Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1885-03-21
Theodore.
From the Contemporary Review.

T'oAu the contemporary Review.
Theodore was the daughter of a bear keeper,
attached to the hippodrome at Constantinople,
and was one of the three sisters whom their
1nother sent on the stage when they were still
children seven or eight years old With no
talent either for music Or dancing, her fortune
was In her face and her tongue. Her pretty
FEATURES, her nimble movements, her audac ious
smartness In re partee, made her the most pop
uiaf and notorious in the pantomimes Ito use
tne nearest modern equivaent) which delighted
q people whose taste had fallen below the regu-
lar drama. Needless to say what was the mo-
railty OF the Byzantine stage, or what the life
,star n ens young actress led Her enemies of
iater years declared it to have been more than
usually tsu shameless and disgusting; but
6 dne question if deeately balanced less
need make little difference to our view of her
character. After some years she accompanied
Wehai.hy Iyrlan. as his mistress, to the Cover
norshlp OF 1ripoli: Quarreled with him, left him.
and after having been reduced to sad straits in
Egypt, found her way back to Constantinople,
ward in the city, she sought to support herself
by spinning wool in house near the edge of
the Golden Horn. This looks like trying to turn
her charms. Encouraged by the words of an
orlental fortune teller, who had promised her
wealth and power, she threw herselfin the way
Oh Jushnian. who yielded at once to her fasci-
nations; He was then about forty years OF age
Probably some twenty years her senior
nephew of the reigning emperor and gathering
into his hands the refns of government which
were beginning to slip from the grasp of his
aged ana ignorant uncle. He was able
ana Well-educated man, already remarkable
Tor his fondEess for theology and his as
slduous attention to- public business.
His passion led him to promise to
marry the whilom actress, but law dating Din
substance) from the time of Augustus, and re-
enacted by later emperors, forbade the union
OF senators and other persons of exalted rank to
women who had been on the stage. Nothing
was left but to repeal the law, which the
emperor was compelled by the urgency of his
nephew to do, and the statute may still be read
In that Corpus Juris which long held sway
over continental Europe, monument of Theo-
DORA arts and Just1nian's susceptibility. There
nad been, however, more serious obstacle to
the nupt1als of the eager pair. The Empress
who had risen in life too late to acquire the polish
OF the capital. But she was pious, and she was
respectable to the backbone. She had probably
heard OF TheOdora's earlier fame for the
court was like most courts; anyhow she
knew what Theodore had been, and the idea
OF her nephew marrying such q person was
too shocking to be considered. While she lived
she held out and kept her husband to his resist
ance; but when She died he gave way, the law
when in few years the old emperor died Theo-
dora was crowned along with her husband, and
received the homage OF the senate, the priest
MOOD, and the people. rise like this had never
been seen before, not even in Constantnople
and was never seen again. That such a person
should have married an emperor was wonder
iul enough. But that of all emperOrs she should
have married Justnian, the studous and
pious Justinian the industrious and abstemi-
hymn to Aphrodite, had there been a poet to