Upon the Epistle side we see as it were a procession of twenty-five figures all in white with palms in the right hands and crowns in their left.  They are the martyrs SS.  Clement, Sixtus, Laurence, Cyprian, Paul, Vitalis, Gervasius, Protasius, Hippolytus, Cornelius, Cassianus, John, Ursinus, Namor, Felix, Apollinaris, Demetrius, Polycarp, Vincent, Pancras, Chrysogonus, Protus, Jovenius, and Sabinus, and their names are written in a long line over them; each is aureoled, and each upon his white robe bears a letter the significance of which is hidden from us.  This procession comes out of the city of Ravenna which is magnificently represented, occupying indeed a fifth of the whole length of the mosaic.

In the foreground is the palace of Theodoric, the whole facade of it, the triple arched peristyle in the midst flanked on either side by two triple arched loggias, each having a second story of five arches.  In the spandrils of the arches are figures of Victories, and of old in the tympanum we might have seen Theodoric on horseback.  Within, the arches are hung with curtains.  On the extreme right is the great gate of the palace in the wall of the city, flanked on either side by towers.  In the lunette over the gateway we see three small figures of Christ with the cross between two Apostles, and within the gate, I think, a great figure, seated.  Over the facade of the palace we look into the city and see four churches, which Dr. Ricci suggests may be, on the right, this very church with its baptistery, now destroyed, together with the church of S. Teodoro (now S. Spirito) and the Arian baptistery:  they are altogether Byzantine in type.  Out of this city come the martyrs; there are twenty-five of them all in white, as I have said, and they are led by S. Martin Confessor, who bears of course no palm, is robed in purple, and bears his crown in both his hands.  He leads the procession along a way strewn with flowers to the throne where Christ sits guarded by four angels.

Above this great scene, between the windows, above each of which there is an ornamental mosaic, we see sixteen figures of Prophets or perhaps Fathers.  Over these are twenty-seven compartments each filled with a mosaic.  Those over the heads of the prophets are, except in the case of him who stands, at each end, last but one, filled with a sort of recessed throne in mosaic, over which in each case are set two doors.  But the eleven compartments over the windows and the two over the two figures last but one at either end are filled with thirteen scenes from the New Testament, beginning on the left as follows:  (1) The Last Supper, (2) The Agony in the Garden, (3) The Kiss of Judas, (4) Christ taken, (5) Christ before the High Priest, (6) Christ before Herod, (7) The Denial of Peter, (8) Judas trying to restore the money to the priests, (9) Christ before Pilate, (10) The Via Crucis, (n) The Maries at the Sepulchre, (12) The way to Emmaus, (13) The Incredulity of S. Thomas.