拜占庭-失落的帝国

拜占庭-失落的帝国 (一) “The eye of all the world”， the ancients called it, the heart of a lost empire that had lasted for a thousand years and more. Saint Sophia, the church of the divine wisdom, this was their crowning glory---the glory of Byzantium. The vanished empire of Byzantium born of pagan Rome. Byzantium, the dream of a Christian Roman empire that stretched from Spain to Syria. Byzantium, whose influence ran from Northern Russia down to Nubia upon the upper Nile. Byzantium, gateway to a lost chapter of our past. The Orient Express, I first traveled this line in the 60s. I bought a ticket at Waterloo station in London for a ride to Istanbul in Turkey in a life-long fascination. It took three days to get there with hell on wheels really, goats in the corridor and communism out of the window. Then all of a sudden the trains run around a bend and bang, the orient hit me in the face, the great golden city by the sea set between the east and west, you could see it had been the center of the world. It was astonishing. I come to Istanbul, and underneath, the magic ruins of the lost empire of Byzantium. The Orient Express stopped here in the heart of the old city. I got off it in clouds of smoke and steam, haunted by the ghost of Greta Garbo and Agatha Christie by a thousand spies and archaeologists, by the kings and courtesans, the prewar Europe. 【Saint Sophia】圣索非亚大教堂 建于东罗马皇帝Justinian统治时期(公元532年—— 公 元537年)，当时拜占庭帝国正处于鼎盛阶段。作为世界上十大令人向往的教堂之一—圣索 非亚大教堂与蓝色清真寺隔街相望 【Nubia】努比亚(非洲东北部一地区,历史上曾为一古国) 注:作者坐的是大名鼎鼎的“东方快车”号 Greta Garbo 30年代的电影巨星葛丽泰?嘉宝 她演过《茶花女》，所以才有后面的 courtesans Agatha Christie 阿嘉莎(克莉丝蒂(1890-1976)英格兰侦探小说家，她是东方快车谋杀案 小说的作者 (二) Istanbul, one of the very greatest of Islamic cities, the monuments of the conquering Turkish Sultans who’d ruled here since 1453, dominating its skyline. Underneath there are much older ghosts, brushed each day by people of the living city, the ruins of Constantinople, the capital city of the empire of Byzantium. Istanbul, Constantinople, two names, new and old, for the same grand city. Sixteen centuries ago, in the year of 330, the Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor chose the city, then a small Greek town, to be his capital. No one quite knows why. One thing sure though, the great warrior emperors had left Rome and cities of the west for ever. This mosque, the mosque of the Turkish Sultan who conquered the city, is built straight on the foundations in the most ancient burial church of the mysterious emperors of old Byzantium. What then was this most ancient half-forgotten empire—— the Empire of Byzantium? Byzantium! That magic, spicy word! Now, imagine that the empires of Greece and Rome had never died, but had been fused together in a single empire set between East and West. And imagine that the emperors of this kingdom, the sacred emperors could be torn into pieces by the mobs in the street, emperors who could mutilate their courtiers and children, could kill their priests and blind whole armies of invaders, yet emperors whose artists made some of the most finest, the most exquisite images the world has ever seen——visions of heaven and earth, sublime architectures, copied by everybody from the caliphs of Bagdad to the Popes of Rome, the Kings of Germany and the tribes of Nubia, visions of heaven’s order and earthly power, that still lie deep within the modern world. Just as this mosque, the conquerors’ mosque, stands on the ruins of Byzantium, so do you! This is where the Empire of Byzantium began, beside this ancient column here on main street. (三) A lonely ancient relic in a modern city. In the year of our Lord 330, on a lovely May morning, A great procession came down this road which’s the highway of an ancient city called Byzantium, and the procession was led by the great Roman Emperor Constantine. He brought with him a bunch of priests, pagan and Christian ones, and they were all holding an incredible collection of relics. There were twelve baskets filled with crumbs, the residue, it was said: “of our Lord’s miracle of the loves and fishes". There was the very axe that now we've made the art with. There was a statue that the emperor himself had brought secretly from Rome, a statue of the Greek God Palace. And at the exact moment prescribed by astrologists, they buried their relics, just over there, at the foot of the column, seven drums