204 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB VOL. xiil. (3) 



It is worth our while to pause for a moment and glance 

 at the description Pliny gives (Epistle vi.) of the throng 

 assembled in the galleries of the Basilica when he made 

 one of his greatest orations in pleading before the court 

 for an heiress of high rank who had been defrauded by 

 her trustees. 



It was this use of the basilicas as halls of assembly that 

 fitted them so well for places of worship, after Constantine 

 had made Christianity the rehgion of the state ; when the 

 seat of the judge in the apse at the end became the throne 

 of the bishop, whose subordinate clergy took the places 

 of the assessors of the court. 



The galleries, however, played a more important part 

 in the Greek Church than in the Western, as they were 

 allotted to the women of the congregation, who, in accord- 

 ance with Eastern etiquette, had to sit apart from the men : 

 a custom still maintained, as everyone knows, among the 

 Jews and the Mahometans. Thus it happens that while, 

 as women are not secluded in western lands, the abbeys 

 and cathedrals replacing the basilica in these countries 

 have mostly discontinued the galleries, in the East, on 

 the other hand, the basilica itself has been displaced in 

 favour of a building square in its ground plan, as better 

 adapted for galleries, while at the same time it admits of 

 being roofed with a dome. This has become the almost 

 universal type of Greek buildings for worship, as in 

 Russia, as well as of Mahometan mosques and Jewish 

 synagogues ; Santa Sophia, in Constantinople, and the 

 synagogue at Frankfort offering good typical examples of 

 such gallery arrangement. 



While the retention of the atrium, or fore-court, with 

 its covered colonnade as an approach to the basilica, had 

 a distinct advantage in a hot country from the shade it 

 afforded, yet it injured the architectural effect from its too 

 great elongation. As, however, the covered ambulatory 



