and
for some time the fair Cyprian, a veritable priestess of the divine
Aphrodite, made conquests innumerable in all the great cities of the
Orient. Finally, she returned to Constantinople, to the scenes of her
first exploits, being then between twenty and twenty-five years of age.
In her bitterest humiliation, some vision had whispered to her that she
was destined to a great career.

Wearied of amorous adventures and of a wandering career, she began from
this moment to adopt a retired and blameless life in a modest mansion,
where she relieved her poverty by the feminine task of spinning wool. It
was at this moment that happy chance threw the patrician Justinian in
her path. Captivated by her beauty and her feminine graces, this staid,
business-like, and eminently practical personage, already marked as his
uncle Justin's successor to the Empire, wished to make the fair Theodora
his wife. But there were obstacles in the way. The Empress Euphemia
flatly refused to accept the reformed courtesan as a niece; Justinian's
own mother, Vigilantia, feared that the vivacious and beautiful
worldling would corrupt her son. It was even said that at this time the
laws of Rome prohibited the marriage of a senator with a woman of
servile origin or of the theatrical profession. But Justinian remained
inflexible. The Empress Euphemia conveniently died; Justinian overrode
the opposition of his mother; and Justin was persuaded to pass a law
abolishing the rigid statute of antiquity and to make Theodora a
patrician.

Soon followed the solemn nuptials of Justinian and Theodora; and when,
in 527, Justinian was officially associated with his uncle on the
throne, Theodora was also solemnly crowned in Saint Sophia by the hands
of the Patriarch as an equal and independent colleague in the
sovereignty of the Empire, and the oath of allegiance was imposed on
bishops and officials in the joint names of Justinian and Theodora;
while in the Hippodrome, the scene of her earlier triumphs, the daughter
of Acacius received as empress the adulation of the populace.

Such, according to the Secret History, is the romance of Theodora. The
reason why it has been given general credence is because the work
purported to be that of a contemporary writer, the greatest historian of
his age, who has weighted his charges with emphasis and detail, and
because the recital received the convincing endorsement of Alemannus and
of Gibbon. The principle which governed Gib