of pottery, brought from the Egyptian deserts, and Constantine renamed the city Constantinople, and claimed it as the capital of his grand new empire. And over the years, the column itself became to be seen as a relic, the Byzantines, that’s the people who lived in the city, called it Christ’s Nail, because the thought the great golden statue of Constantine upon the top had something of one of the nails in Christ Crucifixion built into it. And every year on the New Year’s Day, that’s the first of September, the Byzantines turned up at the bottom of this column, and sang him as the saint Constantine, the founder of their city and the mighty empire called Byzantium. Constantinople was designed to be the center of the Christian world, the center of Christ’s government on Earth. These great cups were made to hold the mystery of Christ’s blood inside the city’s churches, church’s glowing with Roman gold and ancient holy images. Images that for a thousand years flooded right though Europe and the East. This saint is Byzantium’s first story, the story of how in two short centuries a dream was made. The dream that was Byzantium. Constantine, the Christian emperor, the man who took the faith of Jesus and the God of Abraham, and created the beginning of the governments and churches in which the West still trusts. He was crowned they say at York in England in 306. For 40 years he’d killed foes and family alike and when he died, people were so frightened of him that no one touched his body for a week. (四) This was the extent of Constantine’s ambition, the late Roman Empire, with Constantinople, not Rome, as its capital, and in the far north, in Germany, the city of Trier, a great imperial garrison. It still shows something of what ancient Constantinople used to look like. The city gate, still guarding the main road into town, a great grim gate. Like the rest of the northern frontier, Trier was continuously threatened by Huns and Goths and Vandals and a dozen other warrior nations. Constantine the Great, the emperor himself would have walked down the same passage 1,600 years ago. These vaults and arches are the architecture of his time. Once you’re through the gate, most Roman towns are almost the same, they were if you like, a sort of an abstract idea of a city, and they were stamped on every landscape from Yorkshire to Syria. You can still sense their design in a thousand old world cities, and in the new world too. From Washington to San Francisco, planners still use parts of the same old patterns. All Roman towns had roads like this one, wide thoroughfares that took you from the country to the heart of the city. This one is at Palmyra, in the Syrian Desert. In Constantinople it was called, quite simply, the Main Road. "Now what you gotta see, is that behind all these columns, there were little rows of shops running down the sides of the street, butchers, bakers, candle-maker(s), all sorts of people. In Constantinople, it would have the goods of the known world, Africa, China, the boutique, everything was for sale. Just imagine, the emperor, is coming in in triumph, he’s won a war, he’s coming through the gate. The shopkeepers have been told to dust down the street, flowers have been strewed all over the pavement, roses are raining down upon him, there are rugs and silks flattering in the breezes all around him, the whole town has been sucked out to come and see him. Behind the course, behind the main street, full of town houses, servants, soldiers, all the people, there were taverns, brothels, everything in the city, in among stoas, started in among stoas with those huge buildings that Constantine had to build, before his city could really be called a Roman metropolis. (五) It’s only a little building, but it was actually the heart of ancient Palmyra. It’s the senate, the Oval Office where government was conducted, where the town elders met, where plots were hatched, all that sort of thing. Of course, in Constantine's great imperial cities, this would have been a vast long hall. And quite often in the central hall of government, Great Constantine himself would have sat where now the altars of Christian churches stand, because this is basically the same building. In the year 360, Constantine's son built a magnificent church in Constantinople, specially for the drama of Imperial Communion. Next-door, those