The ancient custom of reclining at meals had ceased. The guests sat on benches or chairs. At the same time the "triclinia aurea," or golden dining room, was still the title of the great hall of audience in the palace at Constantinople. The term only served to illustrate the jealous retention of the old forms and names by the emperors and patricians. The last branch of the ancient empire did little for the arts of painting and sculpture, though it long preserved the old traditions of art, gradually becoming more and more debased with every succeeding generation, whilst outward splendour was increased because of the greater quantity of the precious metals that had accumulated or been inherited during so many centuries.
The decay of art and skill in the old world was, however, counterbalanced by the rise of new societies, which were gradually being formed in various parts of the empire. These consisted partly of the races of Huns, Goths, Saxons, and others, who had invaded Italy and settled themselves in it, partly of the old municipal corporations, who defended their property and maintained their privileges in the great walled towns of Italy. The cities profited to a great extent by this infusion of new blood; and became the parents of the future provinces of Italy, so rich in genius and industry, so wealthy and powerful in peace and war. The most important of them was Venice, and it is in Venice that, in the later middle ages, we find the birthplace of most of the art with which the furniture and utensils of home and warlike use were so profusely decorated.
We point to Constantinople as the last stronghold of the old arts of the Roman period, but it is because it was from the Greeks that the new states borrowed their first notions of art. Nearly all the early art we meet with throughout the west in manuscripts and ivories bears a Byzantine character.
A remarkable piece of monumental furniture has survived from these early centuries of the Christian era, half Byzantine and half western in character, the chair of St. Maximian of Ravenna, preserved in the treasury at Ravenna, and engraved and described in the "Arts Somptuaires" of M. Du Sommerard. Ravenna was the portion of the empire that most intimately connected the east with the west. The domed churches of San Vitale, San Giovanni in Fonte, the tomb of Galla Placidia, the round church of Santa Maria, built by Theodoric, together with the great basilica of Saint Apollinare in Chiasse, and others of the Latin form, unite the characteristics of the eastern and western architecture. What is true of architecture can also be pronounced as to painting, sculpture, textile fabrics, and all decoration applied to objects, sacred or domestic, that were in daily use.