We have here then under our eyes the two schools of mosaics, that of Rome and that of Constantinople.  It is easy to see that the Roman work, the original work that is, is more classical and realistic than the rich and glorious figures of the processions; but it is not decoratively so successful.  Indeed I know of nothing anywhere that is more artistically, dramatically, and as it were liturgically satisfying than these long processions on either side of S. Apollinare Nuovo.

Little else remains in the church worth notice except an ancient ambo under the arcade in the nave and the chapel of the Relics at the top of the left aisle.  This was largely built of ancient fragments in the sixteenth century.  We see there two beautiful alabaster columns with capitals of serpentine with two small columns of verde antico also with ancient capitals.  The screen is Byzantine.  The walls are ornamented with bas-reliefs and paintings, but above all these we see there a marvellous portrait in mosaic of the emperor Justinian as an old man, unhappily restored in 1863.  The altar is ancient and above it is a marble coffer with Renaissance ornaments, upheld by four columns of porphyry, having two Byzantine and two Roman capitals.  On the Epistle side of the altar here is a marble chair—­a Roman thing.

From that splendid and well-preserved church we pass to that of the Spirito Santo.  Unhappily this once glorious building has suffered as much as any church left to us in Ravenna, for it was almost entirely rebuilt in 1543 when the portico we see was added to it, and in 1627 was restored and adorned, as it was in 1854 and 1896.  That it was founded and built by the Goths and reconciled later for Catholic use appears in Agnellus’ life of the archbishop S. Agnellus, where we read that of old the Arian Episcopio stood near by, together with a bath and a monastero of S. Apollinare.  What the monastero may have been we do not know, but the bath was perhaps the Arian baptistery known as S. Maria in Cosmedin.

The church of the Spirito Santo was not in Arian times known under that dedication, but was called of S. Theodore.  It owes the pleasing portico it now possesses, as I have said, to the sixteenth century, but that portico is itself largely constructed of old materials, being upheld by eight antique columns, of which six are of Greek marble.  These originally supported the baldacchino over the high altar.  Within, the church is divided into three naves by fourteen columns, thirteen of which are of bigio antico, and the other, the last on the Epistle side towards the altar, of a rare and curious marble known as verde sanguigno.  The capitals are of Theodoric’s time, late Roman work.

Very little remains in the church that is of any interest to us.  In the sacristy, however, we may see in the present lavabo some fragments of the ancient ciborio.  And in the nave at the western end on the Gospel side is an ancient sarcophagus of Greek marble which was carved in the Renaissance and in the seventeenth century became the sepulchre of one of the Pasolini family.  In the first chapel on this side of the church is the ancient ambone removed from the nave in the sixteenth century, and in the second are two columns of pavonazzetto marble.