was still a comparatively new religion, even if we accept the
traditional chronology of the early world; and in her time the experts
had not yet settled what were its tenets. The only thing that was
perfectly clear to each theological expert was that if you did not
agree with his own particular belief you were eternally damned,
and that it was his duty to put you out of your sin immediately by
cutting your throat lest you should inveigle some other foolish
fellows into the broad path that leadeth to destruction. Theodora was
a Monophysite--that is to say, she believed that Christ had only one
soul, whereas it was well known to the experts that He had two. Nothing
could be too dreadful for the miscreants who believed otherwise. It
was gleefully narrated how Nestorius, who had started the abominable
doctrine of Monophysm, had his tongue eaten by worms--that is, died
of cancer of the tongue; and it is not incredible that Procopius, who
was a Synodist or Orthodox believer, may have invented the libels
and secretly written them down in order to show the world of after
days what sort of monster his heretical Empress really was, wear she
never so many gorgeous ropes of pearls in her Imperial panoply. It
is difficult to place any bounds to theological hatred--or to human
credulity for that matter. The whole question of the nature of Christ
was settled by the Sixth Œcumenical Council about a hundred and fifty
years later, when it was finally decided that Christ had two natures,
or souls, or wills--however we interpret the Greek word Φύσις--each
separate and indivisible in one body. This, and the Holy Trinity, are
still, I understand, part of Christian theology, and appear to be
equally comprehensible to the ordinary scientific man.
But it is difficult to get over a tradition of the eleventh
century--that is to say, six hundred years before Procopius’ _Annals_
saw the light--that Justinian married “Theodora of the Brothel.”
Although Mallet showed that Procopius had strong personal reasons for
libelling his Empress, one cannot help feeling that there must be
something in the stories after all.
Once she had assumed the marvellous crown, with its ropes of pearls,
in which she and many of the other Empresses are depicted, her whole
character is said to have changed. Though her enemies accused her of
cruelty, greed, treachery, and dishonesty--and no accounts from her
friends have survived--yet they were forced to admit that she acted
with propriety and amazing courage; and no word was spoken against
her virtue. In the Nika riots, which at one time threatened to depose
Justinian, she saved the Empire. Justinian, his ministers, and even the
hero Belisarius, were for flight, the mob howling in the square outside
the Palace, when Theodora spoke up in gallant words which I paraphrase.
She began by saying how indecorous it was for a woman to interfere in
matters of State, and then went on to say: “We must all die some time,
but it is a terrible thing to have been an Emperor and to give up
Empire before one dies. The purple is a noble winding-sheet! Flight is
easy, my Emperor--there are the steps of the quay--there are the ships
waiting for you; you have money to live on. But in very shame you will
taste the bitterness of death in life if you flee! I, your wife, will
not flee, but will stay behind without you, and will die an Empress
rather than live a coward!” Proud little woman--could that woman have
been a prostitute selling her body in degradation? It seems impossible.
The Council, regaining courage, decided for fighting; armed bands were
sent forth into the square; the riot was suppressed with Oriental
ferocity; and the Roman Empire lasted nearly a thousand years more.
“Toujours l’audace,” as Danton said nearly thirteen hundred years
later, when, however, he was not in imminent peril himself.
[Illustration: [_Photo, Alinari._
THE EMPRESS THEODORA.
From a Mosaic (Ravenna, San Vitale).]
In person Theodora was small, slender, graceful, and exquisitely
beautiful; her complexion was pale, her eyes singularly expressive:
the mosaic at Ravenna, in stiff and formal art, gives some evidence of
character and beauty. She was accused, as I have said, of barbarous
cruelties, of herself applying the torture in her underground private
prisons; the stories are contradictory and inconsistent, but one story
appears to be historical: “If you do not obey me I swear by the living
God that I will have you flayed alive,” she said with gentle grace
to her attendants. It is said that her illegitimate son, whom she
had disposed of by putting him with his terrified father in Arabia,
gained possession of the secret of his birth, and boldly repaired to
Constantinople in the belief that her maternal affection would lead her
to pardon him for the offence of having been born, and that thereby
he would attain to riches and greatness; but the story goes that he
was never seen again after he entered the Palace. Possibly the story
is of the nature of romance. She dearly longed for a legitimate son,
and the faithful united in prayer to that end; but the sole fruit of
her marriage was a daughter, and even this girl was said to have been
conceived before the wedding.
