Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (55 page)
Read Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) Online
Authors: Paolo Cesaretti
15
.
Codex Justinianus
I 1 6.6.
16
.
Wars
III 10.20.
17
.
Secret History
1.15
18
. Ibid. 1.17.
19
.
Imperator Caesar Flavius Justinianus Alamannicus Gothicus Francicus Germanicus Anticus Alanicus Vandalicus Africanus pius felix inclitus victor ac triumphator semper Augustus
.
20
.
Institutiones
, proem 1.
21
.
Digest, Tanta/Dedôken,
pref.
22
.
Ecclesiastes
1.2 passim.
23
.
Wars
IV 9.11.
24
.
Ecclesiastes
, 3.6.
25
. Ibid. 2.9.
26
. Ibid. 1.14.
27
. Procopius’s audience also caught several delightful literary allusions, including the famous passage in Polybius about Scipio Emilianus weeping over Carthage after he himself had set it ablaze in 146
B.C.
See Polybius,
The Histories
XXXVIII 21–22 (22 = Appianus,
Punica
132).
28
.
Secret History
1.18.
:
“Our Most Pious Consort Given Us by God”
1
.
Wars
VII 31.14.
2
. Dido in Virgil,
Aeneid
I 630.
3
.
Digesto
XXIV 1 32.13 (Ulpianus).
4
. John Malalas,
Chronographia
XVIII 214 (p. 368 Thurn).
5
.
Buildings
I 9.6.
6
.
Secret History
17.36.
7
. See Ibid. 17.24.
8
. See in any case the important G. E. M. de Ste. Croix,
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, 2nd ed.
(London: Duckworth, 1983), where there is a curious mention of Theodora at p. 391 and p. 631 (n. 52). Marxism has always been more concerned with the dialectic between slaves and free men, and with mythologizing the Spartans and the Gracchi.
9
.
Novella
8,
Iusiurandum
.
10
. Ibid. pref.
11
. Ibid. 8.1.
12
.
Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum
IV 8639 (read
akteanôn
for
kteanôn
). I wish to mention here the essay by S. G. Mercati, “Sulla tradizione manoscritta dell’iscrizione nel fregio dei SS. Sergio e Bacco a Costantinopoli” (On the Handwriting Tradition of the Inscription in the Frieze of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople),
Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia
3 (1925): 197–205.
13
.
Secret History
16.11. Dewing read the Greek as “maltreat,” but I read it as “torture.”
14
.
Daimoniôs erôsa
, ibid.;
erastheisa ektopôs
(Antonina), ibid. 1.17;
êrasthê erôta exaision
(Justinian), ibid. 9.30.
15
. Ferdinand Gregorovious,
Athenaïs. Geschichte einer byzantinischen kaiserin,
(Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1882).
16
. See
The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu
, trans. by R.-H. Charles (London and Oxford, 1916), p. 144.
17
.
Secret History
16.1. Dewing read the Greek as “schemed to lie in wait for the woman even unto her death,” but I read it as “schemed to lay a fatal trap for her.”
18
. Ibid. 9.26.
19
. The
Life
of the “patrician” Anastasia can be read in
Propylaeum ad Acta Sanctorum Novembris, Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae,
ed. H. Delehaye (Brussels, 1902), c. 565.8 foll.
20
.
Liber Pontificalis
LVIII 3 (Agapitus).
21
.
Matthew
10:16.
22
. John of Ephesus, op. cit., II, p. 677.
23
. Ibid. I, pp. 26 foll. (
Patrologia Orientalis
XVII I).
24
.
Secret History
13.12.
25
.
Liber Pontificalis
LX 6 (Silverius).
:
“Inhuman cruelty”
1
. Cf.
Liber Pontificalis
LX 7 (Silverius).
2
. Ibid. LX 8.
3
.
Wars
I 25.13.
4
. “Ex duabus naturis compositum unum,” Liberatus,
Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum
22 (p. 138.8 Schwartz).
5
.
