Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (54 page)

6
. S. Ellis, “The ‘Palace of the Dux’ at Apollonia, and Related Houses,” in
Cyrenaica in Antiquity
, ed. G. Barker, J. Lloyd, and J. Reynolds (Oxford: B.A.R. International Series, 1985), pp. 15–25.

7
.
Parrhêsia
in Greek (see Glossary).

8
.
Secret History
12.30.

9
. Theodora’s peregrinations through the Levant from Pentapolis to Constantinople can also be read as a late-antiquity, Christianized, female version of the ancient returning-home narratives (
nostoi
) of the Homeric heroes of Troy, which loomed so large in the collective imagination of antiquity and late antiquity.

10
. Immortalized in a short story by Arno Schmidt in
Kosmas, oder vom Berg des Nordens
(Krefeld: Agis, 1955). He may have reached the Indies, and for that reason was called “Indicopleustes.”

11
. See supra, introduction, note 1 (
autopsia
) and Glossary.

12
. As in the earliest Greek etymology of the verb forms
eidon
(“I saw”) and
oida
(“I have seen,” therefore “I know”).

13
.
Secret History
9.27 foll. Here again I depart from Dewing’s Loeb Classical Library translation: the Greek text allows interpretation as “the devil” or as “Heaven” (Dewing’s choice).

1
. Authors such as Zacharias Scholasticus; John of Amida, bishop of Ephesus in the sixth century; and Michael the Syrian, patriarch of Antioch in the twelfth century.

2
. A very clear statement of Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s belief about the resolution of two natures into one in the Incarnated Word is in
Epist. XL, Ad Acacium Melitinae
(Migne,
Patrologia Graeca
, vol. LXXVII, coll. 192 foll.).

3
.
Gospel according to Matthew
19.6.

4
. Copt (see Glossary).

5
.
Secret History
12.28.

6
. Ibid. 12.30.

7
. Baronio, op. cit.

1
.
Secret History
12.28.

2
. Ibid. 12.27. Dewing’s translation says he was “passionately devoted to the joys of Aphrodite,” but the Greek text allows my interpretation.

3
. Ibid. 12.18 foll.

4
. George Ostrogorsky,
History of the Byzantine State
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969).

5
.
Secret History
12.24–26.

6
. Ibid. 12.20–22.

7
. Ibid. 12.23.

8
.
Testamentum Salomonis
9.

9
.
Secret History
12.14; cf. Homer,
The Iliad
V 31.

10
.
Secret History
30.34.

11
.
Wars
I 17.37.

12
.
Secret History
12.29.

13
.
Secret History
12.30.

14
. Ibid.

15
. Ibid. 12.31 foll.

16
. If, as we think, this happened in the year
A.D.
521, the message was probably dated 570, since it was the custom in Antioch to consider that year 1 was our
B.C.
49, the date of Julius Caesar’s victory at Pharsalus. (In reality, the battle took place in 48
B.C.
)

17
.
Secret History
27.6.

18
. Ibid. 8.12.

19
. Or
excubitor
; see Glossary.

20
. Ibid. 6.9.

21
. See Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (tenth century),
De Cerimoniis Aulae Byzantinae
, I, pp. 429 foll. Reiske.

22
. Robert Browning,
Justinian and Theodora
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p. 39.

23
.
Secret History
6.27.

24
. Ibid.

25
. Ibid. 6.20.

26
. See
Novella
30.11 (
usque ad utriusque oceani fines
).

27
. Dante Alighieri,
Paradiso
VI 10.

28
. A church was later built on the “foundations of Theodora’s house”: the church of Saint Panteleëmon (“the All Merciful”).

29
. On this issue see Raymond Janin,
La géographie ecclésiastique de l’empire byzantin, I, Le siège de Constantinople et le patriarcat oecuménique, III, Les églises et les monastères
(The Ecclesiastical Geography of the Byzantine Empire, I, The See of Constantinople and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, III, The Churches and the Monasteries) (Paris: Publications de l’Institut Francais d’études Byzantines, 1969), 387 foll.

