Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (5 page)

The stands of the racetrack were off-limits to clerics, monks, and ladies, but the games gained ceremonial dignity from the presence of the emperor. In At Meydani Square we find traces of this custom in the bas-relief [
fig. 6
] at the base of the column of Theodosius I (r. 379–95) that depicts the emperor sitting in the famed gallery or loge (the Kathisma) that connected the Hippodrome, where he saw and was seen by everyone, to the Sacred Palace, where he was accessible only to the circle of potentates who also appear around him in the sculpture: ministers, military men, functionaries, superintendents, and dignitaries.

6. Bas-relief at the base of the column of Theodosius I, c. 390–95, Hippodrome, Istanbul.

The Hippodrome spawned myriad interpretations and allegories. To some it seemed a sort of microcosm, at once an imitation and a revelation of the mysteries of the universe. The arena symbolized the Earth, the gates from which the chariot races started symbolized the twelve months of the year or the twelve signs of the zodiac, and so on, in a sophisticated game of correspondences that posited the Hippodrome
as the navel of the Christian-Roman world, with the emperor as its oracle.

7. Front and back of the marble tablet used for playing with marbles, c. 500. Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

Other, simpler inhabitants of the city spent hours gathered around elaborate marble tables carved with slightly sloping paths for marbles bearing the colors of the teams [
fig. 7
]. The marbles always rolled down randomly toward the holes at the bottom, so the game required no skill and was ideal for anyone who enjoyed betting.

The amphitheater of the Kynêgion (comparable to Rome’s Coliseum) was used for hunting games that involved the killing of wild beasts such as stags—guilty only of being bigger than man—or lions, or the bears that Acacius had kept. Constantinople’s multifaceted ceremonial and entertainment industries had needed Acacius’s strong arms, as well as the arms of many tamers, veterinarians, physicians, nurses, cleaning and security personnel, cooks, grooms, and blacksmiths.

Society’s rigid division into ten different classes, designed for military purposes, placed the performers and the show-business laborers in a single category—the lowest one—at the very margin of social life. But this category was the highest in terms of fame: charioteers such as Faustinus, Constantine, Uranus, and Julian were celebrated by poets. Porphyrius, the greatest of charioteer heroes, had statues dedicated to him, and epigrams such as the following:

This Porphyrius was born in Africa, but brought up in Constantinople.

Victory crowned him by turns, and he wore the highest tokens of conquest on his head, from driving sometimes in one colour and sometimes in another.

For often he changed factions and often horses.

Being sometimes first, sometimes last, and sometimes between the two, He overcame both all his partisans and all his adversaries.
¹³

The games at the Hippodrome and the Kynêgion, theoretically regulated by consuls who for censturies had exercised only nominal power, were a triumph of pomp, wealth, and liberality. Dances, tournaments, hunting games (
venationes
in Latin), and generous donations offered entertainment and sustenance to the whole capital, and many jobs as well. The animals had to be groomed; the hunters (
venatores
) who killed them in the arena were trained to be agile and powerful marksmen; the choreographers planned dances; the charioteers practiced with their horses and chariots; and the city’s craftsmen turned out precious objects in ivory. Designed and carved in limited numbers, the prized ivory diptychs—a respected art form—celebrated the glories of the current consul for both the eyes of the power elite of the time and the pleasure of future generations of museum visitors [
fig. 8
].

Like a snapshot straight from the past, one diptych shows the consul seated on a throne, dressed in magnificent garments that are in and of themselves a statement of rank and power. In his right hand he waves the prize cloth to start the games. Below him, the performers, intentionally carved in a smaller scale, are shown in the usual postures of their daily tasks. They are male dancers and ballerinas, actors and actresses wearing theater masks, charioteers on their chariots, subjugated “barbarians,” hunters with their ropes, straps, and irons aiming at wild beasts. Do these figures represent the dream of a life that might please the consul in power? Or do they represent the nightmare of clerics such as Saint John Chrysostom?

On this particular diptych a Latin inscription—for Latin was still the administrative language of the empire—praised the consul for his career and his moral virtues. As emphasis, images beside the throne and at the top (the area symbolizing goodness and Heaven) portray Christ and the Virgin Mary with angels in flight, together with winged victories and the effigy of the ruling imperial couple. All of this denoted the consul’s role of guardian and protector, and it was no less religious or Christian for being set in the Hippodrome.

8. Ivory diptych of Anastasius, Constantinople, 517. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

Those ceremonies, those dreams, and those nightmares required the brute strength of men like Acacius; they required wild beasts; and they required the athleticism and dexterity of dancing masters and set designers. They also required administrative and political skills, the skills practiced by men such as Asterius.

