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34 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
Bulgarian Government abstained in future from sending
Russian refugees to Russia without making the necessary
arrangements with Moscow.
Of the unfortunate Turco-Jewish " refugees " on board
the Semiramis we received sad tidings ; in spite of all efforts
to obtain permission to land they would have to return by
the next boat. Every day the aged father and mother sat
on the quay looking up at their son and daughter-in-law,
who looked down on them from the deck and wept. The
Jew told his Swiss friends, who paid him a visit on board,
that he could not understand why he was prevented from
going ashore ; perhaps his brother was working against him
in order to take his place in the undertaking and pocket the
profits.
In the afternoon I went to have a look at St. Sophia. I
wanted to see the wonderful interior again—that vast oval
hall, so complete and harmonious, so uniquely proportioned
with its enormous dome floating above it, a triumph of the
human mind over ponderous matter. It is and will remain
one of the most remarkable creations of architecture, and
even if Byzantine culture had produced nothing but this
building it would hold a high place. The most amazing
thing about this edifice, built by the Emperor Justinian in
A.d. 532-537, is the fact that it appeared so early, and seemingly
without any preparation, with no known precursors of any
thing like the same size. It cannot have been related to the
architecture of Western lands, which was highly undeveloped
at that time ; and the art which raised the dome of the
Pantheon in Rome had long been forgotten. It is a creation
of the East. The master-builders Anthemius of Tralles and
Isidorus of Miletus were Greeks from Asia Minor, who relied
on the science of the Greeks, and especially of Archimedes,
in solving the mechanical problems involved in constructions
of such unusual magnitude. But whence came the idea ?
This great hall, with its four vast piers arranged in a square
to support the lofty central dome, and with the semi-domes
on each side that give the building its remarkable rounded
completeness, has surely no connection with Greece.
The more one considers this riddle, and the more one sees
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