Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (13 page)

Procopius’s
Secret History
allows us to reconstruct a similar episode from the Mediterranean of late antiquity, when Theodora was a star. Up to this point we have overheard only the noisy clatter of her performances in the theaters of Constantinople: the slaps and laughter accompanying the winks and gestures. We sensed the turmoil that her body aroused, the magic spell of her beauty. All this, before she could even utter a word. And then, suddenly, Theodora also talked, and her first words confirmed her legendary status: a sexual and literary legend. The first time she speaks in Procopius’s account she chastises Nature: “And though she made use of three openings, she used to take Nature to task, complaining that it had not pierced her breasts with larger holes so that it might be possible for her to contrive another method
of copulation there.”
²
Under the yoke of her “utter wantonness,” Procopius’s Theodora is no longer part of the kingdom of nature, but outside it. She has left civilized human society for a private, alien, non-human realm, the realm of hubris. She addresses Nature, claiming that it is robbing her of pleasure—sexual pleasure. Robbing her, a woman!

Did Theodora truly speak those words, and if so, to whom? Did she say them to one or more of her tireless lovers, who could never sate their erotic frenzy? Did she whisper them to another actress? We have no way of knowing. Here, as in other instances—such as the night (or nights) of the seventy couplings—the primary sources are missing. All we have (once again) is a literary version, and it is stated in prose that richly echoes Greek literary tradition; the echoes were easily grasped by Procopius’s natural readers, sensitive as they were to literary nuances.

“Four openings”: the protagonist of the
Secret History
speaks for the first time, and her words stand as the high point of her narrative. They are also the high point of a literary theme, for early Greek authors had attacked some women by criticizing their sexual customs. For example, in the Attic oratory of the fourth century
B.C.
, Lysias had criticized Anthiopa, a courtesan, for “using immorally” two orifices. Later, with exaggeration common in ancient rhetoric,
³
the author known as Pseudo-Demosthenes had accused the courtesan Neaira of “abusing” three parts of her body. Procopius, familiar as he was with these authors, exaggerated the number of orifices even further, bringing it to four.
⁴

But quantity did not suffice to feed this denigrator’s elegant rage. To quantity he added quality. What Anthiopa and Neaira had merely proffered or performed, and what Lysias and Pseudo-Demosthenes had criticized as an abuse, Procopius’s Theodora
longed
for. She wanted pleasure. She desired, for her pleasure, more of what had been previously characterized as an abuse.

If the words of Procopius’s Theodora—contemptuous as they are of natural law and human custom alike—do bespeak hubris, then she is not unlike the mythical Prometheus who stole fire from the gods, or the modern Don Juan who made fun of piety for the dead. Indeed, in
clamoring for sexual pleasure—to the point of taking Nature to task—Theodora asserts herself as a literary creature, apart from declaring her personal sexual appetites. And while Procopius succeeds as a writer in his own genre, paradoxically he fails in his attempt to humiliate Theodora, for never has such a resentful work bestowed so much fame on its target.

In
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
, Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), the great Enlightenment historian, paraphrased the passage about the “four openings”; he wrote that Theodora “wished for a
fourth
altar, on which she might pour libations to the god of love.”
⁵
The use of a sacred, ritual vocabulary to write about sex is typical of the contemptuous libertine style as used, for example, by the Marquis de Sade. Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), a cardinal and church historian, brought a different, more malicious attitude to the matter. In his
Ecclesiastical Annals
, he noted that Theodora “surpassed all other women in wickedness. She deserved the names given to the Furies in Hell.”
⁶
Although Cardinal Baronio could identify what was different, his judgment was faulty.

Thus Theodora’s irritated reproach to Nature is an instance of a literary device that both preceded the
Secret History
and followed it; it may also hint at her physical traits, just as a fossil hints at an ancient life-form. Perhaps Theodora’s breasts were seen to offer little material for erotic play; her beautiful body was probably boyish rather than buxom and matronly.

What were the “true” features of that young face and body that could “win the hearts”
⁷
of so many men and kindle so many different passions? From the mosaic of the San Vitale basilica in Ravenna [
fig. 1
] we know how she looked as a mature woman, about thirty years after this period. Even if we assume that the artist or the mosaic installer had access to the palace and saw Theodora, still the majestic, stately portrait reveals little of the mime actress whose career had caused so much scandal. In the
Secret History
, even his hatred doesn’t blind the author to her beauty. As a matter of fact, he describes her almost impartially.
She “was fair of face and in general attractive in appearance, but short of stature and lacking in colour, being, however, not altogether pale but rather sallow, and her glance was always intense and made with contracted brows.”
⁸

16. Marble portrait head of “Theodora” (actually Licinia-Eudoxia), c. 430–40, Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

The literary source (Procopius) and the visual source (Ravenna), date to almost the same time, but they are far apart geographically and opposite in meaning and intent, and they do not agree about Theodora’s height. (In the mosaic, she is the tallest figure, possibly as a mark of hierarchical respect.) But they do agree on Theodora’s expression, for in the mosaic her dark eyes appear particularly deep. Focused attention seems to be Theodora’s dominant trait: she seems to scour her surroundings, scrutinizing them for dangers, glimpsing opportunities. She is not lost in gentle or transcendental contemplation like an icon, nor does she wear an expression of detached serenity, like the marble
bust of an emperor or a philosopher. Her beauty is diaphanous, well proportioned, restless, and expressive. It is a beauty that could easily qualify as “modern.”