Wars
VI 21.6.
6
. Ibid. VI 22.15.
7
. Ibid. I 26.3.
8
. Ibid. II 14.1 foll.
9
. Ibid. II 4.1 foll.
10
. Ibid. VI 29.11.
11
. Ibid. VI 29.34.
12
. Ibid. VI 29.32.
13
.
Buildings
I 10.17.
14
.
Wars
III 13.12 foll.
15
. Cf.
Sappho
1.2.
16
.
Wars
I 25.16.
17
. Ibid. VI 4.20 foll.
18
. Ibid. I 25.27.
19
.
Secret History
15.1.
20
. Ibid. 15.5.
21
.
Res publica
and
res privata
(see Glossary).
22
.
Secret History
3.2.
23
. Ibid. 2.13.
24
. Ibid. 2.11.
25
.
Wars
II 19.36.
26
.
Secret History
2.21.
27
. Ibid., 3.6.
28
. Ibid. 3.2.
29
. Ibid. 3.15–18.
30
. Ibid. 3.26.
31
. Ibid. 3.20.
32
.
Liber Pontificalis
LXI 3 (Vigilius).
:
“Solomon, I Have Conquered You!”
1
. John the Lydian,
De magistratibus populi romani
III 69 (p. 263.14 Bekker).
2
. Cf.
Wars
IV 6.5–9.
3
. Cf. Justinian’s
Confessio rectae fidei
(Migne,
Patrologia Graeca,
vol. LXXXVI, col. 993).
4
. Cf., for ex., Paul the Silentiary,
Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae
56.
5
.
Psalms
145(146).3.
6
.
Buildings
I 10.2.
7
. Enrico Zanini,
Introduzione all’archeologia bizantina
(Introduction to Byzantine Archaeology) (Rome: Nuova Italia scientifica, 1994), p. 95.
8
. Gibbon, op. cit., vol. 2.
9
.
Buildings
I 11.9.
10
. Ibid. I 2.5–12.
11
. Following Malachi 3.20.
12
. Cyril Mango,
Byzantine Architecture
, (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), p. 98.
13
. Gregory of Tours,
Libri Miraculorum
I,
De gloria martyrum
103 (Migne,
Patrologia Latina
, vol. LXXI, cols. 793–95).
14
. See Robert Byron,
The Byzantine Achievement
(London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1929), where the comparison is more a confrontation, all in favor of Holy Wisdom.
15
.
Kat’onar: Narratio de Sancta Sophia
8 (p. 83.1 foll. Praeger).
16
.
Buildings
I 1.46.
17
.
Narratio de Sancta Sophia
10 (pp. 86.19–24; 87.19–21; 88.4 foll. Praeger).
18
.
Buildings
I 1.30.
19
.
Narratio de Sancta Sophia
26 (p. 102.10 foll. Praeger).
20
. Cyril Mango,
Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), p. 262.
21
.
Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum
IV 8643.
22
.
Narratio de Sancta Sophia
27 (p. 105.4 foll. Praeger).
23
. Cf. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics
1166a 31, now a proverb.
24
. See Tursun Beg and Ibn Kemâl, “Storia del signore della conquista” (History of the Conquering Lord), in
La caduta di Costantinopoli
(The Fall of Constantinople), ed. A. Pertusi, vol. I.
Le testimonianze dei contemporanei
(Contemporary Witnesses) (Milan: Mondadori-Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1976), pp. 330, 466.
25
. See Margherita Guarducci,
La più antica catechesi figurata: Il grande musaico della Basilica di Gasr Elbia in Cirenaica
(The Oldest Figured
Catechesis: The Great Mosaic of the Gasr Elbia Basilica in Cyrenaica), “Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei,” year 372, Remembrances of the Class of Moral, Historical and Philological Sciences, series VIII, XVIII (1975), fascimile 7, pp. 659–86.
