area comprising North Africa
and the eastern fringe of the Mediterranean as far north as the
mountains that separate what is today upland Turkey from the low-
lands of Syria and Iraq fallen to Islam shortly before the middle of
the seventh century.

We know little of the architecture of Alexandria around the time
of Justinian, for no buildings of the time survive as complete
structures. The churches must however have been fine; the larger
ones were apparently basilicas with timber roofs, though the
systems of vaulted and domical construction were known, and in the
shrine of St Maenas near Alexandria ( Ill. 1 ), both pendentives and
squinches were used in the sixth century, though as far as we know
only on a small scale. By the seventh century vaulting of quite
extensive proportions had become normal, and pointed domes of
large size were being used for the churches of Egypt. But the build-
ing material that became normal after the mid-sixth century, mud
brick, did not lend itself to great elegance or finesse of design or

-11-