same pious emperors built a giant racetrack, a hippodrome. You can still see part of its outline in streets. And here at last, around this old Egyptian obelisk, you can discover something of an atmosphere of ancient Constantinople, the heart of old Byzantium. This stone is like a giant mirror, reflecting all the life that once went on around it. There’s the emperor and his family, Constantine’s successors come to the royal box to start a chariot race. There’s the obelisk in the middle of the racetrack and the chariots too, eight of them running all at once. You need a lot of luck to win. This place wasn’t just a racetrack though. This is a place where people met their emperor and his court. It’s the air, the space of Byzantium, a hundred thousand people roaring, new emperors are presented to them, as captives of foreign wars are brought and thrown at the feet of the emperor. The old Parliament, it’s the real heart of Byzantium and that scene there maybe you've seen it before. Look at it carefully, the emperor's in the middle with his family, just like God. Around them stand the army and the court, just like the saints. Beneath them, begging mercy are Byzantium’s enemies, the damned. It’s a grand last judgment right here on earth with the emperor playing God. So that’s it, really. The emperor brings happiness and harmony, the theater brings luck and victory .This is the center of the world, an image, you might say, of heaven on earth. So if we’d pushed open the gates of the imperial palace, the one stood beside the hippodrome, we’d have really been opening the earthly gates of paradise. Arcades of gold and marble, silver boats on pools of mercury, silk carpets, golden thrones in halls of porphyry bowls, all have gone, only echoes of them still remain in Syria and Italy. (六) Once though, Constantinople held the palace of all palaces, the palace of the Christian empire. Church, hippodrome and palace, Constantine had made a sacred engine that would power Byzantium for ever. To protect the holy city of Constantinople, the emperors of Byzantium built the largest city walls in all the world. Armies that controlled the lives of millions rode from these gates, and through them passed the producer of an empire. “The whole history of this city is in this gate, the great golden gate of Imperial Byzantium. You see that great high span at the top. That was once open to the skies. For 600 years emperors and armies rode through that gate in triumph, coming back from wars against the Persians, the Arabs, the Bulgarians, the Russians. Then there was an earthquake, the gate was blocked, and that final gate at the bottom, that even a cavalryman couldn’t come through on a horse, that gate was built in the final years of Byzantium. So this is a magic gate, it’s a gate of legends; they say its wooden doors were covered with sheets of gold to give the gate its name. They say that the very last emperor killed fighting on these walls is buried beneath these stones, waiting for a call to take the city once again. So it’s a gate of legend, but above all it speaks of imperial Byzantine power. “Power has controlled innumerable lives. You know there are thousands of blocks in this gate, and each one of them, each tiny mark upon them, made by an individual human hand, endless lives absorbed in making millions of these blocks, enough to build the whole city of Constantinople. Now this snowy marble, strange grey lines running through, is found all over the Byzantium Empire, from Spain, to Syria and back to Constantinople. But it comes from one island only, one tiny island in the sea. (七) Southwest of Istanbul, three days’ sailing on an ancient slave ship, is the Isle of Marmara, its very name in stone. In the first centuries of Byzantium, slaves in their tens of thousands worked in these marble hills. How the Byzantines love marble! In marbles, says a priest, God trapped fields of flowers and mountain forests, and fish and fruit, and melting snows. The ancient blocks still strew across the kies, hint at the frantic energy that was once used to move their precious stone. Still inside the modern quarries, a ancient stone that weighs around a hundred tons, part of an enormous column, to memorialize the military victories of Byzantium. If it were finished, we'd have had a spiral staircase cutting in, and roses