30
.
Isaiah
34.4;
Apocalypse
6.14.

31
.
Song of Songs
(King James version) 1.2–4.

32
. Ibid.

1
. The reference to Pietro Aretino (see also above, p. 21) is not only to his notorious 1534–36 work, which is called “Playful and Pleasing Conversations”; in him, as in Procopius, we find different literary veins that are sometimes at variance with each other, but nonetheless all “authentic.”

2
.
Secret History
9.30;
Wars
I 25.4.

3
.
Secret History
9.15.

4
. Homer,
The Odyssey
XVII 218, now a proverb.

5
.
Secret History
9.32.

6
. Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
, XI 12.

7
. Philostratus,
Lives of the Sophists
561 (p. 68.30 foll. Kayser).

8
. Ammianus Marcellinus,
Rerum gestarum libri
XVI 10.10.

9
. Horace,
Odes
III 30.1.

10
.
Secret History
4.44 foll.;
Wars
VIII 12.34.

11
.
Secret History
9.51.

12
. Ibid. 10.2 foll.

13
. The Roman poet Tibullus captured the feeling in an elegy: “Quisquis amore tenetur, eat tutusque sacerque / Qualibet, insidias non timuisse decet (“He who is a slave of love can walk as assuredly as a god, / Go everywhere, and have nothing to fear”).
Tibullus
I 2.29 foll.

14
.
Secret History
9.33.

15
. Ibid. 7.9 foll.

16
. Ibid. 7.15.

17
. Ibid. 7.23.

18
. Ibid. 17.35.

19
. Ernst Kitzinger,
Byzantine Art in the Making: Main Lines of Stylistic Development in Mediterranean Art, 3rd–7th Century
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).

20
. See the life of Saint Samson Hospitaler in
Acta Sanctorum, Iunii,
V (Antwerp, 1709), pp. 267, line 5 foll.

21
.
Secret History
10.13.

22
. It is, therefore, unlikely that their private conversations as lovers, later as husband and wife, and finally as emperor and empress, were as long and elaborate as Harold Lamb imagined them in his psychological portrait
Theodora and the Emperor
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952).

23
.
Novella
30 (536), pref.

24
. Browning, op. cit., p. 69.

25
. Giorgio Ravegnani,
La corte di Giustiniano
(Justinian’s Court) (Rome: Jouvence, 1989), p. 48.

26
.
Secret History
9.53. Dewing read the Greek as “They took over the Roman Empire,” but I read it as “received.”

1
. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, op. cit., I, proem (p. 5 Reiske).

2
.
Secret History
7.7.

3
. Ibid. 19.1–3.

4
. See
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
, ed. A. P. Kazhdan et al. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), vol. I, p. 364 foll., under entry “Caesaropapism”; Gilbert Dagron,
Empereur et prêtre: Étude sur le “césaropapism” byzantin
(Emperor and Priest: Study on Byzantine “Caesaropapism”) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996).

5
. “De haereticis et Manichaeis et Samaritis,” in
Codex Justinianus
I 5.12.

6
. Ibid. I 5 12.3.

7
.
Secret History
11.23.

8
. Ibid.

9
.
Codex Justinianus
I 27 1.1.

10
.
Secret History
11.29.

11
. See Averil Cameron, “The Last Days of the Academy at Athens,”
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society
, 195, New Series 15 (1969): 7–30.

12
. Mango, op. cit., chapter 4.

13
.
Collectio Avellana
125, 11.

14
. Theodoric died plagued with nightmares that have become legendary in literature. See
Wars
V 1.35 foll.

15
.
Secret History
15.25–35.

16
.
Wars
II 3.26.

17
. Ibid. III 11.21. He was described as coming from a sort of Balkan “Germany,” halfway between “Thrace and Illyricum.”

18
.
Secret History
1.11.

19
. Ibid. 1.12.

20
. Ibid. 1.19 foll.

21
. Ibid. 1.13.

