CHAPTER XXVIII

ACCOUNT OF MAMMIANUS AND HIS STRUCTURES

JOHN the rhetorician writes, that in the time of Zeno, Mammianus from an artizan became a person of note and a member of the senate; and that he built in the suburb of Daphne what is called the Antiphorus, on a site previously planted with vines and suitable for cultivation, directly opposite the public baths; where there is also the brazen statue inscribed, “Mammianus the friend of the city.” He also states that he built within the city, two basilicas, singularly beautiful in their design, and embellished with brilliant stone-work; and that, as an intervening structure to the two, he raised a Tetrapylum, exquisitely finished both in its columns and its brazen work. The basilicas I have identified, retaining, together with their name, some trace of their former beauty, in the stones from Proconnesus, which form the pavement, but nothing remarkable in their architecture: for, in consequence of the calamities which had befallen them, they had lately been rebuilt, without receiving any thing in the way of ornament. Of the Tetrapylum I was not able to detect the slightest vestige.