When she was still adolescent she went for a tour in the Levant with
a wealthy Tyrian named Ecebolus, who, disgusted by her violent temper
or her universal _charity_, to use Gibbon’s sly phrase, deserted her
and left her penniless at Alexandria. The men of Egypt appear to have
been less erotic than the Greeks, for she remained in dire poverty,
working her way back home by way of the shores of the Euxine. In Egypt
she had become a Monophysite; and when she reached Constantinople it
is said that she sat in a pleasant home outside the Palace and plied
her spinning-wheel so virtuously that Justinian fell in love with her
and ultimately married her, having first tried her charms. Passing
over the obvious difficulty that a girl of the charm and immorality
of Procopius’ Theodora need never have gone in poverty while men were
men, the wonder naturally arises whether the girl who went away with
Ecebolus was the same as she who returned poor and alone and sat so
virtuously at her spinning-wheel as to bewitch Justinian. Mistaken
identity, or rather loss of identity, must have been commoner in
those days than these when the printing-press and rapid postal and
telegraphic communication make it harder to lose one’s self. However,
granting that there was no confusion of identity, one may believe--if
one tries hard enough--that she was befriended by the Monophysites in
Egypt, and may have “found religion” at their hands, and, by suffering
poverty and oppression with them, had learned to sympathize with the
under-world. Though the story may seem to be more suitable for an
American picture-show than for sober history, still one must admit that
it is not absolutely impossible. When she became great and famous she
did not forget those who had rescued her in the days of her affliction;
and her influence on Justinian is to be seen in the “feminism” which is
so marked in his code. What makes it not impossible is the well-known
fact that violent sexuality is in some way related to powerful
religious instincts; and the theory that the passions which had led
Theodora to the brothel may, when her mind was turned to religion, have
led her to be a Puritan, is rather attractive. But nothing is said
about Theodora which has not in some way been twisted to her infamy.
The only certain fact about her is that she had enormous influence over
her husband, and it is difficult to believe that a great and able man
like Justinian could have entirely yielded his will to the will of a
cruel and treacherous harlot. The idea certainly opens an unexpectedly
wide vista of masculine weakness.
She used this influence in helping to frame the great Code of
Justinian, which has remained the standard of law in many countries
ever since. A remarkable feature about this code is that, while it
is severe on the keepers of brothels, it is mild to leniency on the
unhappy women who prostituted themselves for these keepers’ benefit.
The idea that a prostitute is a woman, with rights and feelings like
any other woman, appears to have been unknown until Theodora had it
introduced into the code of laws which perpetuates her husband’s
memory. One night she collected all the prostitutes in Constantinople,
five hundred in all--were there only five hundred in that vast
Oriental city?--shut them up in a palace on the Asiatic shore of the
Bosphorus, and expected them to reform as she had reformed, but with
less success; as our modern experience would lead us to expect. The
girls grew morbidly unhappy, and many threw themselves into the sea.
Even in a lock hospital we know how difficult it is to reclaim girls
to whom sexual intercourse has become a matter of daily habit, and if
Theodora’s well-meant attempt failed we must at least give her credit
for an attempt at an idealistic impossibility. These girls did not
have the prospect of marrying an Emperor; no pearl-stringed crown was
dangled before their fingers for the grasping. Poor human nature is
not so easily kept on the strait and narrow path as Theodora thought.
Throughout her life she seems to have had great sympathy for the
poor and the oppressed, and one feels with Edward Foord that one can
forgive her a great deal. We must not forget that her husband called
her his “honoured wife,” his “gift from God,” and his “sweet delight”;
and spoke most gratefully of her interest and assistance in framing
his great code of laws. Was her humanitarianism, her sympathy with
down-trodden women, the result of her own sad past experience? To think
so would be to turn her pity towards vice into an argument against her
own virtue, and I shrink from doing so. Let us rather believe that she
really did perceive how terribly the Fates have loaded the dice against
women, and that she did what she could to make their paths easier
through this earth on which we have no continuing city.
Her health gave her a great deal of trouble, and she spent many months
of every year in her beautiful villas on the shores of the Sea of
Marmora and the Bosphorus. She remained in bed most of every day,
rising late, and retiring early. To Procopius and the Synodists these
habits were naturally signs of Oriental weakness and luxury; but may
not the poor lady have been really ill? She visited several famous
baths in search of health, and we have a vivid account of her journey
through Bithynia on her way to the hot springs of the Pythian Apollo
near Brusa.
We have no evidence as to the nature of her illness. Her early life,
of course, suggests some venereal trouble, and it is interesting
to inquire into the position of the various venereal diseases at
that time. Syphilis I think we may rule out of court; for it is now
generally believed that that disease was not known in Europe until
after the return of Columbus’ men from the West Indian islands. Some of
the bones of Egypt were thought to show signs of syphilitic invasion
until it was shown by Elliott Smith that similar markings are caused
by insects; and no indubitable syphilitic lesion has ever been found
in any of the mummies. If syphilis did really occur in European
antiquity, it must have been exceedingly rare and have differed widely
in its pathological effects from the disease which is so common
and destructive to-day; that is to say, in spite of certain German
enthusiasts, it could not have been syphilis.
