Theodora, the famous consort of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I., was, according to the dubious evidence of Procopius, the daughter of Acacius, a bear-ward at Constantinople, and had already been by turns actress, dancer, and shameless harlot, when she won the heart of the austere and ambitious Justinian, to become in succession his mistress, his wife, and the sharer of his throne (527). There was a law which forbade a member of the senate to marry an actress, but Justinian cleared the way by repealing it. Theodora was of less than middle height, and her complexion was pale, but such was her beauty that Procopius tells us 'it was impossible for mere man to describe her comeliness in words, or imitate it in art.' Never thereafter did the breath of scandal touch her name; she became Justinian's trustiest counsellor, bore a chief share in the work of government, and saved the throne by her high courage at the crisis of the Nika riots (532). 'Now every man must die once,' said she in council, 'and for a king death is better than dethronement and exile. . . . If you wish, O emperor, to save your life, nothing is easier: there are your ships and the sea. But I agree with the old saying that "empire is the best winding-sheet." She lavished her bounty on the poor, and especially upon the unfortunate of her own sex, and died at forty (548), her slender and graceful frame worn out by the anxieties of state. Her character descended to history unspotted until the appearance (1623) of the Secret History of Procopius, the work of a man who had enjoyed the full favour and confidence of the court, and had in his other writings openly extolled the triumphs and the wisdom of Justinian and Theodora, whose reputation he was the while labouring in secret to destroy. His stories satisfied his first editor, Nicholas Alemannus, and later Gibbon and Dahn; but it may be remembered that there is not a word of Theodora's profligacy in Evagrius or Zonaras, and moreover that, when a man owns that elsewhere he has purposely denied or concealed the truth, it may at least be said that we are entitled to hesitate about the value of his testimony at all.
See Antonin Débidour, L'Impératrice Théodora (Paris, 1885); C. E. Mallet's article in Eng. Hist. Rev. (vol. ii. 1887); F. Dahn's Prokopius von Cäsarea (Berlin, 1865); Bury's Later Roman Empire (1889). Sardou's drama on the theme (1884) revived interest in the puzzling personality and character of the great empress.