sta built close to her palace a great
church in the shape of a Latin cross. This she dedicated in honour of
the Holy Cross which it will be remembered her predecessor S. Helena
had discovered in Jerusalem. Of this church, though it has long since
disappeared--the "western" part of it having been destroyed in 1602
and what remained restored out of all recognition in 1716--we know a
good deal. According to Agnellus it was covered with most precious
stones (? marbles) and apparently with mosaics and was full of
splendid ornaments. It had, too, a great narthex, and at the end of
this Galla Placidia presently built a cruciform oratory for her own
mausoleum, where she was to lie between her brother Honorius and her
son Valentinian.

[Illustration: Colour Plate THE MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIA]

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is the oldest complete building left
to us in Ravenna, for it dates from well within the first half of the
fifth century, whereas the baptistery, altered and transformed as it
was by S. Neon, is as we see it a work of the first years of the
second half of that century. Simple as it is, without, a cruciform
building of plain brick, within it is so sumptuously and splendidly
adorned that not an inch anywhere remains that is not encrusted with
mosaic or precious marbles. These mosaics were, before their radical
"restoration," perhaps finer and more classical than those of the
baptistery. It might seem, indeed, that they were perhaps the finest
and subtlest work done in the Roman realistic tradition, nor was there
perhaps anywhere to be found so noble a representation of the Good
Shepherd as that which adorned this great monument. It is, however,
impossible to speak with any confidence of what we see there now, for
all has been restored again and again, and is now little better than a
_rifacimento_ of our own time, a copy, faithful perhaps, but still a
copy, of the work of the fifth century.

Nevertheless, the impression of the whole is very splendid and solemn.
The roofs and dome are covered with mosaics of a wonderful and
indescribable night blue, powdered with stars. In the cupola is a
cross and at the four angles are set the symbols of the four
Evangelists, glorious heraldic figures.

Above the door we see Christ the Good Shepherd, youthful, classic in
form and repose, very noble and Roman, seated on a rock in a broken
hilly landscape, a cross in His left hand, caressing His sheep with
His right. Thi