But gonorrhœa is a very old story, and was undoubtedly prevalent in the
ancient world. Luys indeed says that gonorrhœa is as old as mankind,
and was named by Galen himself, though regular physicians and surgeons
scorned to treat it. It is strange that there is so little reference to
this disease in the vast amount of pornographic literature which has
come down to us. Martial, for instance, or Ovid; nothing would seem too
obscene to have passed by their salacious minds; yet neither of them so
much as hint that such a thing as gonorrhœa existed. But it is possible
that such a disease might have been among the things unlucky or “tabu.”
All nations and all ages have been more or less under the influence
of tabu, which ranges from influence on the most trivial matters to
settlement of the gravest. Thus, many men would almost rather die than
walk abroad in a frock coat and tan boots, or, still more dreadful, in
a frock coat and Homburg hat, though that freakish costume appears to
be common enough in America. In this matter we are under the influence
of tabu--the thing which prevents us, or should prevent us, from eating
peas with our knife, or making unseemly noises when we eat soup, or
playing a funeral march at a cheerful social gathering. In all these
things the idea of _nefas_--unlucky--seems more or less to enter;
similarly we do not like to walk under a ladder lest a paint-pot should
fall upon us. Many people hate to mention the dread word “death,” lest
that should untimely be their portion. Just so possibly a licentious
man like Ovid may have been swayed by some such fear, and he may have
refrained from writing about the horrid disease which he must have
known was ever waiting for him.
But though it may seem to have been impossible that any prostitute
should have escaped gonorrhœa in Byzantium, just as it is impossible
in modern London or Sydney, yet there is no evidence that Theodora so
suffered; what hints we have, if they weigh on either side at all, seem
to make it unlikely. She had a child after her marriage with Justinian,
though women who have had untreated gonorrhœa are very frequently or
generally sterile. Nor is there any evidence that Justinian ever had
any serious illness except the bubonic plague, from which he suffered,
and recovered, during the great epidemic of 546. I assume that the
buboes from which he doubtless suffered at that time were not venereal
but were the ordinary buboes of plague. He had been Theodora’s husband
for many years before that terrible year in which the plague swept away
about a third of the population of the Roman Empire, where it had been
simmering ever since the time of Marcus Aurelius. If Theodora really
had gonorrhœa, Justinian must have caught it, and it is unlikely that
he would have called her his “honoured wife.”
A more probable explanation of her continued ill-health might be
that she became septic at her confinement, when the unwanted girl
was born. When the Byzantines spoke of a child as being “born in the
purple,” they spoke literally, for the Roman Empress was always sent
to a “porphyry palace” on the Bosphorus for her confinement; and once
there she had access to less good treatment than is available for
any sempstress to-day. It is impossible to suppose that the porphyry
palace--the “purple house”--ever became infected with puerperal sepsis
because there was never more than one confinement going on at a time
within its walls, and that only at long intervals. Still, there must
have been a great many septic confinements and unrecorded female
misery from their results among the women of that early world; and
that must be remembered when we consider the extraordinarily small
birth-rate of the Imperial families during so many centuries. Had the
Roman Emperors been able to point to strong sons to inherit their
glories, possibly the history of the Empire would have been less
turbulent. A Greek or Roman Lister might have altered the history of
the world by giving security of succession to the Imperial despot.
After all, it is idle to speculate on Theodora’s illness, and it does
not much matter. She has long gone to her account, poor fascinating
creature; all her beauty and wit and eager vivacity are as though
they had never been save for their influence upon her husband’s laws.
Theodora is the standing example of woman’s fate to achieve results
through the agency of some man.
She died of cancer, and died young. There is no record of the original
site of the cancer; the ecclesiastic who records the glad tidings
merely relates joyfully that it was diffused throughout her body, as
was only right and proper in one who differed from him in religious
opinions. It is generally thought that it started in the breast. No
doubt this is a modern guess, though of course cancer of the breast
is notorious for the way in which its secondary growths spread through
liver, lungs, bones, neck, spine, and so forth; and there is little
reason to suppose that the guess is incorrect. After trying all the
usual remedies for “lumps,” her physicians determined to send her to
the baths of Brusa, famous in miraculous cure. There were two large
iron and two large sulphur springs, besides smaller ones; and people
generally went there in spring and early summer when the earth was
gaily carpeted with the myriad flowers that spring up and fade before
the heat of the Mediterranean July. May we infer from the choice of a
sulphur bath that the cancer had already invaded the skin? Possibly.
Such a horror may have been the determining factor which induced the
Empress and her physicians to travel afield. But if so, surely the
recording priest missed a chance of rejoicing; for he does not tell us
the glad news. All over Bithynia and the Troad there were, and are, hot
mineral springs; Homer relates how one hot spring and a cold gushed
from beneath the walls of Troy itself. The girls of Troy used to wash
their clothes in the hot spring whenever Agamemnon would let them.