sculpture of soldiers on its turning surface. Still here though, it cracked as it was quarried. In ancient times, these quarries were called the quarries of the mother of God. They might just as well being called the quarries of the mother of Constantinople. The whole city was made here, and it was prefab city. Wasn’t just sent off in blocks, every thing was finished, these have been finished, and gone to Constantinople, each one had been lettered. They had exact place in every one of the ancient buildings of the city. This, for example, is the very tip of a building that would have looked like a Roman temple. Modern quarry masters tell me that they found the best new scenes of marble in the hills, beside the ancient stones. This is a bare good spot then, a giant lonely column shaft. I’ve seen that same shape, so-called peacock’s feather pattern, cut on a broken column lying right on the main streets of old Istanbul. 【Marmara】 马尔马拉海:土耳其西北部的一个海，位于亚洲和欧洲之间。通过博斯普鲁斯海峡与黑海相 连，通过达达尼尔海峡与爱琴海相连 【Name】adj.非正式用语 Well-known by a name:著名的:颇有名气的名字的: a name performer.著名的演家 【kies】 黄铁矿 【frantic】adj hurried and excited but disorganized; frenzied; desperate慌乱不安的; 狂乱的; 疯狂 的; 令人绝望的; 不顾一切的: a frantic dash, rush, search, etc 疯狂的撞击) 冲击) 搜 查等 * frantic activity 不顾一切的行动. spiral staircase 螺旋梯 a set of stairs arranged in a circular pattern so that they go around a central point as they get higher prefab adj.(形容词) Prefabricated. 预制的 ) prefabricated house 预制房屋. n (infml 口 letter [vt] to write, draw, paint etc letters or words on something The card was neatly lettered P.A. DUFFY. letter sth in sth Several pages are lettered in gold. column shaft 柱身 (八) This was once a marble square on a highway at the middle of Constantinople. I didn’t suppose the Turks on modern Istanbul think much about ancient Byzantine victories. Yet, there’re still some fragments here of that great memorial column that made it all the way from Marmara, the ghosts of the imperial armies, still lining the routes of their processions through the city. Just as all the ancient roads and sea lanes ran through the empire to Constantinople, so did the rivers of the region. Channeled into great aqueducts, bringing treasured water to a thirsty city. Underneath the town, cut deep into its hilltop, an eerie underworld, some 15 centuries’ old. Fresh water systems, so that the Byzantines could bathe just like the Romans do in marble halls, and every thing made with the dazzling technology of ancient Rome, father of Byzantium. Marble columns, high brick vaults, the dark forests of Byzantium, beneath modern Istanbul. Those Greek letters, hammered into the column with a chisel point, the marks of one of Marmara’s quarrymen. Food, too, flooded into the enlarging city. What a vast logistic exercise, and an earthly miracle, supporting Constantinople’s half a million people, Europe’s biggest city, and every thing cause, by hand. There was no food industry. Everything was carried here in boats and carts. The finest fish, the Byzantines believed, were caught beside the emperor’s palace, between the rising of the Pleiades and the settings of a blood red star of Arcturus. Colors, smells and textures of the ancient everyday, the raw ingredients of Byzantine experience, the world of the ancient Mediterranean. pleiades in ancient Greek mythology, the seven daughters of Atlas, who were changed into stars by Zeus 【希腊神话】 普勒阿得斯:变成星星的阿特拉斯的七个女儿(迈亚、伊莱克特拉、塞拉伊 诺、泰来塔、梅罗普、亚克安娜和斯泰罗普) Arcturus 大角星，牧夫座:天空中第四亮的星星，是牧夫星座最亮的星，距地球约36光年 (九) Just like the people of modern Istanbul, the Byzantines loved fresh bread and fresh vegetables. While the bread，at least the grain for it, they brought from their province of Egypt, the vegetables they grew themselves, in little plots beside their houses in the city, in fields in the great green swathe that ran for mile upon mile down the walls of the city, and here’s still a little bit of it today, growing more or less the same crops. Look at the garlic, the onions, the dill, the dill they used to flavor fish especially those heavy, yellow fish soups they so loved. And this frolic ecological Byzantine delight here, there’s three or four different sorts of crops, there is rocket for salad, there is chard and cabbage again, all sorts of these mint, all growing together in a great profusion. At the end of it all, lettuce to calm your stomach. So and the