Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1885-04-30
THEODORA.

THEODORA.
Theodore was the daughter of bear
keeper attached to the hippodrome at Con-
stantinople, and was one of three sisters
whom their mother sent on the stage when
years old. With talent either for music or
dancing, her fortune was in her face and
her tongue. Her pretty features, her nim-
BILE movements, her audaciOus smartness in
repartee, made her the most popular and
notorious in the pantomimes Ito use the
nearest modern equivalent which delighted
a people whose taste had fallen below the
regular drama. Needless to say what was
| the morality of the Byzantic stage, or what
the life which the young actress led. Her
enemies Of later years declared it to have
| gusting, but the question, if delicately bal
anced less or more, besides being now insol-
uble, need make little difference to our view
of her character.
After some years she accompanied
wealthy Tyrian as his mistress, to the gov
ernorship of Tripoli; quarreled with him,
left him, and after being reduced to sad
straits in Egypt, found her way back to
Constantinople, where, according to story
current long afterward in the city, she sought
to support herself by spinning wool in a
This looks like trying to turn over new
leaf. However, she did not conceal her
charms. Encouraged by the words Of an
Oriental fortune teller, who had promised
her wealth and power, she threw herself in
the way of Justinian, who yielded at once
to her destinations. He was then about for
ty years of age-probably some twenty
years her senior-nephew of the regular
emperor, and gathering into his hands the
reinsof government which were beginning
to slip from the grasp of his aged and igno-
rant uncle.
He was an able and well-educated man,
already remarkable for his fondness of the
ology and his assiduous attention to public
business. His passion led him to promise
to marry the whilom actress, but a law da-
| ting (in substance) from the time of Angus
tus, and re-enacted by later emperors, for
babe 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 so long held sway over con-
tinental Europe, monument of TheodOra's
arts and Justinian's susceptibility. There
had been, however, a more serious obstacle
| to the nuptials of the eager pair. The Em-
press Euphemia was an ignorant and rustic
person, who had risen in life too late to ac-
quire the polish of the capital. But she
was pious, and she was respectable to the
backbone. She had probably heard of Theo-
dora's earlier fame, for the court was like
most courts anyhow she knew what Theo-
dora had been, and the idea of her nephew
marrying such a person was too shocking to
be considered.
While she lived she held out and kept
her husband to his resistance; but when she
died he gave way, the law WAS repealed,
and the marriage was solemnized, and when
in few years the old emperor died, Theo-
dora was crowned along with her husband,
and received the homage of the Senate, the
priesthood, and the people. A rise like this
had never been seen before, not even in
ConstantinOple, and was never seen again.
! That such person should have married an
emperor was wonderful enough. But that
of all emperors such should have married
Justinian, the studiOus and piOus Justinian,
the industrious and abstemiOus Justinian-
here was, indeed, matter for hymn to
AphrOdite, had there been poet to sing it.
The Contemporary Reriee.
| A WOMAN's WORK.-She must always
have the masculine buttons of the family
sewed on so they will never come off while
in use, and she must keep the family no.
! SleES SO lldG UODOuS "Oulu SFcl llioIi uoG
| that there were toes in the stockings while
they were on. She must hold herself in
constant readiness to find everything her
husband has lost-and a man never knows
where to find anything. He will put his
boots carefully away on the parlOr sofa, and
when he has hunted for them half an hour
| he will suddenly appeal to his wife with
countenance like an avenging angel and
demand "What in thunder she has done
with his boots?' She must shut all the
doors after her lord and master, and like
wise the bureau drawers, for married man
was never known to shut a drawer. 1t
would be as unnatural for hen to 60 in
swimming for recreation.
She must go to bed first in cold weather,
so as to get the bed warm. Her husband,
| if he be wise man, never asks her to dO
this. Oh, no; but he sits to 'juSt finish this
piece in the paper" and waits till she has
got the sheets to a comfortable temperature.
All, there are great many tricks in the
trade of living together. A woman is eX-
pected to take care Of the baby, even after
the first infantie wonder has multiplied
into a round half dozen. And if he doubles
up with the collie or trials of cutting teeth or
the necessary evils Of mumps and measles
and WhOoping cough and scarlet fever and
rash and throat distemper and short sleeves
and bare legs and pins sticking into him
and too much candy and had temper, her
husband tells her that he "does wish she
would try and quiet her baby" and he
says it, too, as if he thought she alone was
responsible for its being in existence, and as
! if she was considerably to blame, too.
| And when she has the headache nobody
thinks of minding it-a Woman's always
having the headache. And if she is "ner-
vous enough to fly" nobody shuts the door
any quieter, and nobody tucks her on the
lounge with shawl over her, or coddles her
to death as man has to be coddled under
such circumstances. We might 60 on in
fnitely with the troubles of being woman,
and if there is man who thinks woman
has an easy time of it, why, just let him pin
on a pound Of false hair and get inside a
pair of corsets, and on a pull-back overskirt,
and be a woman himself, and see how he
| likes it.
WHAT IS LIFE?-"What is life?" asked
a reflective friend of the philosophic Munt-
ford. The answer constitutes one of the
most charming utterances ever expressed by
mortal. Study it:
'The present life is sleeping and waking.
1t is night on going to bed and morning on
getting up. 1t is to wonder what the day
will bring forth it is rain on the window as
,;k ~, &Io ;, 70 IL,