When Theodora went to Brusa she was accompanied by a retinue of four
thousand, and Heaven resounded with the prayers of the Monophysites;
but the Orthodox refused to pray for the recovery of so infamous a
heretic, just as they had refused to join in her prayers for a son.
Theodora met with little loving-kindness on this earth after she had
left Egypt; possibly the world repaid her with what it received from
her.
The sanctuaries of Asklepios were the great centres of Greek and Roman
healing, and the treatment there was both mental and physical. The
temples were generally built in charming localities, where everything
was peace and loveliness; the patients lay in beds in beautiful
colonnades, and to them, last thing at night, priests delivered restful
and touching services; when sleep came upon them they dreamt, and
the dreams were looked upon as the voice of God; they followed His
instructions and were cured. They were not cured, however, if they had
cancer. One Ælius Aristides has left us a vivid--and unconsciously
amusing--account of his adventures in search of health; he seems to
have been a neurotic man who ultimately developed into a first-class
neurasthenic. To him his beloved god was indeed a trial, as no doubt
Aristides himself was to his more earthly physicians. He would sit
surrounded by his friends, to whom he would pour out his woes in true
neurasthenic style. Aristides seems never to have been truly happy
unless he was talking about his ailments, and he loyally followed
any suggestion for treatment if only he could persuade himself that
it came from the beloved Asklepios. The god would send him a vision,
that ordered him to bathe three times in icy water when fevered, and
afterwards to run a mile in the teeth of a north-east wind--and the
north-easters in the Troad can be bitter indeed; very different from
the urbane and gentle breath that spreads so delicious a languor over
the summer of Sydney! This behest the much-tried man of faith would
dutifully perform, accompanied by a running bodyguard of doctors and
nurses marvelling at his endurance and the inscrutable wisdom of the
god, though they expected, and no doubt in their inmost hearts hoped,
that their long-suffering patient would drop dead from exhaustion.
There were real doctors at these shrines besides priests. The doctors
seem to have been much the same kind of inquisitive and benevolent
persons as we are to-day; some of them were paid to attend the poor
without fee. The nurses were both male and female, and appear to have
been most immoral people. Aristides was the wonder of his age; his
fame spread from land to land, and it is marvellous that he neither
succumbed to his heroic treatment nor lost his faith in the divine
being that subjected him to such torment. Both facts are perhaps
characteristic of mankind. The manner of his end I do not know.
In Theodora’s time Asklepios and the other Olympian divinities had
long been gathered to their fathers before the advancing tides of
Christianity and Earth-Mother worship; but though the old gods were
gone the human body and human spirit remained the same, and there is no
doubt that she was expected to dream and bathe and drink mineral waters
just as Aristides had done centuries before; and no doubt a crowd of
sympathizing friends sat round her on the marble seats which are still
there and tried to console her--a difficult task when the sufferer has
cancer of the breast. She sat there, her beauty faded, her once-rounded
cheeks ashy with cachexia and lined with misery, brooding over the real
nature of the Christ she was so soon to meet, wondering whether she or
her implacable enemies were in the right as to His soul--whether He
had in truth two souls or one. She had made her choice, and it was too
late now to alter; in any case she was too gallant a little Empress to
quail in the face of death, come he never so horribly. Let us hope that
she had discovered before she died that Christ the All-merciful would
forgive even so atrocious a sin as attributing to Him a single soul!
All her piety, all the prayers of her friends, and all the medical
skill of Brusa proved in vain, and she died in A.D. 548, being then
forty years of age. So we take leave of this woman, whom many consider
the most remarkable in history. Let us envisage her to ourselves--this
graceful, exquisite, little cameo-faced lady, passionate in her loves
and her hates, with some of the languor of the East in her blood, much
of the tigress; brave in danger and resourceful in time of trouble;
loyal and faithful to her learned husband as he was loyal to her; yet
perhaps a little despising him. Except Medea, as seen by Euripides,
Theodora was probably the first feminist, and as such has made her mark
upon the world. On the whole her influence upon the Roman Empire seems
to have been for good, and the merciful and juster trend of the laws
she inspired must be noted in her favour.
Theodora dead, the glory of Justinian departed. He seemed to be stunned
by the calamity, and for many critical months took no part in the
world’s affairs; even after he recovered he seemed but the shadow of
his old self. Faithful to her in life, he remained faithful after her
death, and sought no other woman; that is another reason for thinking
that Procopius lied. He lived, a lonely and friendless old man, for
eighteen more years, hated by his subjects for his extortionate
taxation--which they attributed to the extravagance of the crowned
prostitute, though more likely it was due to the enormous campaigns of
Belisarius and Narses the eunuch, as a result of which Italy and Africa
once more came under the sway of the East. Justinian was lonely on his
death-bed, and the world breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone. He
had long outlived his glory.
The Emperor Charles V