:
“God … Entrusted These Lands to the Demons of Violence”
1
. For Agathias’s poetry see R. C. McCail, “The Erotic and Ascetic Poetry of Agathias Scholasticus”
Byzantion
41 (1971): 205–267. “Romance in the shadow of power,” was a favorite theme of Georg Lukács (1885–1971).
2
. See Assunta Nagl, entry “Theodora,” in
Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft
, Neue Bearbeitung, begonnen von G. Wissowa … hsgb. Von W. Kroll–K. Mittelhaus, Zweite Reihe, V 2 (Stuttgart: Meltzer Verlag, 1934), col. 1790.
3
.
Secret History
18.37.
4
.
Wars
II 22.29.
5
. Ibid. II 22.17.
6
. Evagrius Scholasticus,
Church History
IV 29 (p. 178.2 foll. Bidez-Parmentier).
7
.
Wars
II 23.11.
8
.
Secret History
16.14.
9
. Ibid. 4.7.
10
. Ibid. 4.8–10.
11
. Ibid. 16.12.
12
. Ibid. 4.12.
13
. Ibid. 4.11.
14
. Ibid. 4.16.
15
. Ibid. 4.21.
16
. Ibid. 4.27 foll.
17
. Ibid. 4.30.
18
.
Codex Justinianus
I 27 1.1.
19
. The solemn majesty of the term “Consul Romanus” inspired a great passage in Thomas de Quincey’s
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
.
:
“Loyal to Her Family”
1
.
Autokratôr
(see Glossary).
2
.
Wars
VII 22.8.
3
. Ibid. VII 22.7.
4
. Ibid. VII 22.17.
5
.
Secret History
17.28.
6
.
Magister militum
(see Glossary).
7
. In his role as
dux
(see Glossary), Gontharis reported directly to Areobindus.
8
.
Wars
VII 31.6.
9
. Ibid. VII 31.9.
10
. Ibid. VII 31.15.
11
.
Greek Anthology
VII 590.
12
.
Secret History
19.5.
13
. See “Ioannes 90,” in
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire,
ed. J. R. Martindale, III A (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 676 foll.
14
.
Secret History
5.22.
15
. Ibid. 5.21.
16
. Ibid. 5.22. Dewing’s translation was “Ioannes,” but I prefer “John” here.
17
. Ibid.5.20.
18
. Ibid. 5.21.
19
. Ibid. 5.17.
20
. Corippus,
In laudem Iustini
I 272 foll.
21
. See Averil Cameron,
An Emperor’s Abdication, Byzantinoslavica
37 (1976): 161–67.
:
“Her Next Stage”
1
. Augustine,
Sermo 81
(Migne,
Patrologia Latina
, vol. XXXVIII, col. 505).
2
.
Daniel
9.27 passim.
3
. John of Ephesus, op. cit., II, pp. 626, 635 foll.
4
.
Wars
II 28.41 foll.
5
. Ibid. VIII 11.9.
6
. John Malalas,
Chronographia
XVIII 103 (p. 410 Thurn).
7
. See the
Life
of the “patrician” Anastasia, op. cit., c. 565.16 foll.
8
. On the specific issue of the Egyptian village of Aphroditos, which had “entrusted itself” to Theodora, see R. G. Salomon, “A Papyrus from Constantinople,”
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
34 (1948): 98–108.
1
. Paul the Silentiary,
Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae
59 foll.: “for the good of the surviving ruler and his subjects” (v. 64).
2
.
Secret History
18.13; 18.21 (this is the passage that calls it “a Scythian wilderness”).
3
. The original text is “Ite igitur faciles per gaudia vestra, Quirites / et Narsim resonans plausus ubique canat.” From
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
VI (1199).
4
. Gregory the Great,
Epistulae
II 47.
5
. For the interpretation and identification of the Ravenna mosaics, see also Irina Andreescu-Treadgold and W. Treadgold, “Procopius and the Imperial Panels of S. Vitale,”
Art Bulletin
69 (1997): 708–23.
6
. Kitzinger, op. cit, p. 88.