22
.
Wars
V 3.30.

23
.
Secret History
16.5.

24
. Ibid. 16.1–5.

25
. Ibid. 30.21–6.

26
. Cyril of Scythopolis,
Vita S. Sabae
71 (pp. 173.28–174.12, ed. Schwartz).

27
. John of Ephesus,
Lives of the Eastern Saints
, ed. E. W. Brooks, II, pp. 630 foll. (
Patrologia Orientalis
XVIII 4).

28
.
Matthew
27.54;
Mark
15.39;
Luke
23.47.

1
.
Secret History
8.5

2
.
Wars
I 24.16.

3
.
Praefectus praetorio per Orientem
(see Glossary).

4
. The
res publica
(see Glossary).

5
.
Secret History
30.11.

6
. Ibid. 30.6; 30.11.

7
.
Civis romani
(see Glossary entry for
cives romanus
).

8
. Theophanes Confessor,
Chronographia,
p. 183.9 De Boor.

9
.
Wars
I 24.6.

10
. Ibid. I 24.3 foll.

11
. Aristotle,
Politics
1728 b 19 passim, now a proverb.

12
. Cf.
Secret History
8.3.

13
. Epicurus, fr. 551 Usener, now a proverb.

14
. Homer,
The Iliad
XXII 305.

15
.
Wars
I 24.33–37.

16
.
Apocalypse
2.11 passim.

17
. Isocrates,
Archidamus
45. See on this matter B. Baldwin, “An Aphorism in Procopius,”
Rheinisches Museum für Philologie
, 125 (1982): 309–11.

18
.
Wars
I 24.58.

19
.
Greek Anthology
VII 591.

20
. Ibid. VII 592.

21
. There was a tradition of women’s
parrhêsia
in Byzantium after Theodora: her niece Sophia was a particularly good example. Another example, hundreds of years later, was a sophisticated historian who was “born to the purple,” Anna Comnena.

22
.
Magister militum
(see Glossary).

1
. Anthony the Hermit, the father of all monks, lived to the age of 105 (he died in
A.D.
356) and was told by God when he was to die.
Life of Antony
89.2.

2
.
Psalms
129(130).1.

3
.
Secret History
10.14. Even the famous passage from Evagrius,
History of the Church
IV 10, about the different theological views of the two rulers, does not attack the idea of a deep cooperation, for which reason the twelfth-century chronicler John Zonaras wrote of a paradoxical “double monarchy.”

4
. Ibid. 18.21. The passage calls it “a Scythian wilderness.”

5
. Winston Churchill; see Martin Gilbert,
Churchill: A Life,
(London: Heinemann, 1991), p. 33.

6
.
Secret History
3.21.

7
. Ibid. 3.12.

8
. Ibid. 16.18.

9
. Ibid. 16.21.

10
.
Codex Justinianius
VII 37.3 (Nov. 27, 531),
titl.
, where the text mentions a Peter, “vir inlustris, curator divinae domus serenissimae Augustae” (“an excellent man, administrator of the private treasury of the most serene Augusta”). See
domus divina
in Glossary. See also, for ex.,
Novellae
38, 5 (Pontus), XXIX, 4 (Paphlagonia), XXX, 6 (Cappadocia).

11
.
Secret History
2.35.

12
. Gregory of Nazianzus,
Epithalamium ad Olympiadem
, vols. 23, 12, 40 (Migne,
Patrologia Graeca
, vol. XXXVII, cols. 1543–45).

13
. Procopius,
Buildings
I 11.9.

14
. Had Theodora been a literary person, to the prospect of a cure she might have added seductions such as those inspired by the famous poem of Catullus (No. 46) about spring in Bithynia, “Now spring brings back balmy warmth” (“Iam ver egelidos refert tepores”), trans. Francis Warre Cornish, in
Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris,
2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1995). Here I am not the first to follow Theophanes Confessor, p. 168.8 ff. De Boor instead of John Malalas, p. 368.49 ff. Thurn.