Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (22 page)

HE YOUNG MIME ACTRESS
who had returned from the Levant driven by an ardent—if not erudite—passion for theology was now settled in the palace of Hormisdas with Justinian; one could easily imagine the “playful and pleasing conversations”
¹
(both verbal and physical) he was having with her.

The mighty Justinian could perhaps be criticized for his passion, which has been called an “overpowering love,” an “extraordinary love.”
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He did not follow the etiquette of proper behavior at court; he was practically sick with love—mad for love. This was all the more scandalous because he was not a young man and he was famously not hotheaded. People wondered why. Some mentioned the ever “new devices in intercourse”
³
that they heard Theodora had used, years earlier, to keep her lovers. Others recalled hearing that the daughter of the Hippodrome was an expert in witchcraft, spells, in love potions and poisons. And others mentioned the low-class background of the former consul: “Birds of a feather flock together,”
⁴
they would say, seeing unhappy omens in their relationship.

The critics could not accept the fact that Theodora might represent for him all the diversity and wonder of life. That, with her defenselessness and proud dignity, she and her family deserved help. The critics also failed to consider that the empirical logic she had developed in the theater, and refined in Alexandria, might help him to see his political problems in a different perspective, from a nonofficial point of view.
Nor did they consider that she had full experience of the life of the period, both in Constantinople and elsewhere.

But nothing escaped Justinian. Because of his broad studies and his position, he might have been impatient with all the customary ways of doing things. He had everything, and there was nothing that a sixteen-year-old virgin daughter of an illustrious family could offer him. His relation with Theodora, though—that little female Ulysses—made him more completely and more deeply a man. He felt that she provided some of what he needed to become a kind of Solomon who would also be a perfect Roman man.

But what about Theodora, who sparked an “erotic fire” in Justinian as soon as she set foot in the palace of Hormisdas, and kept it smoldering until the end of her life? No one—not even Procopius, who packed his narrative with so many denigratory rumors—openly accused her of having failed Justinian during the long union that lasted more than half her life, until her death in 548. Although he cast so many aspersions on her “nurture and education,” not even Procopius dared to attribute any explicit affairs to her after she entered the palace (unlike Sardou in his play), or any licentiousness at all (as Sade suggested in his work).

Historians have asked whether her behavior was motivated by fear, opportunism, or simple gratitude. But—and this speaks volumes about the depth of her critics’ prejudice—no one has considered the idea that she might have harbored deeper feelings. Such feelings might have been difficult to acknowledge and hard to mention for a woman who, like her, had been born in society’s gutter. But her feeling was so deep that it led her ultimately to resist Justinian in order to defend what was, in her eyes, loftiest and most unique about him, something that she perceived so clearly because she had always lacked it: power.

Observers in Constantinople had to resign themselves quickly and acknowledge that this affair did not have the lighthearted quality of a passing fancy. It was a grave imperial issue. Unable to think small, Justinian began to move resources toward Theodora and her family. People in the palace muttered that public funds “became fuel for this
love,”
⁵
and the capital’s leading families gradually lost the hope of forging marital alliances with the crown.

Theodora was promoted to a high position at court: she became a “patrician.” By around 523, therefore, she held the same rank as Justinian, who everyone expected to be the next emperor. The couple lived together openly in the palace of Hormisdas. During ceremonies in churches and basilicas, Theodora shone more brilliantly than the candles in the women’s gallery: the Christian temples were the new stage for displaying her beauty. The learned statesman used these occasions to mount fresh challenges to the old conventions.

Theodora was becoming a lady, the mistress of riches, mansions, lands, handmaids, eunuchs. She took a splendid retinue along when she visited almshouses or places of worship to display her Christian sharing of suffering. And, all the while, other people tended to the constant growth of her assets, to ensure her dignity and well-being and that of her family.

As in any court, the newcomer was subjected to minute scrutiny and endless comments on her beauty and her career. Merciless comparisons were made between Theodora and Empress Lupicina-Euphemia, the aged and much-derided woman on the throne. Mischievous comparisons were drawn with a great lady of the time, Juliana Anicia, who had commissioned elegant manuscripts and lavish basilicas. Like her, Theodora was a “patrician,” but much younger and low-born: she came not from an illustrious family but from the Hippodrome and the Kynêgion. Some whispered that there really was no respect anymore for age or noble blood.

They must have scrutinized her face, her “intent, frowning” expression, and commented that although she appeared beautiful, she lacked the measured serenity that softens the features and clears the eye. It was considered imperative for people with great power to present a serene, impassive countenance. Any startled or impatient gesture got noticed; observers must have found it odd that this actress did not maintain a smooth, affectless mask.