peasants in the fields, they stopped there for a moment, straightened their backs to watch the lords of Byzantium, those great history makers riding by, they too could think, well, we’re not in such a bad time either. The Byzantine economy was based on the classic Mediterranean diet: wine, grain, cheese, and vegetables and olives. Olive oil was a staple. It was Byzantium’s fuel. It lit streets, and homes and lighthouses, it oiled carts and cured baldness (治愈秃头) ?, and it was used for cooking. In its first centuries, Constantinople’s oil came mostly from northern Syria. This is a wonderful thing. It’s a piece of Byzantine industrial archeology. It’s a factory for making olive oil. This is a marvelous little place. I’ll show you how it works, it’s very sensible very logical. The olives were picked from the trees, they came down that little street in wagons, they were tipped down through a window, and they fell into that trough down there, they were then scooped out of the trough and put into this mill, this is a great oil press for the berries. You see this drum, there were two of those, they fitted on end in here side by side, a bar went between them, and four or five men pushed around the outside and reduced the olives to skin and the stone into a sort of horrible messy pulp. That then, was taken out of there, and laid in these circles here. Now this thing in the wall here, held a great beam that ran through the air. And hanging above this was a huge cylinder of stone and that then was slowly dropped onto the massive olive paste and the oil dripped down into these tanks. Not the end, because this, after all, although is cold pressed 冷榨, is actually a very impure oil at this moment. So they take it out of here. swathe swath的变体 The width of a scythe stroke or a mowing-machine blade. 刈幅:镰刀或割草机刃一刈的宽度 dill An aromatic herb(Anethum graveolens) native to Eurasia, having finely dissected leaves and small yellow flowers clustered in umbels. 莳萝:产于欧亚的一种芳香型草本植物(莳萝) ，长有纤细分裂的叶子和成伞形花序的小 黄花簇 rocket 芝麻菜，紫花南芥:一种生长于地中海的植物(芝麻菜属 芝麻菜 亚种 绵果芝麻菜) ，它 的花有紫色的叶脉和黄白色的花萼，叶子有时用在沙拉里 也作 arugula,rocket salad,roquette chard 【植】牛皮菜; 菜(一种可供食用的甜菜) trough 槽, 水槽 ? 治疗落发的秘方:在洗澡前用热橄榄油,加一大匙蜂蜜及一匙肉桂粉在头发上停留约15 分钟后再洗头 (十) And they put it into this tank here. Now this tank has already got water in it. So as they pour the olive oil in, it flows to the surface, all of the impurities go down to the bottom. And see this little trench here? A vital piece of gourmet equipment, because this is where the very finest oil ran from that impurity tank down into this tank to make fine, clear olive oil for the tables of Byzantium. This is Sagila, one of 300 ancient Syrian villages the Byzantine olive grows. Provincial Byzantium preserved in fine-cut stone. Just off the main square is the public bathhouse, forerun of the Turkish bath.(取基督教“要敬神，先污身”之义)? Saint John cast whores and devils under one of these. This is Sagila’s cafe coming along all down on Main Street. Old soldiers and half-mad saints got drunk in bars like this. Money lenders, magistrates, and merchants, did their business here, can you hear the farmers, tough independent homesteaders, chuckling about the prices that the city folk were paying for their olive oil? Life was very good. There was time for both a devil and his buds (魔鬼的随从，指异教徒) and for the church and all its works. If you’d come up this path fifteen hundreds years ago on the first of September, you’d have been accompanied by thousands of people shouting and singing praises to the lord, it was the feast day of Saint Simon of the pillar. The first place these processions came through is this great baptistery. Ten thousand people, whole city is full, have been baptized in this room in a single day. And then out there they all went praising the lord onwards to the church, the saint. It's Roman architectures in the course, arches, vaults, and column tops, but now these Christian crosses too. The ancient forms are turning into something else. See, the wind of faith (指基督教信仰) is bending all those ancient pagan patterns. This is the star that would become Byzantium. And at the church’s hub, the remains of the fifty-foot column on which Saint Simon lived. So was this weird man who lived up a pillar and half the world had come to see him, when he died, they built this beautiful dancing church in his honor. Well, as a young man, Simon had worn cloth so rough that made men bleed, many dreamt up the idea of chaining his left leg to a large rock, that before he went on the column. bud Friend; chum. Used as a form of familiar address for a man or boy: 伙伴，兄弟:朋友;伙伴。