Like Theodora’s father, Asterius worked for the Green team but held a much higher position. Technically, he was in charge of organizing
shows, hiring personnel, and managing funds. His name, of Greek origin, recalled the stars and the heavenly bodies, and he was a guiding star in the destiny of Acacius’s family. The new bear keeper of the Greens—who became the new man in the life of Theodora’s mother—would have to report to him, as Acacius had done. Indeed, Asterius might have chosen and promoted the man who was to succeed Acacius both in the bear cages and in the home of the widow and her orphan girls. We don’t know if Asterius received any compensation for this, and if he did, what kind. What we do know is that in Constantinople there were clear patron-client rules in the assignment of any job, and the case of Acacius’s widow was no exception.

While it’s not easy to distinguish between Asterius’s personal or personalized attentions and his official duties, we can depend on historical sources regarding the Green and Blue factions, although these do present problems of historical interpretation. For a long time, historians believed that belonging to one faction or the other implied an identification with ethnic, religious, or political groups, but recent research has shown otherwise, and indeed the two factions had important similarities. They were simply associations, partially financed by the empire and by private patrons, that attracted an enthusiastic following at the Hippodrome races, where each team sported a different color. Because of the institutional and ceremonial nature of all the spectacles, the factions had been directly entrusted with management of the shows. This was true not only in the capital but in other cities of the empire as well, where both the Greens and the Blues had built solidarity networks to assist their own; these were the opportunities that Theodora’s mother grasped. There were especially active organizations in leading metropolises such as Antioch, Alexandria, and—of course—the capital.

No information has survived about the man who took on the role of stepfather to the three orphan girls. He was less an individual than a function on the stage of history, his role being that of a replica, a “double,” as if his only task was to maintain Acacius’s position and income. So one could float many theories about his authority and status in a female household dominated by Acacius’s widow, especially with regard to the education of daughters who were hers alone.

+ + +

Females were encouraged to stay within the sheltering walls of the women’s quarters—the ancient gynoecium. The rare women seen on the street and in public had humble jobs such as innkeeper, washerwoman, or fryer, and were often the subject of unsavory rumors. But because of their age and, most of all, their low social level, little girls such as Acacius’s daughters probably played outdoors and in the street. In particular, Comito and Theodora, who were older, were probably allowed to leave their home (most likely an apartment in a multistory building where lower-class families lived, sometimes in promiscuous arrangements) and walk to the Kynêgion, where first their father and then their stepfather would show them the animals and invite them to offer morsels though the bars of the cages.

Although it was too early for Comito and Theodora to learn the proper conjugation of Greek verbs according to the rules of grammar (it was a costly education and, anyway, it would have been premature before the age of about ten), they could learn some forms of nonverbal communication from the man who knew the art of taming ferocious and frightening beasts before large crowds. The children could discover what kind of voice was best to soothe animals; not just bears but also horses, dogs, and colorful parrots imported from the East. Possibly, the words were short, one- or two-syllable interjections, sometimes with onomatopoeic sounds, sometimes articulated clearly, sometimes repeated like a lullaby. We know Greek interjections such as
my, ppy, gry
: childish phonetics that might become a secret language for animals. Undoubtedly, their visits to the Kynêgion could be useful for Comito’s and Theodora’s lives in the theater, for there they probably learned about using a peremptory voice, a proper posture, a controlling gesture.

Historical sources agree that once she became empress, Theodora preferred to wield power in secret, remote, inaccessible places, a preference born perhaps in the caves of the Kynêgion, where she would visit the cages containing the bears sent to Constantinople from Italy, Thrace, or Illyria.

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Some sources and popular folklore maintain that Theodora and her family were not originally from Constantinople but from Paphlagonia, at the farthest southeastern corner of the Black Sea or Pontos Euxeinos, or from the island of Cyprus, or even from the vast Syrian-Mesopotamian East, which Constantinople’s “Romans” were trying to wrest from Persia, their historical enemy. Close reading of these sources leads nowhere, so we must continue to consider that Theodora’s ancestral land, her native habitat, her ideal site, was the capital, in the spectacular shows and ceremonies of the Hippodrome and the Kynêgion, where profane spectacle mixed with religious ritual, the cult of personality with the flattery of the masses, violence with games, imperial majesty with the homage of subjects.

It was a world indisputably linked to her family. This is the context in which her prodigious ascent was to take place.