wever, that certain influences darkened the style even before
it had reached maturity; chief among these was a gloomy hierarchical
splendour, and a ritual rigidity, which to-day we yet refer to, quite
properly, as Byzantinism. Choisy sees a distinction in the constructive
types of Roman and Byzantine architecture, in that the former covered
spaces by concreted vaults built on centres, which approximated to a sort
of "monolithic" formation, whereas in the Byzantine style the vaults were
built of brick and drawn forward in space without the help of preparatory
support. Building in this way, it became of the greatest importance that
the vaults should be so arranged as to bring about an equilibrium of
thrusts. The distinction holds as between Rome in the 4th century and
Constantinople in the 6th, but we are not sufficiently sure that the
concreted construction did not depend on merely local circumstances, and it
is possible, in other centres of the empire where strong cement was not so
readily obtainable, and wood was scarce, that the Byzantine _constructive_
method was already known in classical times. Choisy, following Dieulafoy,
would derive the Byzantine system of construction from Persia, but this
proposition seems to depend on a mistaken chronology of the monuments as
shown by Perrot and Chipiez in their _History of Art in Persia_. It seems
probable that the erection of brick vaulting was indigenous in Egypt as a
building method. Strzygowski, in his recent elaborate examination of the
art-types found at the palace of Mashita (Mschatta), a remarkable ruin
discovered by Canon Tristram in Moab, of which the most important parts
have now been brought to the new Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, shows
that there are Persian ideas intermixed with Byzantine in its decoration,
and there are also brick arches of high elliptical form in the structure.
He seems disposed to date this work rather in the 5th than in the 6th
century, and to see in it an intermediate step between the Byzantine work
of the west and a Mesopotamian style, which he postulates as probably
having its centre at Seleucia-Ctesiphon. From the examples brought forward
by the learned author himself, it is safer as yet to look on the work as in
the main Byzantine, with many Egyptian and Syrian elements, and an
admixture, as has been said, of Persian ideas in the ornamentation. Egypt
was certainly an important centre in the development of the Byzantine
style.

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