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(Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople 4.1-3)
For the rest of the churches of God lie, so to speak, in the middle of confusion, and the ministers of god are jostled by the mob and cannot sing their hymns with freedom; but this is free and untroubled by such things. (2) A man who stands inside it or even passes by outside and hears the songs of the priests singing hymns would say truly that the church had been gifted with its location not on earth but in heaven, or indeed planted by god in the east. (3) Indeed one can see in it and in the regions surrounding it inexhaustible treasures of water and reservoirs of sweet water made equal to seas, from which as though from four heads of rivers the whole City of Constantinople receives its supply.
Comment by Crow 2008: The four reservoirs have been identified as those of Aspar, Aelius, Mokios and possibly Bonus; see Magdalino (1966), 57, n. 37 with earlier references. However this may also be an allusion to the four heavenly rivers, see Dagron (1984b), 282, n. 75. Later in this passage Mesarites extols the fertility of the gardens and orchards around the church and includes a reference to 'pleasant' aqueducts and a multitude of springs', although this sentence is copied verbatim from Libyans' description of the road from Antioch to Daphne; Downey (1957), 863, nn. 8 and 9.
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