Some probably recalled the example of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from
A.D.
161 to 180. The embodiment of stoicism on the throne, he always appeared calm, resigned, as if the “sphere of his soul was lit by true light.”
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He once called Herodes Atticus to answer charges of serious abuse of authority, and the defendant, who was mourning a loved one, departed from his customary polished language, speaking gracelessly and even insulting the emperor. And yet Marcus Aurelius “never knit his eyebrow nor changed expression.”
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His philosophical mind gave him self-control: he was emperor of himself.

Some busybodies also recalled the Roman journey (in
A.D.
357) of Emperor Constans I, the son of Constantine the Great, who was also a master of self-control: “He always looked straight ahead, neither turning his face to the left nor to the right, almost like a statue; and though the coach moved to and fro, no one saw him gesture, or spit, or clean or wipe his mouth or nose, or move his hands.”
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It was best to carry oneself like a statue, but Theodora’s expressiveness and her intent frown seemed to flout this custom. Justinian was criticized too for flouting customs: he paced through the palace in the dead of night. Given the prevailing ideals of sovereignty, some critics even doubted that these lovers deserved to have their features sculpted in marble, or that their features should be “more lasting than bronze.”
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Others observed that such infractions were evidence of the demise of ancient ideals.

The actress who had been let into the palace may have looked around with “intent and frowning” eyes because she too was scrutinizing others: courtiers and functionaries, prelates and military officers. Whatever reservations these people had were spoken under their breath; publicly, they bowed to Theodora’s unexpected ascent and good fortune, “for that which appears unaccountable is wont to have the name of Fortune applied to it.”
¹⁰

She carefully observed every single gesture or word and memorized it forever. Then she told Justinian, or asked him for an explanation. She knew that she represented his position of power, that she was living proof of the effectiveness of that power. She was like a symbol, his badge: anything done to her was indirectly done to him, because he was
the one who held the power. And if she demanded respect and homage it was not for herself but for him, she told him. An oversight or an impolite gesture toward her might imply a possible threat against him.

If he disregarded protocol because he was busy reading, Theodora might have reminded him that it was not his studies that guaranteed his position. She confided in no one. She kept her guard up. She collected rumors, secrets, information. Even about her “new Solomon.” And she surprised the scholarly Justinian by reminding him that he had ordered Vitalian’s abrupt end.

The legal and institutional gap between her and Justinian was far more vast than the gap that had separated her from Hecebolus, and the setting was no longer the provinces but the very heart of the empire. Theodora too had changed. She deemed her position with Justinian to be so strong that she could afford
not
to ask him for anything. She understood that the more impossible a challenge, the more he was attracted to it. It was impossible, for instance, for a man of senatorial rank to marry an actress, albeit a patrician such as herself: it was “a thing forbidden from the beginning by the most ancient laws.”
¹¹
But Justinian saw this as one more reason to change those laws immediately. The fact that Theodora had a daughter—who must have been around eight years old in 523—was no obstacle for him. As a matter of fact, it was a guarantee that Theodora could bear children. For Justinian had decided by then to make her his wife, the mother of his future progeny.

But Theodora’s daughter, and her whole past, were not mere details for Lupicina, the slave that Emperor Justin had bought and made his concubine, then his wife and empress, with the new name of Euphemia [
fig. 21
]. The former slave hoped for a very different bride for the man they had adopted and raised with such solicitous devotion. She opposed the union. The learned forty-year-old Justinian argued with his uneducated adoptive mother: if Theodora had maintained so many qualities despite all her misadventures, it was a sign of divine favor and grace. And her recent exemplary behavior revealed her true character. But Lupicina stubbornly resisted the wedding. Procopius, the product of a very different culture, wrote that Justinian

might have taken his choice of the whole Roman Empire and have married that woman who, of all the women in the world, was in the highest degree both well-born and blessed with a nurture sheltered from the public eye, a woman who had not been unpracticed in modesty, and had dwelt in chastity, who was not only surpassingly beautiful but also still a maiden and, as the expression runs, erect of breast; but he did not disdain to make the common abomination of all the world his own.
¹²

Had Lupicina survived to read (and been able to read) these words, she would have agreed with Procopius completely.

21. Bronze portrait head of an empress (“Lupicina-Euphemia”), c. 520, Narodni Muzej, Nis (Serbia).

While waiting for Justin’s wife to change her mind about the marriage, Theodora and Justinian enjoyed the unshakeable certainty typical of any satisfying new love affair.
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