Around the Blue Mosque - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 123

sections alternating with eight concave ones above the angles of the
octagon. This gives the dome the oddly undulatory or corrugated
efect we noticed when looking down on it from the sphendone. he
octagon has eight polygonal piers between which are pairs of columns,
alternately of verd antique and red Synnada marble both above and
below, arranged straight on the axes but curved out into the exedrae at
each corner. The whole forms an arcade that gives an efect almost of
choric dancers in some elaborate but formal evolution, as Procopius
happily says in another connection. The space between this brightly
coloured, moving curtain of columns and the exterior walls of the
rectangle becomes an ambulatory below and a spacious gallery above.
(One ascends to the gallery by a staircase at the south end of the
narthex; don't fail to do so, for the view of the church from above is
very impressive.) The capitals and the classic entablature are exquisite
specimens of the elaborately carved and deeply undercut style of the
sixth century. On the ground floor the capitals are of the “melon”
type, in the gallery “pseudo-Ionic”, and a few of them still bear the
monogram of Justinian and Theodora, though most of these have
been efaced. In the gallery the epistyle is arcaded in a way that became
habitual in later Byzantine architecture - already in Haghia Sophia,
for example; but on the ground floor the entablature is still basically
classical, trabeated instead of arched, with the traditional architrave,
frieze, and cornice, but how diferent in efect from anything classical:
like lace. The frieze consists of a long and beautifully carved inscrip-
tion in 12 Greek hexameters in honour of the founders and of St.
Sergius; oddly enough St. Bacchus is not mentioned. SS. Sergius
and Bacchus were two Roman soldiers martyred for their espousal
of Christianity; later they became the patron saints of Christians
in the Roman army. These saints were especially dear to Justinian
because they saved his life some years before he came to the throne,
in the reign of Anastasius. It seems that Justinian had been accused
of plotting against the Emperor and was in danger of being executed,
but Sergius and Bacchus appeared in a dream to Anastasius and
interceded for him. As soon as Justinian himself became Emperor in
527, he expressed his gratitude to the saints by dedicating to them
this church, the first of those with which he adorned the city.