用作对男人或男孩的一种熟悉的称呼: Move along, bud. 一块走，兄弟 dream up 空想出, <俗>构思, 创造, (发明物等) gourmet (adj) 1/producing or relating to very good food and drink a gourmet cook gourmet dinners 2/ n.attributive.(定语名词) Often used to modify another noun: 经常用来修饰另一个名词: gourmet cooking; gourmet restaurants. 美食烹调法;美食馆 ?中世纪洗澡被认为是亵渎上帝的是事情，早期的基督教传教士对罗马的澡堂非常反感。一 方面是由于罗马的澡堂很多兼营妓院，另一方面是出于基督教“敬神污身”的苦行赎罪的心 理。我们有确凿证据欧洲中世纪的王子公主们基本上终身不洗澡，这也是贵妇人们流行香水 的原因。 (一一) But Simon was a nutter. Simon had tremendous presence like an emperor. He sat still and silent, and in his contest between flesh and the devil, it seemed to most people, that he was beyond touch. And there he was, on his pillar, half way between heaven and earth, a perfect man to settle disputes. So they used Simon. The farmers of Syria would come here when they were in arguments, and he would settle one against the other. The Bedouin, the Arab Bedouin came to see him, too. The emperor used to come to see him. And always he acted as a balance in society, such a terrifying balance that if he cursed somebody from the top of his pillar, a rock would explode next to the unfortunate individual. So Simon, it was a vital element in this new Christian Empire, an element which somehow had taken the old stern order of Roman Age and left it half way between Heaven and Earth. In the eastern Mediterranean, in the warm heartland of the pagan world, the first Christian Empire, the Empire of Byzantium, found its balance. It was a good life, a rich life, and there was peace in plenty. You know, it always strikes me as funny when people talk about the fall of the Roman Empire. After all, standing here in Constantinople, it just got richer and richer and richer, didn’t fall at all. I suppose really it’s because Rome fell, in fact Rome didn’t fall, it just got poor. Constantine had moved the capital from the great old cities in the west to here in the east. And with him moved the government, the generals, the artists, and the architects, everybody who made the empire moved with him. So in 475, that’s 25 years after these walls were finished, the last Roman Emperor of the West, a young man, a junior Emperor, sent the crown back here to Constantinople to new Rome. This was a new city. Now I suppose really, the story about the fall of the Roman Empire, that’s the western Empire, was really invented in the Renaissance by the popes, who really wanted to get the idea of a pagan empire falling and a Christian empire of the west rising. There are good propagandas like Raphael and Michelangelo to buzz on their way. But the truth is, the real truth is, that old Rome, ancient Rome, had been modeled on the great cities of the east, on Antioch and Alexandria, world’s great marvel cities. So when you say Rome fell, it didn’t fall at all, it simply went back home again. After the last emperor of the west resigned, Byzantium lost most of its European provinces. Only for a century then, by the year 555, brand new Byzantine armies had ruthlessly reconquered some of them. And in northern Italy of Ravenna, they left triumphant decorations in this church as their memorial. (一二) The man there is Justinian, the emperor who 200 years after Constantine completely remade the Roman Empire, the man who made Byzantium. He was a man, they said, who was gentle and approachable, a man who never showed his anger, a man who in the quietest voices could order the death of thousands. He didn't organize the empire completely by himself though. His great strength was as a manager. Those strong faces that surround him were the faces of a great team of men he picked together. And he didn't really care whether they were Roman patricians or from the humblest, roughest backgrounds. He himself actually come(s) from a completely illiterate peasant family in Serbia. Justinian though, was only half the picture. The other half was that most remarkable woman over there, the Empress Theodora. They'd married each other for love and they stayed together for 25 years. And look at the young ladies of the court there. They're looking sideways and a bit nervous, since it's not proper for young girls to look straight at