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Theodora: Portrait in a Byzantine Landscape
A biography of the Byzantine courtesan who rose from the gutter to the throne of an Empire.
- GenresHistory
214 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
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December 12, 2018"Certainly they were obsessionally religious almost to a man. It is difficult, if not impossible, for us living in the secular society of the twentieth century to imagine what it must have been like to be a Byzantine. He lived his life between two worlds; like us he was born into the physical world of human desire, power politics, war and peace, life and death, and the everyday business of getting and spending, but he did not feel himself to be primarily its citizen. He was first and foremost a citizen of the world represented in the glittering mosaics which surrounded him when he entered one of his churches: a world ruled by Christ and the supernatural hierarchy of heaven and hell and erupting with miracles. The darkly luminous world of his icons, where martyrs and saints and confessors, silhouetted against golden skies, moved about in a strange and timeless landscape not subject to the mundane dictates of perspective, was his true home. It was far more real to him than the humdrum world of material reality; it was the primary reality in which he lived, and hoped, and planned his future in the prospect of eternity and judgement. Not surprisingly, therefore, his great passion was for theological debate, and this was taken to astonishing lengths." pg 6-7
"The chariots were two-wheeled, and usually they were driven by four horses, though beginners sometimes raced with two-in-hand or three-in-hand teams. The charioteers, some of the most
successful of whom were the idols of the people, stood upright in open cars dressed in short tunics, their arms bare, crash helmets on their heads and covering their foreheads and cheeks; each was armed with a whip and a knife to cut himself free from entangling traces in the event of a crash. Waiting for the beginning of a race, the crowd became more and more tense, and when a white handkerchief was dropped as the signal to start, there was a roar of excitement as whips cracked,
charioteers yelled, and the horses plunged into a violent gallop in a cloud of dust. Usually a race consisted of seven or eight laps of the course, which was about a kilometre in circumference, and the chances of all the chariots surviving without mishap were small; that was part of the excitement. Sometimes a driver fell off as he cornered too fast, and was dragged along by the traces; at other times he cut himself free only to be run over by the wheels of the next chariot or injured by the
horses’ hoofs; occasionally two or more chariots became locked together in a collision, and animals and men spilled on to the track in a struggling confusion of kicking limbs and splintered wood; but even the death of a charioteer did not dampen the hysterical enthusiasm of the crowd. As the excitement mounted, people stood in their places screaming abuse or encouragement at the charioteers, waving their arms about, jumping up and down in the passion of the moment, and as the end came either hugging each other in a rapturous embrace if their faction had won, or howling with despair if it had lost. At the end of the day they went home purged of emotion and flushed with enjoyment, leaving the Hippodrome to those who lived there: the freaks, the owners of side-shows, the stable-boys, the keepers of wild beasts, and a large and varied riff-raff who managed to make a living in a number of unlikely and usually disreputable ways.
One such was a man named Acacius (Akakios in Greek), who was bear-keeper to the Greens; he made a slightly better living than most, for bear-baiting, bear hunts, and fights between bears were popular, but his job was a menial one, and both he and his wife belonged to the lowest order of society. In about A.D. 500, however, Acacius’ wife gave birth to a daughter who was destined to become the most notorious woman in Byzantine history, though no one who was a witness of her very humble beginning could possibly have predicted such a fate for her. She owed it, not only to the fact that she led an extraordinary and dramatic life, but also to a brilliant historian, Procopius by name, who knew her when she was at the height of her fame, and hated her with such an obsessional loathing that he wrote a scurrilous Secret History, in which he did everything in his power to blacken her memory. It was secret because it was so libellous that he did not dare publish it in his lifetime, and in fact it remained unknown for centuries; but since it was discovered about three hundred years ago, the subject of its author’s implacable dislike has enjoyed such a succes de scandale that her name has become the one name in the voluminous annals of the Byzantine Empire known to almost everyone, even to those entirely ignorant of everyone and everything else connected with its thousand
years of history. It was Theodora. " pg 11-12
"The chariots were two-wheeled, and usually they were driven by four horses, though beginners sometimes raced with two-in-hand or three-in-hand teams. The charioteers, some of the most
successful of whom were the idols of the people, stood upright in open cars dressed in short tunics, their arms bare, crash helmets on their heads and covering their foreheads and cheeks; each was armed with a whip and a knife to cut himself free from entangling traces in the event of a crash. Waiting for the beginning of a race, the crowd became more and more tense, and when a white handkerchief was dropped as the signal to start, there was a roar of excitement as whips cracked,
charioteers yelled, and the horses plunged into a violent gallop in a cloud of dust. Usually a race consisted of seven or eight laps of the course, which was about a kilometre in circumference, and the chances of all the chariots surviving without mishap were small; that was part of the excitement. Sometimes a driver fell off as he cornered too fast, and was dragged along by the traces; at other times he cut himself free only to be run over by the wheels of the next chariot or injured by the
horses’ hoofs; occasionally two or more chariots became locked together in a collision, and animals and men spilled on to the track in a struggling confusion of kicking limbs and splintered wood; but even the death of a charioteer did not dampen the hysterical enthusiasm of the crowd. As the excitement mounted, people stood in their places screaming abuse or encouragement at the charioteers, waving their arms about, jumping up and down in the passion of the moment, and as the end came either hugging each other in a rapturous embrace if their faction had won, or howling with despair if it had lost. At the end of the day they went home purged of emotion and flushed with enjoyment, leaving the Hippodrome to those who lived there: the freaks, the owners of side-shows, the stable-boys, the keepers of wild beasts, and a large and varied riff-raff who managed to make a living in a number of unlikely and usually disreputable ways.
One such was a man named Acacius (Akakios in Greek), who was bear-keeper to the Greens; he made a slightly better living than most, for bear-baiting, bear hunts, and fights between bears were popular, but his job was a menial one, and both he and his wife belonged to the lowest order of society. In about A.D. 500, however, Acacius’ wife gave birth to a daughter who was destined to become the most notorious woman in Byzantine history, though no one who was a witness of her very humble beginning could possibly have predicted such a fate for her. She owed it, not only to the fact that she led an extraordinary and dramatic life, but also to a brilliant historian, Procopius by name, who knew her when she was at the height of her fame, and hated her with such an obsessional loathing that he wrote a scurrilous Secret History, in which he did everything in his power to blacken her memory. It was secret because it was so libellous that he did not dare publish it in his lifetime, and in fact it remained unknown for centuries; but since it was discovered about three hundred years ago, the subject of its author’s implacable dislike has enjoyed such a succes de scandale that her name has become the one name in the voluminous annals of the Byzantine Empire known to almost everyone, even to those entirely ignorant of everyone and everything else connected with its thousand
years of history. It was Theodora. " pg 11-12
November 20, 2017
A highly entertaining biography of a fascinating woman. To rise from a background of poverty and prostitution to become Empress of Rome (well, Byzantium) isn't exactly an everyday tale. But because it was written back in the 70s there's not much in the way of referencing: I should have liked to know much more about the author's sources.
July 15, 2012
In sum: don't believe that busybody Procopius. Theodora (almost) saved Byzantium!
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