In pursuit of that seductive beauty, some scholars have identified as Theodora an exquisite marble sculpture of a head, discovered in the course of demolition in the center of Milan, Italy, and now housed at the Sforza castle there [
fig. 16
]. The statue’s oval face resembles the Ravenna mosaic: it shares a delightful restlessness in the lips, an intent expression, and a haughty impatience that recall Theodora. But recent research on the artifact’s form and style leads scholars to attribute it not to the infamous mime actress but to Licinia-Eudoxia (daughter and heir to Theodosius II, Emperor of the East, and his scholarly wife Athenais-Eudocia), who in 437 married Valentinian III, Emperor of the West, and was acclaimed Savior of the East and Joy of the West.
⁹

Undoubtedly, a face such as that of the Milan sculpture could “win the hearts” of men. And though it may not be Theodora’s face, we could legitimately infer that it resembles her. Maybe one day, with the help of computer graphics, we will be able to turn Ravenna’s imperial mosaic into a 3-D reconstruction of young Theodora’s face.

Soon Theodora began to care for her face and body, in order to preserve and enhance her beauty and maybe to perfect it. In the years spent in the theater and at the palace, she did not let a day go by without looking after her beauty. Thermal baths, massages, face masks, and skin treatments were daily activities. During her stage career she would frequent the cosmetic shops annexed to the bathing establishments of the city. The baths were probably an ideal place for making new acquaintances (to fuel her lusts and passions, according to her critics); later, as her career progressed, she would follow her beauty regime in the privacy of home.

Her lifelong familiarity with bath establishments and makeup, and her habit of caring for her body daily, explain why an imperial statue to her was erected near the Arcadian baths of Constantinople, and why the baths of Carthage were called “Theodorian.” These habits emphasize the fact that she was among the last to hold an ancient attitude
toward the body, at a time when the world was turning toward medieval customs. (But as we shall see later, she herself contributed in no small way, as empress, to that evolution toward the medieval.)

Both when she was young and when she was at the palace, sleep was a necessary complement to her beauty treatments. Sleep revived her soul as well as the muscles of her face, which got such a lot of exercise in her work as a mime. And sleep took her to the oneiric dimension that was so meaningful in that epoch, especially to those who, like the girl of the Hippodrome and the Kynêgion, might have been familiar with unorthodox, even esoteric disciplines such as astrology or the interpretation of dreams. Baths and rest were also important to her because they offered moments for reflection about herself and those around her. She did not even like to receive visits in the morning, and she was not bothered by the fact that some criticized her morning extravagance. She knew only too well that a woman such as she, whether an actress or an empress, could show herself in public only if she looked perfect.

She was criticized for lacking self-discipline also when it came to food: apparently, she willingly “partook of all manner of food and drink,”
¹⁰
a reproach informed by coarse ideas about people of humble birth who finally had more than a subsistence diet. Furthermore, archaic taboos about food survived: taboos, for example, about women drinking wine. Some extreme conservatives could have objected that in drinking wine a woman took into her body an unacceptable vital principle other than that socially acceptable vital principle, her legitimate husband’s seed. But it might have been that Theodora simply had a petite, high-energy body that quickly burned all the calories she took in. Her culinary whims led her to quality rather than quantity. She did not like fowl or condiments, but seemed to enjoy small, sugary, high-calorie treats such as sweets made of figs and roses, dates, nuts, grapes, cookies, and “Persian-style” sorbets.

Often, women procurers who hoped to introduce lusty new admirers to Theodora would contact the masseuses and makeup women who pampered her face and body. But Theodora enjoyed total protection,
and the reply was always the same: They admire her?—let them come to the theater and pay to admire her over and over again. And there was a lot to admire, as the
Secret History
reports in a passage about her performances in about 518.

And often even in the theatre, before the eyes of the whole people, she stripped off her clothing and moved about naked through their midst, having only a girdle about her private parts and her groin, not, however, that she was ashamed to display these to the populace, but because no person is permitted to enter there entirely naked, but must have at least a girdle about the groin. Clothed in this manner, she sprawled out and lay on her back on the ground. And some slaves, whose duty this was, sprinkled grains of barley over her private parts, and geese, which happened to have been provided for this very purpose, picked them off with their beaks, one by one, and ate them. And when she got up, she not only did not blush, but even acted as if she took pride in this strange performance. For she was not merely shameless herself, but also a contriver of shameless deeds above all others. And it was a common thing for her to undress and stand in the midst of the actors on the stage, now straining her body backwards and now trying to [offer her] hinder parts both [to] those who had consorted with her and those who had not yet done so, running through with pride the exercises of the only wrestling school to which she was accustomed.
¹¹

It seems an artless performance; even stern historians smile over the relative innocence of these infamous “pornographic” scenes. But one should distinguish between the two episodes described in the
Secret History.
The second one, where she performed “in the midst of the actors,” leaves little to the imagination: Theodora “strained her body backwards” and pushed her (seminaked) belly forward, emphatically shaking her pelvis, throwing her head back, and shaking her hands toward the audience. This traditional move is documented as far back as early Attic comedy, perfected a thousand years before Theodora and still alive in today’s burlesque. When she offered “her hinder parts,” we
extrapolate from the Greek text that it was an abrupt movement, “like that of a wasp or scorpion.”
¹²
This sounds just like the bump-and-grind of the hips, the burlesque move appreciated even by the proper middle class in modern Paris. (On the other hand, Procopius seems to have some kind of obsession, insisting again on Theodora’s “hinder parts,” her buttocks, her customary “wrestling school.” Her buttocks may be the one part of Theodora’s body that he scrutinizes most closely.)