you, not unless you're a woman of power like Theodora. But that is actually a portrait the woman dying of cancer. Within two or three months of this mosaic being finished, Theodora was dead. Justinian ruled for another 20 years, and never remarried and he went to her grave with a candle until he was a very old man. Though Justinian and Theodora restored the Roman Empire, this was no longer that ancient classical world. They lived in a different age, spoke eastern Greek instead of Roman Latin and viewed the world in very different ways. Look at these sculptures. They are probably the last classical figures ever made. They were made actually in the generations just before Justinian. Now, first glance, you might think they are just powers of those usual classical things you see hanging around museums, big stony Alexanders and Caesars all strutting their stuff. But they are not like that at all. They're new, they're different. Something else is going odd. It's very simple work, very realistic in a way. Little light cut lines, and a day old beard lightly chiseled on the hard marble as if to emphasize its transience, its insubstantiality. These people look pensive, sad, and rather wise. After all, having the saints and bishops told them that this life, this material world, was only an illusion, so naturally these statues don't strut their stony stuff like Alexander or the emperors of Rome. They are not heroic descriptions of skin and bone and straining muscle. approachable Easy to talk to or deal with; friendly. patrician (古罗马)贵族:古代罗马共和国的贵族家庭的成员，在公元前 3世纪前，在元老院和执 政官方面拥有特殊权利 strut your stuff informal to show your skill at doing something, especially dancing or performing The band strutted their stuff in a free concert. insubstantial adj not firmly or solidly made; weak (做得)不坚固的, 不坚实的, 薄弱的 insubstantiality (n) pensive thinking deeply about sth, esp in a sad or serious way 沉思的; (尤指)忧虑的: a pensive expression, look, mood 忧虑的表情) 样子) 情绪 skin and bones n. A person or animal that is very thin; someone very skinny. (一三) Each man stands inside his own mysterious inner space, for each one of them was occupied. And from that space they look outwards, from the soul towards the heavens. As you might expect, if you should move around them, solid bulk of marble in the humanity would seem to be nothing more than an illusion. These brand-new people though, were clever and inventive too. Many of them were drawn here, to the center of the empire. Most of Byzantium's brightest brains were packed into these tiny streets and apartments that surrounded the palace complex in Constantinople. There were people here coming to seek their fortune at the court from all over the empire, from Spain, from Egypt, from Syria. There were mathematicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, magicians, alchemists, all sorts of weird and wonderful people packed and living tightly together in these little streets. In the 520s and 530s, there was a great excitement bubbling up inside this unique community. Justinian and Theodora had planned to build new palaces and churches such as the world had never seen. The ancient forms, arches, vaults and column tops, were being used for something revolutionary, something that would be echoed in ten thousand different churches for a thousand years and more, the style that is Byzantium. This seaside church sat right beside the palace was made for some of Theodora's favorite priests. It was probably the work of one Anthemius, the famous physician and mathematician. This was where the style began. Theodora built the church to hold the blood-stained clothes and bodies of two martyr soldiers, Sergius and Bacchus, the army's patron saints. Now it's a mosque. Anthemius's subtle compass has transformed all the usual ancient forms be nothing more than 无非是,正是,简直是 alchemist A practitioner of alchemy. 