Note 83 — Chapter I · CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY[3]

That is the pierced dome elevated to a great height on pendentives. The splendid dome of the Pantheon dates, of course, from Hadrian, but the invention of the modern cupola may fairly be assigned to the Byzantines. The conception, however, had to be completed by raising it still higher on a tour de dome, the first example of which is St. Augustine’s, Rome (1483); see Agincourt, Hist. of Art, i, 67.