s figure even after "restoration" gives us more than a
glimpse of what it once was. Nowhere had Christian art produced so
majestic a representation of its Lord; nor had the subject of the Good
Shepherd been anywhere more splendidly treated than here.

Over the great sarcophagus, opposite the entrance, we see a very
different scene. Here is no longer a youthful Christ, with the hair
and the noble aspect of Apollo, but a bearded and majestic figure in
the fullness of manhood, His eyes full of anger, His draperies flying
about Him, moving swiftly, the cross on His shoulders, in His left
hand an heretical, probably Arian, book which he is about to cast into
the furnace in the midst. Upon the extreme left is a case or cupboard
in which we see the books of the four Gospels. In the other lunettes
we see very gorgeous decorative work of arabesques and stags at a
fountain and two doves drinking from a vase. Above in the spandrils of
the arches are figures of apostles or saints. Nothing in the world is
more solemnly gorgeous in effect than this beautiful rich interior.
The pavement is composed of fragments of the same precious marbles as
those which line the lower parts of the walls.

Under the mosaic of the burning of the heretical books we see the
mighty sarcophagus of plain Greek marble which once held the body of
the Augusta. This, of old, was richly adorned with carved marbles and
perhaps with silver or mosaic; and we know that in the fourteenth
century certainly it was possible to see within the figure of a woman
richly dressed seated in a chair of cedar and this was believed to be
the mummy of the Augusta Galla Placidia. However, we hear nothing of
it before the fourteenth century, and Dr. Ricci suggests that it may
have been an imposture of about that time. It is possible, but perhaps
unlikely, for the Augusta was not a saint, and what reason could men
have in the thirteenth century, when the very meaning of the empire
was about to be forgotten, for such an imposture? However this may be,
the figure remained there seated in its chair during the fourteenth,
fifteenth, and the greater part of the sixteenth centuries. And
indeed, it might have been there still but that in 1577 some children,
curious about it and anxious to see a thing so wonderful, thrust a
lighted taper into the tomb through one of the holes in the marble,
when mummy, vestments, chair and all were consumed, and in a moment
nothing remained but a handful of