9 - ‘I have defeated you, Solomon’

Summary

In this short chapter I draw on the recent studies of Constantinople that have reinterpreted the most famous of imperial claims to have surpassed Solomon and his Temple. I close with some implications drawn from Romanos’ kontakion.

The old Hagia Sophia was destroyed in the Nika revolt of 532 CE; thirty thousand people were said to have died in the Hippodrome during the revolt. The church was rebuilt with startling speed [Colour Pl. XXI]. Its consecration in 537 is described in the Diegesis, a ninth-century account of the rebuilding:

Justinian came in procession from the Palace to the gates of the Augusteion which gives onto the Hōrologion, mounted on a chariot with four horses; and he sacrificed 1,000 cattle, 6,000 sheep, 600 hinds, 1,000 pigs, and 10,000 birds and cocks. And he gave to the poor and needy 30,000 measures of corn … Then the Emperor Justinian made his entry with the cross, accompanied by the Patriarch Eutychius. And escaping from the hands of the Patriarch, he ran by himself from the imperial gates to the ambo, and stretching out his arms [ekteinas tas cheiras autou, cf. diepatesen tas cheiras autou, 1 Kings 8.23] he said, ‘Glory to God, who has judged me worthy to bring to completion such a work. I have defeated you, Solomon [enikēsa se Solomōn]’ … The next day he went to the opening [ta anoixia] of the church, making as many sacrifices or more in holocaust.

Reference to Solomon had been a commonplace at the dedication of churches since Eusebius had described Constantine as ‘our Solomon’ in his ekphrasis of the church of Tyre, consecrated in 318 (HE 10.45, 9–10 above).

The church was dedicated once more in 562, after the earthquakes of 553 to 558, the dome’s collapse and the repair. A kontakion generally ascribed to Romanos praised this reconstruction, once more under Justinian: two hundred and fifty years had passed between the Temple’s destruction and the building of the Holy Sepulchre; Justinian had begun the rebuilding of H. Sophia the day after its destruction.