Justinian's activity extended throughout all parts of his wide empire; Procopins has filled an entire book with descriptions of the emperor's buildings. He sought also to extend the limits of the empire. Italy, the mother-land of Roman authority, must no longer remain in the hands of the barbarians, but the Eastern Empire through its addition must again become the Roman Empire. Although a certain part of Italy was con quered, since Ravenna, the capital of the Ostrogoth Kingdom, fell into the hands of the Eastern Romans and became the seat of the exarchs, the representatives of the Emperor, yet the Lombards resisted the power of the Greeks until the eighth century. To the sixth century belongs the Basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura at Rome, as well as the Cathedral of Parenzo in Istria, which is also a basilica with a fore-court and baptistery.
In Syria a series of columned and pillared basilicas of the sixth century is preserved, the character of which is apparent from Figures (67. 13). The most important are those of Kherbet-Hass, El-Barah, Deir-Seta, Tonrmanin, Baquoza, Belli°, and Onalb-Lonzelt; the latest of these build ings bears the date 565. Soon after this the population abandoned the land before the onslaught of Islam, and very recently those ancient struc tures have been discovered almost intact.
If we cast a glance at the ornamentation of this period, which as Christian-Roman we may contrast with the earlier Pagan-Roman, we shall see still more that decadence of the sense of form which we have noted in the works of the Diocletian period (p. 91). At the same time, a multitude of new forms and motifs springs up; the capitals of the columns in particular acquire manifold variety (p. 13, figs. 5, 6;
pl. 14, figs. In general, we can say that the Greeks still remained the proper possessors of architectonic sculpture, and that wherever they worked the form-sense did not diminish; that though the ancient repose and regularity which were breathed by the conventional decorations created eight hundred years earlier had given place to florid fancy, still a certain nobility and a fine energy of outline were not lacking (pl. fig. 7). Where other. influences were as powerful as the Grecian, where the descendants of a generation which had only lately received its culture were active, there, certainly, the ornamental detail was often dry, rough, and crude.
The more the Germanic races fortify themselves in Italy during the seventh and eighth centuries, the more degraded becomes the once classical culture of the country. Ruins multiply; whatever is newly fashioned stands, both in an artistic and in a technical sense, far beneath the works of the earlier centuries, the mighty ruins of which are made to serve for the erection and adornment of new structures. Rome pre serves from the seventh and eighth centuries the basilicas of Sta. Agnese, S. Giorgio a Porta Latina, and Sta. Maria in Cosmcdin; at Torcello, near Venice, stands the cathedral, erected in the seventh century, a basilica with eighteen columns of Proconnessian marble; and the Old Cathedral of Brescia, a circular structure of nearly 12 metres (39 feet) diameter, of sufficiently crude execution, is of the same period. The ornate Church of Sta. Fosca, ou the island of Torcello (pt. 15, fi:;. Jo), may be somewhat later.