life, her deeds of charity, her advocacy of orthodoxy, she won the
eulogies of the Church; but her controlling attribute had been a love of
power, which had wrought much evil. Our sympathies are naturally with
the beautiful and gifted Athenais, a Greek by birth, by temperament and
by culture, but yet a Christian in religious fervor and pious practices,
whose personal fascination had given her the authority she richly
merited, until the stronger nature of Pulcheria, by despicable means,
had wrought her downfall.

For four years after the death of Pulcheria, Marcian continued to hold
supreme power; finally, in 457, he too came to his end, and with Marcian
the house of Theodosius the Great ceased to reign in new Rome.

XI

THE EMPRESS THEODORA

There are few stranger episodes in literary history than the fate of
Theodora, the celebrated consort of the Emperor Justinian. To us in this
day she is a Magdalene elevated to the throne of the Caesars, a beautiful
and licentious actress suddenly raised by a freak of fortune to rule the
destinies of the Roman Empire. All this is due to the remarkable
discovery made by Nicholas Alemannus, librarian of the Vatican, toward
the end of the seventeenth century, of the Secret History of Procopius,
a work which purported to reveal the private life of the Byzantine court
in the days of Justinian. Before the publication of this work Theodora
was in public opinion chiefly remarkable for the prominent place she
occupied in Justinian's reign. Of her early life nothing was known, but
from the date of her accession to the throne she had exercised a
sovereign influence over the emperor. In an important crisis she had
exhibited admirable firmness and courage. She had taken an active part
in the court intrigues and religious controversies of the epoch, and to
her sagacity the emperor attributed many of his happiest inspirations in
legislation. The ecclesiastical historians accused her of serious lapses
into heresy and of having laid violent hands on the sacred person of a
pope; but, with all their vituperation, there never was in circulation a
calumny affecting her personal character. Such is a brief resume of the
history of Theodora as handed down unassailed for a thousand years.

Then suddenly a startling revelation was made to the world concerning
the previously unknown period of Theodora's life. Alemannus disinterred
from the archives of the Vatican library, where it had long lain