炼丹术士，炼金术士:炼金术或炼丹术的实践者 (一四) Squares become circles, circles octagons, and all around a single central point. Space spins into ever smaller spaces. It's as perfectly mysterious as the finest natural crystal. The walls, the columns, seem to be nothing more than an illusion, and simply fade away. Just look at that great, big, glorious dome, like a huge melon, divided into 16 sections, and held by 8 wonderful swinging arches on those extraordinary V-shape pillars and 28 columns through the church. It's like a vast net of stone and brick slung over this central space, this strange, mysterious space for the imperial communion. It's a wonderful piece of architecture. And it's so... also it's a problem that you can't even see. You see those low domes exert tremendous pressure and there is a force in this building to push the bottom of it out, so the whole thing comes crashing down. Now, Anthemius, like every other architect, has used stone here as lintels and beams, as stress and strain, the old way of doing things. He's come up with a brilliant idea to hold the church together, and it's this cornice. This huge beautiful marble cornice with inscription to Justinian and Theodora, this isn't just here for decoration, this links the church in a chain. It binds the stones together. A great necklace for the church brought from a shining island in a bright blue sea. Throughout Justinian's long reign, the Marmara quarries were hard at work, shipping stone for a new crop of imperial churches. This was building on a grand scale, churches for every country in the empire. But the biggest of them all was a new church for the imperial communion in Constantinople. Through this, the quarry masters were cutting larger and yet larger versions of Anthemius's clever interlocking cornice. Here is a piece of one of those stone chains under construction, and here's its secret. Each block was held to the next block by a great iron bracket held in lead run between the two stones. Anthemius's engineers used rather a lot of iron in their buildings. It's part of a whole new series of techniques that allow them to think more daringly, more bravely than any other architects have done before. Above all, it enabled Justinian himself to have the ambition to conceive of the greatest dome the world has ever seen. octagon (n) A polygon with eight sides and eight angles. 八边形，八角形:有八条边和八个角的多边形 lintel (n) The horizontal beam that forms the upper member of a window or door frame and supports the structure above it. 门楣，过梁:构成门窗上部框架的平行梁木，并支持上面的构架 necklace (n) Something felt to resemble this neck ornament, as in shape: 类项圈物:在形状上，感觉像戴上项链似的东西: a necklace of hundreds of tiny islands. 数百个小岛组成的圈 (一五) Such mysterious cargos, such magic marbles from across the empire, now sailed the seas and came to the holy city of Byzantium to be gathered up upon the site of the imperial communion. This is the finished dream, the tense climax of all of ancient engineering, a lively frame built with prayer and pragmatism to hold the largest dome the world had ever seen. This though, is just the outside of the sacred theater. Inside, forest of columns rises up in ecstasy. The walls, glass and gold and marble, light and dark, insubstantial and illusory, seem to simply fade away. A perfect sea of space for God’s holy wisdom to come down and touch the earth, a perfect theater for the anthems of Byzantium. Lo, the lords of heaven and earth have come. Blood-red columns of Egyptian porphyry were taken, so it was said, from the Temple of Sun in Rome, the church’s wooden doors from Noah's Ark, the building's bronze was stripped from the temple of the Goddess Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the pagan world. No wonder the building has itself become a legend. Poets said: The church combined the signs of sunset and the scale of quarries, the hues of birds and fish, and precious stones, all the textures and experience of their ancient everyday, the living pink, baby's fingernails, the rising of a bright red star Arcturus. In Byzantine, in Greek, this church was called the Church of Hagia Sophia, the church of holy wisdom. All of Justinian's enormous empire, its wealth, its piety, its pagan heritage, was gathered up inside it. Throughout the next nine centuries, this vast old building stood right at the center of Byzantium, the symbol of its true destiny on earth. And on the last day of Byzantium, the emperor and his troops came here to pray before they walked out onto the city walls to die. For these with the vaults that held the dream, the dream that was Byzantium. ecstasy (n) 1/a feeling of extreme happiness in (an) ecstasy She was in an ecstasy of love. 2/ go into ecstasies (=become very happy and excited) an illegal drug that gives a feeling of happiness and energy. Ecstasy is especially used by people who go out to dance at clubs and parties.