The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1909-11-27
GREAT LOVE
STORIES
of HISTORY
Theodore and Justinian
Copyright, By the Au;hor.)
By Albert Payson Terhune

The Roman capital OF Constantine
pie in 525 A. D. was aghast at the
news that the consul, Justinian
nephew and heir to the Emperor JUS
tin IL was to marry Theodore, the
farce-comedy actress whose clever per
formances at the Circus" had for
years set the city in a roar of laugh.
ter.
For An emperor's heir to make an
actress his wife was not only scan.
dalous, but illegal as well. People be-
gan to inquire into Theodora's past
life. Many of the facts they dug up
were OF too unsavory nature to bear
repetition. But they learned also that
she was one of the three daughters Of
a brutal fellow who had been keeper
of the wild bears in the menagerie
under the Circus building When
Theodore was only seven her father
had died. The child was an impish.
gay little creature with a genius for
mimicry. So she had been put on the
stage. She could not sing or dance.
but she was a born comedian. She
grew to womanhood small, thin and
pale. Scarcely the sort of girl to at
tract the attention Of the emperor's
nephew.
Rome, since the days of Nero, had
grown SO great in size and wealth that
it had at last split in two because OF
its own unwieldy bulk, and was divid-
ed into the eastern and western en-
pires. The western empire with the
city of Rome as its capitaD was soon
overrun by barbarian tribes. But the
The Actress Who n e"p.le
Became Empress. n,oa,. aa..-; ~.
Justin l., a Dacian peasant, had fought
his way up from the ranks to the COM
mand of the army. Then he had made
himself emperor and had proclaimed
JuStinian his heir. Justinian was a
wise man, but lacking in firm2ess. The
sort of man that a clever woman
could manage to suit herself Theo-
dora won his love and pointed out to
him a plan by which they two might
become emperor and empress. His
uncles wife. the Empress Euphemia,
sternly forbade the match. But this
did not long stand in Theodora's way.
For Euphemia died rather suddenly.
Justin was old and as much under
Justinian's influence as the latter was
under Theodora's.
The rest was plain sailing. Justin
was persuaded to set aside the law
forbidding a prince to marry an &C.
tress. Theodore and Justinian thus
were married in 525, when the girl
was only II. Two years later Justin
died. Theodore made her husband,
the new emperor, crown her as en-
press. Then she proceeded to do the
lions share of the ruling, interfering
and having her way in nearly all state
affairs. The civilized world was thus
for time swayed by an actress
whims. Nor was she as bad an en-
press as her early life would have
seemed to forecast. She aided her hus-
band to frame the celebrated Justin
ian Code" of laws and in many ways
helped make his reign great.
She attracted some notoriety by de-
claring herself the champion of wives
whose husbands sought to divorce
them, and she started besides a sort
of royal marriage bureau" Match
making was her fad. And certainly no
one could have set brighter example
from her own success along that line.
Justinian's love for her did not cool as
the years went by. And she probably
made him a fairly good wife.
Once when revolutionists seized
Constantinople and clamored at the
palace gates Justinian was wild with
fear and decided to creep to the sea-
shore unobserved and save his life by
flight. Then it was that Theodore
threw away the diplomatic tactics by
which she had won and managed her
husband. For once in her life she let
him feel the lash of her scorn, and
couched her speech in the language of
the stage instead of that of the stately
court. She babe him fly if he chose,
but told him that death was nobler
for a monarch than exile, and vowed
that she would noe stir from her
throne, preferring, as she said. to
Quarrel, Of tho make empire her
o., o. winding sheet"
Justinian, stung
into courage, stuck to his post. and
thereby saved his crown. Once only
he is said to have tainted her in anger
with her humble parentage. She is
reported to have answered that her
father was quite as we'll born as her
husbands grandfather, who had been
a rude peasant
Indeed. few dared to remind Theo-
dora of her past. She had a way Of
putting to death persons who brought
up the subject. For % years this
strange pair of lovers governed most
of the civilized world. Then, at the
age of 40, Theodore died. The gen.
orally accepted story of her fate is
that she fell victim to cancer But
some authorities hint that she tried to
manage" her elderly husband once
too often and without her earlier tact,
and that he. in At Of rage, had her
beheaded.